Hi Everyone!
Well, we made it through the first week! The little ones were excited to start this week. There were a few tears and lots of hugs and we are getting to know lots of new little personalities. Some hiccups along the way, but everything is a learning opportunity for all of us.
Please check your child's backpack for their communication bag as there is information in it for you.
If you are picking up your child at dismissal, please wait in the cafeteria for them. We will bring all of the children down that way and it is less confusing if everyone that is a pickup just goes to the same place. Also, please make sure that the teacher sees you take your child and acknowledges you. It can get busy and we care about your child. We do not want them to go to the wrong place/person.
We hope you have a great weekend with your family. See you Monday!
As promised, here is the note about A Day in the Life of Kinderworld that Mrs. Penney read on Wednesday night.
Dear KinderWorld Families;
The breakdown to your child’s day is as
follows:
Each morning they arrive, students sign in
(printing practice of their name) and we then all gather on the carpet in Mrs.
Penney’s room as a class family to do attendance, O’Canada, Mindful Moment, and
Chitter Chat (oral phonological awareness activity). We cover calendar, days of the week, months
of the year, any news items they’d like to share, and we always have music and
movement incorporated into this time.
By this time it is 9:00am and students are
divided into smaller groups and they work with one specific teacher from
9:00-9:50am. Within the small groups the
focuses are on phonological and phonemic awareness, printing, fine motor
activities, introduction of sight word(s), letter recognition and sounds (Jolly
Phonics). This is where we are covering
Literacy outcomes. Friday mornings look
a little different as from 9:00am-9:30am our French Buddy Grade 5 class comes
to our room to read with us and sing songs with us in French.
By this time it
is snack and getting ready for outdoor recess time.
At 10:25 when
students re-enter the building, they go to another smaller group (may or may
not be the same teacher as earlier) and at this point some either go off to
specialists (Music/PE-2 half hours per week) or have either Art (2 half hours
per week), Library (one half hour per week), or Writing (the remainder of time
per week). This goes from 10:30am-12:00pm
in half hour increments. During this
time Writing mini-lessons take place.
These take the form such as guided writing activities such as ‘talk as
you draw’, ‘point around your pictures’, ‘re-read your pictures so it sounds like
a storybook’; shared writing; independent writing (with support), etc. We follow a balanced writing approach and
continue to cover the Literacy outcomes.
On Wednesday
morning from 11:00am-12:00pm your child is in a small group for what we call
ARCC Hour. Every two weeks where they
are using maker space bins to ‘make, explore, and create’ with. The other two weeks we meet as an entire group
for that hour for our ‘class family meeting’ time. This looks different each week. Some examples: talk about themselves (likes,
dislikes, etc.), about their families, and where we bring up any things that might
have come up in the recent past that might need to be talked about.
By noon it is
time to eat lunch. Students eat in one
of the 3 KinderWorld classrooms from 12:00pm-12:25pm. Any student who is purchasing lunch at the
cafeteria has the choice to either remain and eat their lunch in the cafeteria
(there is supervision) or take it back to one of their classrooms to eat.
At 1:00pm we all
come back together as a whole group.
There is a time of about 10-15 minutes where we focus on Number Sense
outcomes such as counting forward, backward, subitizing, demonstrating numbers
in various ways, mental math, etc.
Then your child
will go off to work within a smaller group (with one teacher) on specific
outcomes within Number, Patterns/Relations, and Space and Shape.
At the end of the
day we often come together again as a large group, do a check in on how the day
went and get ready for home.