And welcome back. We have had a busy first week in Kindergarten. We almost made it through the first week with no tears -- and the few tears that fell were quickly quenched. All of the jks are "in" -- 8 new students in the AM class and 9 in the PM class. And we also welcomed 6 SK students in the afternoon who were in Ms. Wren's class last year. Ms. Wren and I teach in a very similar way, and grouped our classes together fairly often, so there shouldn't have been too much "culture shock" there!
Our new Educational Assistant, Ms. Jeya works a little bit with the morning class and a lot with the afternoon class.
The first week in a JK/SK class is a bit difficult logistically -- the SKs are ready to "investigate" and "work" but the JKs are needing to know where they "belong" and what they are supposed to be doing. The SKs are GREAT role models and did a fantastic job this week. I am SO PROUD of them all!
We read lots of books about kindergarten and school this week, and talked about some important rules of the classroom and the school. Some of the books that we read were : Ms. Bindergarten gets ready for Kindergarten and Froggy goes to School. In the Library, Mrs. Ling read a book called "The Library Book" (which caused me a lot of confusion when I was asking the students what the book was called .... "Yes, I know it was a Library book, but what was it called???"). Students will start taking out Library Books next week. In Kindergarten you can take out one book at a time -- and then return it on or before the following Library day. Please return the library books to Room 9. I take out the cards and keep track of them. The kindergarten students are the only students who use library cards in pockets in the backs of the book. If you return the book to the Library, the Library monitors will not think to take the card out of the book and then your child won't have a library card!
In the upcoming weeks I will post the covers on the blog of the books that we are reading to help jog some memories when you are talking with your children about what they are doing in Kindergarten.
p.s I usually have pictures in my blog posts -- they will start again soon!
My camera was off visiting Colorado this week, so I'm a bit behind on my blog posting. We've been settling in well this year, and have been investigating all of the centres. We're going to start some bigger projects in the upcoming week!
We are going to make a special "book" out of our favourite box fronts. Please send in your child's favourite cereal box, cracker box, or cookie box. My favourite is Shreddies. Did you know that there aren't Shreddies in the USA? I lived there for a year and had to fill the trunk with them every time I came home!
We are also working on retelling and acting out the story. This is lots of fun to do (and to watch!)
We are looking for some jars to use in the classroom. If you have any of these kind of jars, please send them in! We need them with lids -- I think that they are from Classico pasta sauce, and say Mason on the front. We can use any size.
