There are many exciting things happening in February. Literacy and Black History will be themes for Athlone School. Please take a look at the February calendar, newsletter and the school website for all of the information you will need to stay up to date with what is going on.

We will be celebrating Valentine's Day and 100 Day in the classroom on Friday, February 14th. Valentine cards are great for your child to fill out to practice their writing. Please check the newsletter for more information about Valentine's Day.

We have already been working to get ready for conferences in March. We are currently writing our own books to share with our families. We have been setting writing goals, working on our math skills and exploring science and social studies concepts.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a restful winter break! We are working hard in the classroom on our second term units. Students have enjoyed learning about colour and important people in our community. There has also been an emphasis on gathering more information about winter and the changes this season brings.

As we begin to focus on reading and writing more, it is important to practice these skills at home to reinforce what we are learning in the classroom. Making letters out of play dough, reading simple books together and having your child point out letters or words they know, trying a fun literacy app or game on the tablet or computer are all great ways to promote these skills.

In math we are focusing on numbers to 20, naming the number that is one more and one less than a given number, learning 2D shapes, representing numbers in different ways and participating in number talks and math story problems. Playing card games like war, counting a collection of objects, writing numbers in yogurt or pudding and playing board games are just a few ideas to further develop your child's numeracy skills.

I'm also mindful of how important it is to work on and develop social skills in Kindergarten too! We have talked a lot about how to solve problems in a respectful way, how we can become more independent and how to be a kind and helpful friend. I must brag about manners in the classroom.  Students have done an awesome job of using manners to ask for things politely!

If you need any further activities or ideas about how to help your child with a specific skill, don't hesitate to contact me. It has been amazing to see so much growth in such a short period of time with all of the students this year.

All the best in 2020!!

Mrs. Lavallee

New School Year

It has been a very busy September in the Kindergarten room. We have been working on getting to know one another and learning more about ourselves. We have established routines and made our class treaties. We look forward to exploring new ideas and concepts in a variety of different subject areas. We will also spend a great deal of time strengthening our skills in printing/writing, fine motor and numeracy.

There are many activities planned for October! Be sure to take a look at the October newsletter and calendar.

Happy Fall,

Mrs. Lavallee

Spring and Beyond

We have many exciting things planned for the remaining months of school. With the weather getting nicer, we will have many chances to take our learning outside. Please watch for permission forms coming home about community walks and field trips.

We hope to have Kid-netics from the University of Manitoba come to our classroom to teach us more about specific topics in science. 

We have Indigenous Educator (Richelle Scott) joining our classes for sessions in April and May to teach us about Indigenous culture.

Students enjoyed making pizzas in the classroom and we hope to take part in more cooking/baking as we continue to learn about the food groups and healthy eating.

On another note, please be sure to send your child with appropriate clothing for this wet spring weather. An extra pair of socks and gloves in your child's backpack would be helpful!

And before you know it, we will be preparing for our Kindergarten Celebration in June!!

We are looking forward to sharing our learning with our families at conferences coming up in March! We have been quite busy these past few months learning new things and developing our skills in many areas.

We will be focusing on these areas during our final term of school:

- Becoming stronger writers and readers.
- Improving our counting, number recognition and building on our problem solving skills.
- Learning about new concepts in science and social studies. (paper, spring, the world around us, etc.)
- Studying healthy foods and learning about ways to keep our bodies healthy. (Let's make and bake some food too!)
- Learning new techniques in art and creating art pieces that have to do with spring and foods.
- Learning outdoors!

AND...

Let's go on a couple of field trips!

There are so many things to look forward to in the next few months. We are excited!
 

November

We are working hard to put together our growth-folios for first term conferences. We are looking forward to sharing our work with our families! We hope to see you at conferences on Nov. 22nd or Nov. 23rd.

Welcome Kindergarten Families,

October is a busy month as we celebrate Thanksgiving, Halloween and much more learning! Watch for more updates in your child's Bird Binder on special activities happening later this month! Take a look at the October newsletter and calendar located on the right side of the blog!

Mrs. Lavallee :)

May

We will be wrapping up our final units in social studies and science in May and June. We are excited for the culminating projects based on our learning about Living Things and Connecting With Others.

In science we will be creating a class zoo and each student will research an animal of their choice.  After researching the animal, students will create a non-fiction book about the animal.

In social studies we will be learning to connect with classmates through spirit buddy meetings. The meetings will happen in the morning at the beginning of our day. The idea is for students to have meaningful conversations with their peers and learn more about them. 

We will also be starting some new learning about fairy tales. We will be comparing fairy tales, looking at character traits of certain characters and making connections to the books we read.

Keep an eye out for some of our new art projects we will be completing. Check the blog and Instagram for pictures of our Van Gogh sunflowers and art pieces inspired by Canadian Indigenous artists.

We hope you have a great May and we welcome the warmer weather!!

December

Winter break is right around the corner and we are working hard to be ready for the concert on the 15th. There will be many fun and exciting activities happening this month. Please check our class and school newsletter for important dates and times. Please also check your child's BIRD binder on a regular basis for notes regarding activities happening this month.

We will be learning about polar bears this month. If you find any interesting news articles or have something interesting to share about polar bears, please feel free to bring any items in to enhance our learning!

Have a wonderful Christmas break and all the best in the New Year!!

Pumpkin Carving

Our class pumpkin carving was a success! Each pumpkin was very unique and it was apparent that everyone had a lot of fun! I heard a few students say that it was the best day ever! I am glad that everyone enjoyed themselves. Thank you to families that donated a pumpkin and thank you to our wonderful volunteers who came in to carve. Your help was much appreciated! We could not have done it without you!!

Getting Halloween Ready and a Few Other Things!

We started our study on bats this week and began our math pattern centers. We cannot wait to share our pattern books with our families at triad conferences in November. We also completed some fall Piet Mondrian inspired leaves with our TIA artist, Mme Broughton.

Reading and Math

Please keep up with the hard work on home reading and playing the math games that were sent home. Reading and math fact fluency will continue to be a heavy focus in second term.

Reading
When reading we focus on:
- practicing reading each page smoothly without any choppy parts.
- retelling the story to make sure we have understood what we have read.
- use clues (picture, smaller words within a word, etc.) to help decode a difficult word.

Math Fact Fluency
When working on fact fluency we:
- try to answer a fact within 3 seconds.
- embrace that there are many strategies and ways to come up with an answer to a fact.
- make learning our facts as fun as possible!

Here are some of the facts we will be focusing on.

Grade 1 Students
- doubles to 5+5
- sums within 5
- combinations of 10  0+10, 1+9, 2+8, etc.

Grade 2 Students
- doubles to 10 + 10
- near doubles ex. 3+4
- combinations of 10
- making ten ex. 8 + 3  think of it as 8+2+1
- + or - 0, + or - 1, + or - 2

Fact fluency is beneficial for moving onto more challenging math and builds your child's confidence as a math learner!

Here is a helpful chart that shows the facts a student is expected to know by the end of grade 1, 2 and 3. Grade 1 is in yellow and Grade 2 in green. 

Pumpkin Carving and Halloween

We will be carving pumpkins on Friday, October 28th. If you can donate a pumpkin or volunteer to help out with our pumpkin carving, please let me know! Pumpkin carving will happen from 2:00-3:00pm. Our Halloween celebration will take place on Monday, Oct. 31st. A reminder note has been sent out to all families regarding both Halloween and pumpkin carving.

Our class will be participating in We Scare Hunger. If you have any non-perishable food items to donate to Winnipeg Harvest, please send them to school with your child.

Our Learning in Room 23

Testing out different ways to practice our spelling words.

We finished off our study of line by creating these crazy line sculptures. You can see all of the line sculptures in the display case near the office!

We have been hard at work learning math facts, writing our 5 senses fall poem, learning about the ear in science and talking about our families and cultural backgrounds. Watch for some of learning about bats, patterning and the other senses! It is all coming soon!

Spelling

We will begin spelling tomorrow (Oct. 3rd). Please be sure to have your child talk about their spelling sort with you. I have included the explanation page from the information booklet given out at the beginning of the year with the spelling sort for this week. Spelling practice will hopefully be fun! My intention with spelling is to build on spelling skills from where your child is at.

Yoga in the Gym!

Students had the opportunity to try yoga during gym class last week. They enjoyed trying it out and stretching their bodies. If you are interested in joining the yoga club after school each Friday, fill out the permission form and return it to Mrs. Parnell! Check out the link below for a short video at the beginning of the yoga session.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8gBXwCFyc8gSWdwS2xINmpXUFVHQ29lMDk1bk05OThETC13

Our First Art Project of the Year

One of my favourite subjects to teach is art. I hope the students get as much out of it as I do. Watching their confidence in their abilities grow, is always wonderful to see. I typically begin with line at the beginning of the year as the first element of art we study. Line is a great starting point and there are always so many interesting art projects to do that relate to line. Watch for more line art pieces in the coming weeks!

Math Mania

We have been hard at work working on a variety of math activities.

Building patterns with more than one attribute. The attributes are: colour, shape, size, position and thickness.

If you know the answer, can you create a math problem?

Make 10 practice. Knowing the our make 10 facts will be a tremendous help for when we start working on more challenging addition and place value.

The Integrated Arts and Hoop Dancing

 Athlone School was lucky enough to have Teddy Anderson come in and teach each class the basics of hoop dancing. Students took part in two sessions with Teddy and they were able to try out their hoop dancing skills.

This month, our class also had the opportunity to work with sculptor David Perret. David taught our class how to sculpt with plasticine. Each student created a "bust" which is a representation of the upper part of the human figure. I was quite impressed with all of the hard work that went into creating each piece. Great work!

April Showers!

Spring has finally arrived... We can finally go outside without ski pants, we will celebrate Easter and Earth Day and we are in the final stretch of the school year! Check out our new art projects, our non-fiction animal posters, penpal writing and what we have been learning about in science. 

Our study of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia inspired us to create sailboat art!

It's raining, it's pouring!

Reading and writing all about a variety of animals.

Name that liquid...

We learned a few new words such as absorption, transparent, translucent and opaque.

We wrote back to our penpals at Royal School.

Easter math... the equations were hidden in the eggs.  We had to use magnifying glasses to find the tiny equations.

Find an egg and answer the question inside.