Welcome back and happy Spring! I hope families had a restful spring break. It is hard to believe that April is here and our last term has begun. The children sure have grown over the break and I am excited to see the learning and fun these next 3 months bring.
Upcoming Dates / Reminders:
- Thank you to those who have brought back students' indoor shoes after the break and have already returned the report card envelopes. If you haven't yet, please send them in so we can reuse the envelopes for the final term.
- Read Around the Room this Friday, 8:40-9:00am in our class. All are welcome.
- Class and school photos are happening on Wednesday, April 6th. All students will receive a class photo at no extra charge. If you would like to purchase whole school photo, an envelope will be coming home on Friday for the $10 payment. Please return the envelope with payment on or before the 6th or simply recycle the envelope if you are not interested in the whole school photo.
- April 11th and April 22nd are Non-Instructional Days coming up for students. Staff will be collaborating on the new curriculum on April 11th and having a school planning day on April 22nd.
- I would like to change pick up procedures for the final term. Usually the students line up and wait for Miss Norris before leaving but as they are growing, maturing, and getting ready for Grade 1, I would like to give them a little more responsibility. I will talk this over with the students and we will start on Monday. I will continue to walk them out to the outside door and say 'Goodbye' to them, but if they see their adult, they are free to walk over to them. If they do not see their adult, they will go to our usual line up spot against the wall and wait for their adult. I will stay outside until each student has been picked up. After school care students will continue as we have been. I pass them directly to their caregiver. If you have any questions/concerns, please come talk to me.
We have so enjoyed our Cultural Suitcases and just have a couple friends left to share. We will be starting our 'Scientist of the Day' box on April 5th. A notice went home before the break about this next Special Helper job. This is meant to be a fun job and the experiment does not need to be fancy. Seeing what food colouring does to celery or carnations is just fine, for example. It is suggested that you practice the demo with your child before their day. This activity allows your child to build on their oral presentation skills and is tied in with learning about Science which all children have a keen interest in.If you are looking for more science experiment ideas, check out these links:
- http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments.html
- http://www.schoolofdragons.com/how-to-train-your-dragon/science-experiments
- https://sciencebob.com/category/experiments/
- http://www.kidspot.com.au/things-to-do/collection/science-experiments
Classroom News:
Math: This week we focused on the numbers 3 and 4. We talked about how to form the numbers properly and practised by printing the numbers, forming them with playdough, representing them in different ways (i.e. pictures, numerals, tally marks, etc.) and decomposing the numbers (i.e. 2 can be 2+0, 0+2, or 1+1.
Science: We will be moving into a new topic: Spring! We have begun to talk about signs of Spring and have completed some art projects inspired by this season.