December 21st Newsletter

Dear Families,
I hope that you are enjoying this time together as our family has. We have been playing board games, doing puzzles, baking and lots of cooking, sleeping in and spending time in nature. With the increase in COVID numbers we have really hunkered down and stayed close to home over the past weeks as I am sure many of you have.
We loved having Ms. Macdonald with us for three weeks and enjoyed many mornings offsite at the forest and seashore. Her kind, gentle approach enabled her to build strong relationships with your children.  She will return to classes in January and continue to visit a half day each week until her second practicum which begins the week of Feb 14th.
As we transition into the cold and wet winter months, we will reduce our offsite mornings to 2 or 3 per week; Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays weather permitting. As much as possible we will begin our onsite mornings outdoors. Please dress your child for the colder weather including warm socks, mittens, hats and boots. Our offsite calendar for parent volunteers has been updated for January.
As we continue to prepare for Seamless Kindergarten, our second Early Childhood Educator, Chelsea Jacklin, has been hired and will begin on Monday January 17th working in the classroom to become familiar with the children as well as Ms. Sherry and myself.  I am hoping that after our next meeting the district will confirm a start date for families.

In math we are continuing with patten work, introducing the students to complex patterns (3 or more parts) including growing patterns. We will also begin skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. 
During our December Counting Collection framework the quantities in the jars were increased. To encourage accuracy with larger numbers, the children will use tools like egg cartons, cups, plates and ten frames to sort their objects into groups of 2, 5, and 10.  
We will be continuing with mystery number, estimating jars and counting up to 10 and back down to 0 as well as solving math problems in their math journals.
Our Identity inquiry was completed in December and a OSCL will go home in January with your child's reflections. Our new inquiry, Animals in Winter, will investigate the animals that we share our forest with. The children will explore what we can learn from the animals as they deepen their understanding of animals and people roles in the forest.  This will be a cross curricular inquiry for social studies, science, language arts and fine arts. 

i have decided to use a portion of the art grant to purchase potter's clay for the children. I am interested in offering another language for expressing ideas and learning while also working on those important fine motor skills squishing, patting, poking, squeezing, scraping, rolling, pinching, pressing and pounding. It should integrate nicely with our new inquiry.
We will also be continuing with our Social Emotional Well Being; naming strong feelings, using the WITS program and calming routines like story yoga, yoga flow and breathing. 
Enjoy a well deserved rest and Merry Christmas.