Thank you to Marc and Tanya, Jasper's parents, who are washing our dress-up clothes this weekend! 
 
If you have not yet brought in your 4x6 family photo please send it to school next week.  Almost all of our frames have been painted and we will be displaying them on Tuesday. 
 
I thought I should post photos of the children's snow-people artwork as they really are wonderful and some of you may not have had a chance to see them today.  I am so proud of how hard the children worked on these! 
 
Picture
After reading the story The Biggest Snowman Ever, by Steven Kroll the children each made their own snow-person. 

On Tuesday we ripped three snowballs from white construction paper.  Ripping large pieces of paper was tricky and time consuming!  However, the children persevered and finished the task.  Today we completed our snow-people by adding arms, eyes, buttons, a hat, and a carrot nose.  Our creations will be up in the hallway when you come to school tomorrow.  

This art activity helps children develop their hand strength as we used our 'pincher fingers' (thumb and index finger) to rip the paper rather than use scissors.  You can have your child rip images out of flyers/magazines at home to continue to strengthen their hand muscles - which will help them later (in the school year, kindergarten, and grade one) as they complete fine motor work using writing utensils and scissors. 

 
Here are the children's self-portraits for the month of November.
 

Morning Class

Picture
Before Halloween madness took over our classroom, we brainstormed a list of things we wanted to learn about this year.  On Monday we revisited this list to decided which topics would become our projects this year.  

Each child was given two red dots to stick under the topics they were most enthusiastic about.  Once we had all placed our votes (and then tallied these votes), we realized that we needed to eliminate some of the topics that had zero, one, or two votes.

So, the children were then given two blue dots and voted for the topics that had stars beside them: Pirates, Dinosaurs, Sports, Fairies, and Princesses.  The children then counted the blue-dot votes: Pirates (3), Dinosaurs (9), Sports (3), Fairies (7), and Princesses (3). 

We decided to start with dinosaurs as this topic got the highest number of votes.  Over the past week we have been reading dinosaur stories and discussing what we know about dinosaurs.  

We will soon begin talking about what we want to find out about dinosaurs and plan our project around the students' wonders.  Stay tuned for updates on our project! 

Afternoon Class

Picture
Unlike the morning class, no re-vote was needed here.  The children cast their two votes for the topics they wanted to learn about and Camping (7), Pirates (4), and Sharks (3) received the large majority of the votes.  

Although Camping got the highest number of votes, we know that people go camping in the spring and summer, not the winter, so we decided to save this project until a later date.  We thought we could combine Sharks and Pirates and focus on this topic for our first project.  

This week we have been reading pirate books and talking about what we know about pirates.  These discussions led to the decision that we should have a day where we come to school dressed up as pirates!  We will do this in January, as December always feels so busy and hectic.  

The children have begun thinking about what they would like to learn about pirates over the upcoming months. 

 
"Three Little Ghosts"
By Jasper

There was a little ghost who was all alone and sneaking up on someone.
Then a ghost-car came and picked him up and he went to a Halloween party.
And then at the Halloween party he had some yucky treats - they were yummy to him and yucky to humans.
Then they played pin the tail on the witch.
Then he meets his friends and they go home from the Halloween party.
--------------------------------

"Seven Little Ladybugs"
By Kaliko

Seven little ladybugs playing at the park.
When their mom called them, they said, "Okay."
And then they played at home and didn't think about playing at the park again.
--------------------------------

"The Little Fishy and the Good Shark"
By Kaliko

The little fishy was playing at home and then the shark said, "Come on, it's time to play at the park."
 
Welcome to Kinan, a new student in our afternoon class!  
 
Today is Universal Children's Day.  We read the stories "For Every Child" and "We are all Born Free", which talk about the universal rights of the child.  Each page is done by a different illustrator, making the books very visually appealing.  These books are on display in our classroom, so please feel free to read them with your child at drop-off time.
For our community circle, we asked the children "What do you like about begin a kid?"

  • "Playing with my friends" - Amelie
  • "Pretending to be animals" - Augustus
  • "Running" - Daniel
  • "Painting because you get to get messy" - Gabriella
  • "Playing all the angry birds" - Jasper
  • "Eating well and sleeping well" - Justin
  • "Playing trucks and running over creatures" - Kobe
  • "I like running a lot" - Leia
  • "Star Wars Angry Birds" - Luka
  • "Playing zombis versus plants and playing cars" - Nathan
  • "Playing Star Wars on Mommy's iPad" - Rayyan

  •  "It's all fun and I never get bored because I'm a smart kid" - Aroh
  • "Playing with Mom and Dad" - Avery
  • "Going swimming" - Cooper
  • "Playing with my brother" - Dorine
  • "I get to go outside" - Elisha
  • "Drawing" - Finn
  • "I like to go trick-or-treating" - Kaliko
  • 'Going swimming" - Lowyn
  • "I like to go to the park, playing in the sand, and going camping" - Seth
  • "Playing" - Talha
  • "Going swimming" - Tommy
 
Thank you to Iffat, Rayyan's mom, for doing our dress-up laundry!