Hello!

Today was a fun day!  We ate goodies, watched an episode of Franklin, coloured some Halloween colouring sheets, did face painting, and made Halloween goodie bags to take home some candy!

Overall, it was a fun day for our junior kindergartens!

Happy Halloween!


Ms. H.

Happy Saturday!

I hope everyone is having an enjoyable weekend so far, despite the rain!

Yesterday, the students completed some letter tracing worksheets.  They also did a colour, cut, and glue worksheet that was based on the story we read the previous day, The Three Little Pigs.  They did very well with this worksheet. They are all pros at gluing and cutting now!!

They also made patterns and pictures by using different colour combinations and shapes blocks.  I did individual formative assessments on each student, as I came to each student while he or she was working and asked what colours and shapes he or she chose to make a picture.  While some students were able to identify each shape and colour in their picture, some had a little trouble so I will continue to work and make sure they can all recognize and identify each colour/shape. 

We also had some fun with play doh and building blocks for some part of the day. 

The students went to French class.  As always, they enjoyed their time with Mme. Stella very, very much!

Have a great weekend and I'll hopefully see you all on Monday morning!

Miss H. 

Reading the Three Little Pigs!

Namaste!

Today was a great day.

I say this simply because it was. Last night, I began to ponder about the diversity, not only found within the students and faculty at St. Jude's Academy, but also evidently seen around us. It got me thinking. What if I promoted and encouraged a sense of diversity and respect within the classroom? That led me to incorporate other languages into my daily lessons. So, today, I taught the students different ways of saying "hello" in different languages. Today, they learned how to say "hello" in:

French - Bonjour!
India: Namaste!
Kenya and Tanzania: Jambo!
Japan: Kon-nichiwa
Italy: Ciao!
China: Ni Hao

Among many others. They loved repeating after me and getting to know and appreciate the diverse languages and cultures our beautiful world has to offer us. Each day, I will be focusing on one language to say hello in, so be sure to ask your child when you see them at the end of the day :)

We also went over the letter U. Most of us were able to do this worksheet well and others are still working on their pencil-holding techniques.  We also did worksheets about colours.

We are in the midst of concluding our first unit of inquiry and beginning our second one, entitled How we express ourselves. This unit is centered around using our imaginations and getting to know famous fables, stories, nursery rhymes, and poems that have become a tradition.

Today we read the Three Little Pigs. I used laminated pictures and drew the background of the story on the white board. I used the pictures to help animate the story. The students love this and got to move the pictures themselves after, retelling the story in the order of events.

We also had drama and french class.

I hope everyone has a wonderful, restful Thursday!

Ms. H.

Hello!

Today, we started off with getting our pictures taken.  It was quite obvious that everyone came to school with big, happy smiles for our photo shots!

Each child got to become more familiar with recognizing and identifying colours. They did this individually with me and then they did a worksheet where they were required to colour certain parts of the picture with a certain coloured pencil crayon.

They also did some scissor cutting exercises. The students are getting much better at using scissors and glue.

They had silent reading time and also had some free drawing time before lunch. I encouraged the students to draw a picture of their families. They did that very well, some even drew me!

They went to French class today, to gym, and to drama. The day went fairly well.

A reminder: tomorrow is Casual Day.

See you all then!!


Miss H.

Good evening!

Today, we worked on tracing the letter T.  We did a worksheet and then we made the letter T with play doh.  Everyone did very well on this. Good job to all the boys and girls who work so hard to write their letters!

We also had a very, very nice morning learning about the Hindu celebration, Diwali.  We made and decorated rangolis (decorative pictures that are designed and done on floors inside or outside of a house for Diwali). Vishva's mom was very kind to come in and teach us how to decorate our very own rangoli. We are very thankful to her for taking the time to do something so special for us.  She even showed us one that she made and it was very beautiful and colourful. We used tiny mirrors, glitter, sequins, and crayons to decorate our own rangolis. You can see them in the classroom as they are hung up with pride.

Here is an example of what a traditional rangoli looks like:

We also read about penguins. We learned that the male penguin carefully takes care of, and holds the baby egg between his feet until she or he is born, while the mommy fishes for food. We are going to be learning lots of cool facts every day!

We also had silent reading time and also individual reading time with me before lunch. It was very nice and fun. Everyone loves taking out different books and looking at the different pictures to guess what happens next.

A few friendly reminders:

-Tomorrow is Picture Day. Please dress your child in his or her full school uniform.  The students are exempt from wearing their gym uniform for tomorrow because of picture day. Please also bring in any picture day order forms by tomorrow.


-Thursday is Casual Day.  Please dress your child in his or her casual attire. 

Should you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me.

Have a great night!!!!!!


Ms. H.

Hello!!!

Hello everyone. I hope you all had a nice, enjoyable weekend.

Today, we did some scissor cutting and colour exercises. We also learned a new song about pumpkins called “Five Little Pumpkins.”  We will be practicing it this whole week so that we can sing it on Halloween!

We also read a book called “The Little White Owl”.

As you all know, this week is a busy week for all of us at St. Jude’s Academy.  Tomorrow, Vishva’s mom will be coming in to help us make Rangolis, traditional Hindu designs used to decorate floors outside or inside houses.  This will be in celebration of Diwali “The festival of lights,” which is an important Hindu festival.  As an IB school, we pride in celebrating different cultures and traditions as much as we can.  This will be a fun, colourful, and creative activity for our kindergarten students to enjoy and to take home wsith them.

On Wednesday, it is picture day as well as gym day.  Please dress your child in the proper regular school uniform for picture day. Do not worry about your child’s gym uniform, as it will not be required on this day.

This Thursday is Casual Day. Please dress your child up in his or her casual attire.

 Just a heads up that next Monday (Oct. 31) is Spirit/Halloween Dress Up Day. Please dress your child up in his or her Halloween costume before school starts.  They will be wearing their costume for the entire day. Although this is a gym day, do not worry about providing gym uniforms for this day.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at jhusain@stjudesacademy.com

Kind regards,

Ms. H. 

Terrific Thursday!

Hello everyone,

First of all, I would like to wish the HAPPIEST birthday to one of our classmates, Ramsey. I hope you have a wonderful night of celebrations!!!!

Other than fun birthday celebrations and cup cakes, we had a fun-filled day decorating, painting, and jazzing our pumpkins up!!! We made two pumpkins: a porcupine, which is tastefully adorable, and the world with little goofy pictures of all of us and cool looking plastic animals. They were a lot of fun to make and look at. I am proud of everyone because we all worked together to make it AMAZING!!!!!!!

We also did some letter worksheets...... WITHOUT TRACING!!!!!  Most of us can now write 'I', "i', 'A', 'a' without tracing. It is a big accomplishment for one month of school. I am very, very happy with my class and their progress!

Some reminders:

-Phone calls will continue this week

-Care Logs are due tomorrow

-Picture day is on Wednesday, October 26

-Casual Day is on Thursday, October 27

-Halloweeen Dress-Up Day is on Halloween Day (Oct. 31)

Have a great night!!!!!!!!!

Ms. H.   :) :)

Hello!

We started off the day with circle time and discussed what everyone would be wearing for Halloween. Some of us are going to dress up as Scooby Doo, Cars characters, and Disney princesses. What a wide array of Halloween costumes we will have in our class come October 31!

We also worked with glue sticks. Every student has started gluing in their own homework notes into their agendas without any problems. I am very proud that they are getting the hang of using everyday school materials properly and responsibly. We did an assignment that required gluing specific pieces to a mini story book. We are still working on it as it takes a lot of concentration and effort.

We also read a book about pumpkins and decided, as a class, how we will decorate our three pumpkins tomorrow. Tomorrow, we will be receiving a kind donation of three pumpkins for each class. Our mission: to decorate these pumpkins together to the best of our ability. So today, we put on our thinking caps and creativity shoes, some mistaken them for gym shoes, and brainstormed away!

We decided to decorate our pumpkins the following way: an elephant, a piggy, and the world. I am excited to see how these will turn out. Thankfully, we will have the aid of some very special, older helpers from other grades. The students love having our older helpers around.

So your mission at home: if you can think or have any cool, wacky things to add to our pumpkins, please bring them in tomorrow so we can decorate them with!!!!!


Thanks a bunch!!!!


Ms. H.

Hello, everyone!

Today was a bit of a rough day for all of us.  Many of us were much too excited to pay attention during class today. Hopefully we will have a better day tomorrow.

However, we did worksheets involving hygiene and washing our hands every time we go to the bathroom or get our hands dirty. We did some "washing our hands" exercises and pretended to wash our hands, doing every step of washing our hands.

We also practiced writing different letters and tracing lines and other pictures. At the end of the day, I let them all play with play doh while I read a story about controlling our emotions and keeping our hands to ourselves.

A reminder that parent-teacher phone calls will occur between 5 pm - 9 pm this week. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or talk to me in person.

Have a nice, relaxing night and see you all tomorrow :)

Ms. H!

Hello!

Today was a nice day back for all of our junior kindergartens!

We started off the day with circle time and discussed what we each did on the weekend. Some of us were very, very busy bees and all of us seemed to had an enjoyable weekend, relaxing or super busy. 

After, we all made a "I Can Draw Shapes" booklet. Everyone did very well on this. I will be marking it and sending it home later next week. I will also send home a shapes tracing worksheet later this week for you to practice with your child. This is just additional practice work and it will not be collected for marking. I would just like to encourage you, if possible, to practice drawing and recognizing shapes with your child. 

We also did a listening activity. The children were given a colouring "friendly spider" sheet where each type of part of the spider was required to be coloured in a certain colour. I asked them to colour certain parts a certain colour and they were to listen and follow my directions. Most of us did very well on this activity, but some of us will need to listen a little bit more!

I read some “cut and tell” stories, which involve me cutting a picture out of construction while I tell the story. By the end of the story, I have a cool cut out picture. The kids loved this story time!

We also did some activities with letters. Today, I placed an umbrella out in the middle of the carpet. I dropped blue paper “raindrops” all over the students. Their job was to pick up the raindrops, each with a letter written on them, and to put only the letter “U” raindrops in the umbrella. They did well on this!

Have a great day!!!!

Ms. H. 

Hello!

Today, we did some activities concerning circling things that are the same and things that are different.  We also did some Sesame Street counting worksheets. Later on in the day, we did art and painted pictures of fall trees. For the tree trunk, each child put paint on their arm and hand and placed it on top of the paper. For the leaves, each child used his or her index finger and dotted the branches with fall leaf colours - red, yellow, and orange. We will finish the paintings on Monday because we ran out of time.

We also did Show and Share for the letter "T".  Josef and Sebastian were this week's Show and Share presenters.  We watched a movie and ate ice cream. The movie was "Madagascar." A very, very funny movie!

A reminder that Weekend Journals are due on Monday. So are Care Logs to allow some students more time to write them. I will collect both on Monday. 


Picture Day is on Wednesday, October 26, 2011.


Casual Day is on Thursday, October 27, 2011. 


HAVE A FANTASTIC WEEKEND!!!!!






Ms. H. 

Hello!

Good evening everyone,

Today was an awesome day at school. Overall, everyone had a lot of fun and we all learned at the same time. It was great. We made different letters out of play doh, just another tactic to help the students recognize and form their letters. They enjoyed this as they love, love, love working with play doh. We also did some motor-skills activities, which included using scissors. We also made different patterns with building blocks for math.

Later on in the day, we went on a short walk outside the school to collect colourful fall leaves of all shapes and sizes.  With these leaves, we did leaf imprinting with crayons, leaves, and paper. They all turned out very well, as you may have seen today.

Just a reminder that winter uniforms are a must. Polos are now to be replaced with mock turtlenecks. 


I will be making parent-teacher phone calls for the first unit of inquiry next week (between 5-8 pm). 


Care Logs are due tomorrow. Show and Share is also tomorrow. This week's letter is "T". 


Please sign and return any worksheets that I have sent home.


Please hand in the permission form regarding serving ice cream tomorrow during class.




Have a wonderful night!!!


Ms. H.

Hello, everyone!

Today, we had our first Family Tree presentations. Six students, Demiana, Ramsey, Jaiden, Hayden, Vishva, and Jordan, presented their family trees in front of the class for approximately two minutes each. They explained each picture on their family tree and talked a little about their family (mom, dad, siblings, grandparents). Everyone did such a good job so far for their first presentation of the year. Good job boys and girls!

We also formed the letter “E” together out of four pieces of construction paper. This was just a little assessment for the students to recognize and construct letters in forms other than just writing and tracing. Everyone did very well on this assignment. I will be doing more of these mini assessments in the future because I received positive feedback from the students. 

We did some number exercises, including colouring and counting. The students are very good at counting right now and recognizing their numbers. We are mainly focusing on writing these numbers. 

A friendly reminder that winter uniforms are now in effect. Please dress your child(ren) in the proper SJA winter uniform, which no longer includes polos. Polos will now be replaced with the mock turtlenecks with the SJA logo. 

Have a great night!!!

Ms. H. 

Good Afternoon!

Hello parents and guardians,

Today, we worked on tracing and writing the letter "A".  First, I drew the letter A on the whiteboard. Then, we traced the letter and then began to free write it on a sheet of lined primary paper.  This went over pretty well because it was their first time tracing the letter A. You will find these exercises in your child's black book bag. Please sign and return every worksheet I sent home; they are aware that they will be rewarded one sticker per signed worksheet.

We also worked on patterns and recognizing and differentiating different letters. The same letters on the worksheet were to be coloured with the same colour. Many students did very well on this assignment. We also did a couple of other worksheets that dealt with patterns.

I sent home a writing and tracing rubric that is stapled to one of the worksheets done by your child. This is a rubric that is used for all letters (tracing and writing). Please take a look at the expectations and guidelines. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email or in person. If you have any free time with your child, please practice, practice, practice tracing and writing the vowels we learned in class: A, E, I, O, and U.

I will be sending home a new reading book tomorrow with each child.

Have a great night!

Ms. H.

Hello!

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I apologize for the late blog. Things were quite busy on Thursday in preparation for our next IB unit!

On Thursday, we discussed all of the things we were thankful for. As you can see from the turkey sheet I sent home, the students provided many different things to be thankful for. I talked about Thanksgiving and its importance in Canadian and American culture and tradition. I hope you are all having a wonderful and relaxing weekend. I know I am enjoying this time with my family!

We also did some graphing for our math unit, using yellow sticky notes per unit of measure. We did more work on our family trees and they are almost all complete. We will be starting mini presentations on Tuesday. Each student will just simply describe each picture (who is in it, where it is) and I will read each family member's names. Each presenter will be able to take home his or her family tree project after presenting.

We also did some letter exercises where the students used their index finger to move it along the letter "E", which was made of a sand-paper based cutout.

Have a happy, safe, and warm Thanksgiving!

Ms. H.

Hello!

Hello everyone, 

I hope you are all having a wonderful night and spending some quality time in the nice, sunny weather. Today, we worked on writing the letter “E.”  This time, the students attempted to write the letter without tracing it first. It went pretty well for most of them. A few students are still working on it and will get the hang of it very soon!

We also worked more on our family trees. They are coming along great, I must say. We are having a lot of fun looking at pictures and placing them along the bristol board. Because the family trees are taking longer than I expected to complete, presentations will be next Tuesday and Wednesday. 

We also went outside and each picked a pinecone of our choice. With those pinecones, we made little “turkeys” out of pom poms, googly eyes, and pinecones. They were very, very cute looking. 

Tomorrow, we will be finishing up our family trees and working more on proper letter formation and on finishing up patterns. 

I hope everyone has a faaaaaantastic night and I will see you all tomorrow!

Ms. H. 

Hello parents and guardians!

We started off the day working on our family trees.  I worked individually with each student and managed to complete four family trees so far. They look great!

We will continue to work on our family trees tomorrow morning as well for our Unit of Inquiry Summative Assessment.  Each student will present their family tree on Thursday and next Tuesday. They will describe each picture and each family member.  I will help to read each family member on his or her family tree.

I will send home the family trees next Tuesday after each child has presented. We also read a story called Cat and Mouse by Ian Schoenherr.  After, we did a worksheet based on this book and counted the number of cats, mice, and clocks on the worksheet. They traced each number on that worksheet.

We also did some vowel tracing and practice on the letter E. Because many of them are new to using a pencil, tracing letters is taking some time, but they are getting much better with practice.

A friendly reminder that Friday is a PD Day. There will be no school on this day. There will also be no school on Monday, October 10 because it is Thanksgiving. 


HAVE A WONDERFUL NIGHT!!!!!!




Ms. H.

Good evening!

Today was a day filled with apples, apples, and more apples.

To start our day, I read a book called, Johnny Appleseed. Although the context of this book dates back to American history, it was very appropriate and educational for the students. After, I placed an apple, from Chudleigh's of course, on the middle of the table. I asked them to look at the apple and to draw what they saw (i.e. red colour, round, a stem, etc.). After, I cut the apple in half and showed them the seeds. We talked about what seeds are and how, under specific circumstances, they can grow, bloom, and be fruitful. After that, I cut the apple into many pieces and the students got to taste it. They described what it tasted like (i.e. yummy, cold, sour, sweet, hard, etc.).

After, we made apple sauce. I peeled and cut the apples. The students added the apples to a large pot, along with water, sugar, and a touch of cinnamon for taste.  The end result was very, very successful. The students loved their creation and so did I. I also let some other teachers try it, one of which commented that it was the best apple sauce she had ever tasted!

I will send home a recipe sheet tomorrow. We also planted the appleseeds that were left over from our apple sauce. It was a lot of fun.

Just a friendly reminder that this Friday is a Professional Development (PD) Day. There will be NO school on this day. 


Also, Monday, October 10 is Thanksgiving Day. There will also be NO school on this day. 


My email address is jhusain@stjudesacademy.com

Have a great night!

Ms. H.

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Tomorrow, we will be planting our own apple trees and be making apple sauce with the apples we picked from our trip to Chudleigh's!

We will also be reading a book called "Johnny Appleseed," which originates back to American history.


Ms. H.