October Newsletter

Good morning families
I hope that you are enjoying your long weekend as I am with our family. This is the first year ever that I have not hosted dinner. Instead I am the pie maker and we will gather at our daughter's home for Thanksgiving dinner.
Scholastic book order brochures will be coming home on Tuesday. If you wish to participate in this online program our class code is RC232105. 20% of purchases will be donated to the class by Scholastic as a credit. This is used to purchase books for the students.
We have continued with our Identity Inquiry and the children are exploring names through hands on activities with loose parts, read alouds, art materials and circle games. This week we will explore our family and do an art activity connected to how many people live in our homes. Please remember to send in your family photo.
We had our first cooking session on Thursday. The children made applesauce and will be enjoying it on Friday morning with Mrs. K. Next week we will make be doing some more cooking with apples. Please send in an apple if you have not already done so. I am going apple picking on the weekend so will bring some in too.
The children are doing an excellent job in our outdoor program. This past week was about 90 minutes but i see that the children are ready for extending to 120 minutes. If you have completed the volunteer form and RCMP check please let me know and I will add you to our list.
The children have been busy with our first collaborative art project, a large rainbow, with lots of painting, glueing and decorating. As per their request for their own personal rainbows Mr. M. made a set of cardboard rainbows for the children to paint and decorate in the atelier.
I introduced our daily phonemic awareness program (Heggerty) this week and the children are participating nicely. This systematic program will target all of the phonic and phonemic kindergarten goals such as rhyme, letter sounds, compound words and segmenting.
In math we are exploring number formation, oral counting to ten and back down to zero. I have also introduced counting using objects and we have practiced two counting strategies; touch & count and make a line. I have begun to do 1:1 math assessment and have been updating your child's e-portfolio as I work with him/her.
Mrs. R. wanted to share

Hello parents! On Friday's in the forest I have been doing oral story telling from the Secwepemc First Nations. It has been on the saga of 'brother bear and brother coyote', where brother coyote is always tricking brother bear. See if your children can recall the legend of 'how we have day and night', or 'how brother bear lost his tail'. In the forest we have been having fun finding animals under logs, building structures, stacking Inukshuks, and climbing. In the gym we have been working on our ball handling skills: bouncing (both hands, then one hand), throwing under hand to a partner, receiving a pass from our partner, catching above and below our waists. 

Have a great weekend!!!!
Liz McCaw