Mme Smyth's Kindergarten Blog : February 11, 2022

Bonjour! Hello! Oki! Kindergarten families,

This week in Kindergarten

What a lovely week we have had in Kindergarten! We have spent a lot of time completing a variety of Valentine’s day themed activities to prepare for our special day on Monday, such as: Valentine’s day counting and sequencing, working on our fine motor by creating our special love-bot Valentine’s day card holders, I Spy Valentine’s counting, and using our early writing skills to design our own Valentine’s Day cards for our friends and family.

We spent some more time discussing our classroom environment and what kind of things we can see at school, i.e., what we can find in our backpacks. As we have already discussed and engaged with the sentence “Dans mon sac à dos, il y a…”/ “In my backpack, I have a …” students have moved onto their next steps and began to read/write about it.

As students are diving deeper into furthering their early literacy skills, we have spent more time learning about specific letter sounds and letter recognition. We have visited all of the vowels, and are now blending long consonants (/m/, /j/, /f/) with the vowels. Students have shared many familiar words that begin with these letter sounds/letters, and are building connections between sounds and letters independently, such as fé in février.

Kindergarten students also continued to explore Drumfit for PE! They have shown a lot of skill in following routines and directions when drumming along to some awesome KidzBop songs, as well as using their full bodies to demonstrate their refined movement skills when drumming along. Some videos we followed this week are:

COVID Health & Safety

Starting next week, on Monday February 14, masking for all students in Alberta will become optional. All adults, including staff, volunteers, and visitors, will be required to wear a mask when in schools. We ask for your support in continuing a positive mindset towards the choices that everyone makes (either masked or unmasked) while at school.

Please continue to use rapid tests and refer to checklists as a guideline to support monitoring student symptoms and illness, including various isolation criteria/timelines: Alberta Health Daily Checklists. We truly appreciate your diligence and care in supporting the health and safety of the students and staff at Tuscany School!

Valentine’s Day

On Monday, February 14th, Kindergarten will be celebrating Valentine’s Day by spreading love to our school community. Participation is completely optional! Below is a reminder of some quick Do’s and Do Not’s if you’re thinking about creating valentines for your child’s class.

Do:

Do Not:

💚Send NON-EDIBLE treats (cards, stickers, pencils, etc.)

💚Bring one for EVERY STUDENT in your child’s class (lists were sent home and are in Google Classroom for your reference).

💔 NO food treats (candies, cupcakes, cookies, not even healthy options)

💔 Only send for your child’s BFFs

And remember, we’re only an email away should you have any additional questions! ♥

Scholastic Book Orders

Recently we sent home the February Scholastic flyer, and have linked the digital flyers in Google Classroom, as well as “how-to” guides for parents on how Scholastic Reading Club is used. Orders are placed online only, and if you use our classroom code, you can receive free shipping on orders of over $40. We recommend placing orders by February 20th.

English online flyer

Français online flyer

Class Codes:

Roussy: RC883554

Smyth: RC708810

Thouret: RC149985

Our book recommendations:

English	Français
Perfectly Norman Big Feelings Pack The Bad Seed Pack A Kid is a Kid is a Kid I Promise Pigeon Pack If You Give… Pack Why Am I Me? I Want My Hat Back How to Eat Pizza 100 Ninjas at the Zoo Boy	Pat le chat - Agent secret Éléphant et rosie - Je joue de la trompette L’amour Un enfant c’est un enfant Une famille c’est une famille Brise d’hiver Si j’avais un manchot Je t’aimerai toujours Ensemble Peppa Pig La merveilleuse machine à se faire des amis Collection Robert Munsch

Palais de glace/Ice Castle

As part of our Carnaval celebration, we will be working together as a class to build ice sculptures. For this day, we are asking students to bring in some ice blocks to be used as "bricks" for our creations. Blocks with FLAT sides are preferable for stacking but you can send in additional shapes for decoration. Please ensure all cartons are thoroughly washed before filling them with water. You can freeze them with plain water or add a bit of food colouring for a special effect. The more ice the better! Here are some examples:

2L cardboard milk cartons (these take about 5 days to freeze solid, so start now!)
1L cardboard milk/juice cartons
juice boxes
ice cubes

IMPORTANT: Please send all ice blocks to school "unwrapped." To unwrap your ice block, make a cut down the middle of one side of the milk/juice and peel away the cardboard.

Please send your unwrapped ice blocks to school in a bag on the morning of February 15th and leave them at our class's designated location (see map.)

Thank you so much for your support with this fun design activity. We look forward to a great week of Carnaval and can't wait to see the creative structures the students build!