Hello Families....I am back. Last week I was away on a brief medical leave but I am back and feeling great. Looking forward to working hard through these 3 weeks.
While I was away, our student teacher Mr. S. did a fantastic job keeping the ship afloat. Him and I were able to plan each night over email/text and he did an amazing job teaching our children. We are very grateful for him. Thank you Mr. S.
Here is some important information.
1. We are a bit low on gifts for our families helping families. I know this year is tough on many families and I completely understand if you are not able to support this year. I am only mentioning this in case some families still have gifts at home at they are planning on sending in (a couple kids did mention this today). Thank you for your continued support with this.
2. We are going on a field trip on Monday to the Auburn Heights Retirement Residence. We are super excited to take part in this community building activity. We will be singing to the residence and working on a Christmas craft with them. I am looking for one parent who would be interested in joining us next Monday afternoon. Please email me if you are interested.
3. Parent teacher conferences are this Thursday evening and Friday morning. I am looking forward to meeting with you. I still have a few spots available if you have not yet booked a time. This goal for this parent teacher conference is for me to tell you where your child is functioning for their grade, what they are doing well and where they might need to improve. We will look at some of their work together which will help give you a better perspective as to what they are doing. The meetings are only 15 minutes so I will have to talk fast :) If you have any questions ahead of time please email me so I can have an answer prepared and ready to go for our meeting.
4. Next week is our Christmas concert. It is on Wednesday evening. The kids are asked to dress in their best cowboy/cowgirl attire. Concert begins at 6pm.
5. November book orders have not yet arrived. I will be sending home the Decembers orders tomorrow in hopes of having all orders in by Friday. This way the books will arrive before Christmas for sure.
I think that is it for now. If I think of more things that I need to catch you up on I will add another post called November 30 #2.
Have a wonderful evening.
P.S. I really missed the kids and I was so happy to see their smiling faces this morning. What a great day!
Monday 30 November 2015
Tuesday 17 November 2015
November 17
What a wonderful day. Tomorrow we have a very special event planned. Hawk the Calgary Police therapy dog will be coming to visit us tomorrow at the end of the day. Soooo excited! Also, tomorrow is fun lunch.
Grade ones received a book called Mr. Zinger's Hat. This is part of the TD Grade One book giveaway program. School photos were sent home today as well.
Mr. S has been working very hard on our writing skills. We have been adding sound and feeling words to our stories. Tomorrow we will begin to talk about "juicy words" and how to add them to our stories as well.
In math we have been working very hard on measuring all kinds of things around our classroom. This is a lot of hands on fun.
In Social Studies we have started talking about the groups that we belong to and have represented this in our visual journals.
I showed the class a new app today that helps them learn their phone number and practice calling 911. The app is free and is called DialSafe Pro.
Landyn says if you want to measure something at home you can measure anything. Mathew thinks he may try and measure his dog. This should be an adventure.
Grade ones received a book called Mr. Zinger's Hat. This is part of the TD Grade One book giveaway program. School photos were sent home today as well.
Mr. S has been working very hard on our writing skills. We have been adding sound and feeling words to our stories. Tomorrow we will begin to talk about "juicy words" and how to add them to our stories as well.
In math we have been working very hard on measuring all kinds of things around our classroom. This is a lot of hands on fun.
In Social Studies we have started talking about the groups that we belong to and have represented this in our visual journals.
I showed the class a new app today that helps them learn their phone number and practice calling 911. The app is free and is called DialSafe Pro.
Landyn says if you want to measure something at home you can measure anything. Mathew thinks he may try and measure his dog. This should be an adventure.
Thursday 12 November 2015
November 12
Welcome back! Did anyone else think today was Monday? Yikes!
This morning we had 2 rounds of Daily 5. Our new student teacher Mr. S has started working with some small guided reading groups. This is awesome as we will now be able to meet with each student twice as much.
During Writer's Workshop, Mr. S and the kids brainstormed a list of "feeling words" that we are able to add to our own writing projects. The kids sure do love listening to Mr. S's stories.
We had music this morning with Mrs. Jones.
After lunch we watched the movie Inside Out. Here is a message from Mrs. Kinsman regarding this movie.
This morning we had 2 rounds of Daily 5. Our new student teacher Mr. S has started working with some small guided reading groups. This is awesome as we will now be able to meet with each student twice as much.
During Writer's Workshop, Mr. S and the kids brainstormed a list of "feeling words" that we are able to add to our own writing projects. The kids sure do love listening to Mr. S's stories.
We had music this morning with Mrs. Jones.
After lunch we watched the movie Inside Out. Here is a message from Mrs. Kinsman regarding this movie.
To Families of Cranston Students:
Part of our work at Cranston School is to provide our students with opportunities to grow in their character development and to learn how to best respond in particular social situations.
We know from brain research that how we react to others, and in particular situations, can often be changed through the power of story. This Thursday, November 12, we are going to share in a story-event as a whole student body when we come together to view the video "Inside Out". This Pixar film tells the story of a character who lives inside a child's brain and tries to keep core memories of positive personal stories strong in the face of challenges associated with moving to a new city and school. As the students encounter the story of the main character, Riley, they will begin to share understanding of how they can control and manage their responses to new events based on their past experiences, and that their responses can be changed.
A shared experience of story like this provides all students with opportunities to develop common language and understanding that will support our daily work at Cranston School to build peaceful communities of strong, connected, responsible and positive young citizens.
The film is 102 minutes long and we will be showing it in the gym right after lunch. Please discuss the film with your children to reinforce the positive messages the video contains.
Thank you.
Mrs. Kinsman, Principal
When the movie was done we played scooter tag in gym. We came back and had out snack and then we worked on math games.
Have a wonderful evening.
Tuesday 10 November 2015
Families Helping Families
Cranston families, if you are interested in helping…
IMPORTANT à
Please send your child’s teacher a comment through this BLOG post titled ‘FAMILIES HELPING FAMILIES AT CHRISTMAS’.
State what item you are willing to contribute or donate based off of the needs
the family has indicated so that all other families in your child’s class can
see what has been contributed and what still is in need.
Please
remember that our families would love to not have to worry about the purchase
of food items and more than one gift card to their chosen grocery store would
be welcomed!
**We welcome donations of gently used items for our
families as well.
All gifts/donations will need to be wrapped and labeled for whom they
are intended for. Wrapped contributions will be due by:
Wednesday December 2nd,
2015
In the spirit of
giving this holiday season, all staff at Cranston school would like to thank
families in advance for their thoughts and contributions! Thank you for making
a families Christmas a little brighter!!
Monday 9 November 2015
November 9
Happy Monday families. We had a lot of fun talking about all of the things we did this weekend. I enjoyed hearing that some children were out playing in the snow.
During Daily 5 this morning, I worked with a group of grade 2's. I have started to introduce the Literature Circle jobs to them. Today we learned about being a reporter. This group is going to make a "newspaper" that tells about the events in their book called Brad's Brilliant Ideas.
During writer's workshop, we learned about adding sound words to our stories. We learned a great big new word today called onomatopoeia. Question of the day: What does onomatopoeia mean? Please give an example and post your answers on the blog.
We had music this morning and we are learning to square dance.
After lunch we did calendar activities and then learned a new doubles math game.
At the end of the day we worked on our clay log houses and finished a page in our visual journals comparing the past to the present.
Just a reminder there is no school on Wednesday.
During Daily 5 this morning, I worked with a group of grade 2's. I have started to introduce the Literature Circle jobs to them. Today we learned about being a reporter. This group is going to make a "newspaper" that tells about the events in their book called Brad's Brilliant Ideas.
During writer's workshop, we learned about adding sound words to our stories. We learned a great big new word today called onomatopoeia. Question of the day: What does onomatopoeia mean? Please give an example and post your answers on the blog.
We had music this morning and we are learning to square dance.
After lunch we did calendar activities and then learned a new doubles math game.
At the end of the day we worked on our clay log houses and finished a page in our visual journals comparing the past to the present.
Just a reminder there is no school on Wednesday.
Friday 6 November 2015
Happy wonderful Friday. I have been away from school for a few days but things seemed to have run very smoothly. That is because your children are amazing!
This morning we continued to work on our Remembrance Day art. We will post them in the hallway next week.
This morning we had our Friday Fun Snack. The kids loved the smoothies but they were freezing afterwards. Some even said they had a brain freeze :)
After this we had 2 rounds of Daily 5. One of the grade 2 groups is working on a book about Asteroids. We had a very rich discussion this morning about asteroids and dinosaurs
After Daily 5 we worked on math. We have been learning about the doubles. We represented the double in our math journal. We thought of real life examples that represented each double. For example 7+7 can be presented by 2 weeks on a calendar. 6+6 can be represented by 2 rows in a dozen of eggs.
After this we played a game with dice that helps us with basic addition skills along with the doubles. This game you can play at home to help solidify your child's mental math skills. Roll 2 dice, add those numbers together and then double.
Question of the Day: How would you represent 9+9? What is a real life example? Or how would you represent 4+4 using a real life example?
This morning we continued to work on our Remembrance Day art. We will post them in the hallway next week.
This morning we had our Friday Fun Snack. The kids loved the smoothies but they were freezing afterwards. Some even said they had a brain freeze :)
After this we had 2 rounds of Daily 5. One of the grade 2 groups is working on a book about Asteroids. We had a very rich discussion this morning about asteroids and dinosaurs
After Daily 5 we worked on math. We have been learning about the doubles. We represented the double in our math journal. We thought of real life examples that represented each double. For example 7+7 can be presented by 2 weeks on a calendar. 6+6 can be represented by 2 rows in a dozen of eggs.
After this we played a game with dice that helps us with basic addition skills along with the doubles. This game you can play at home to help solidify your child's mental math skills. Roll 2 dice, add those numbers together and then double.
Question of the Day: How would you represent 9+9? What is a real life example? Or how would you represent 4+4 using a real life example?
Tuesday 3 November 2015
November 3
We started our day off working with our grade 3/4 buddies on a Remembrance Day art project. We will be using sharpies and chalk pastels. Our creations are looking wonderful so far.
After our buddy time we moved to Daily 5. I worked with a group of grade twos on nouns, verbs and adjectives.
When Daily 5 was over it was lunch time already.
After lunch we worked on calendar activities. Thank you to Kaitlyn for doing such a great job leading this activity. It is one of our new classroom jobs.
We continued to work on the friendly facts in math. We are representing the friendly facts in our math journals using 10 frames and number sentences.
At 1:00 we had a presentation by an author named Trevor Enfield. This was awesome.
At the end of the day we continued working on our friendly facts.
Book and Movie club starts tomorrow.
Picture re-take day on Thursday.
This Friday is Fun Snack Friday.
Please everyone dress for the weather. There were a lot of cold kids at recess today.
Have a wonderful evening.
After our buddy time we moved to Daily 5. I worked with a group of grade twos on nouns, verbs and adjectives.
When Daily 5 was over it was lunch time already.
After lunch we worked on calendar activities. Thank you to Kaitlyn for doing such a great job leading this activity. It is one of our new classroom jobs.
We continued to work on the friendly facts in math. We are representing the friendly facts in our math journals using 10 frames and number sentences.
At 1:00 we had a presentation by an author named Trevor Enfield. This was awesome.
At the end of the day we continued working on our friendly facts.
Book and Movie club starts tomorrow.
Picture re-take day on Thursday.
This Friday is Fun Snack Friday.
Please everyone dress for the weather. There were a lot of cold kids at recess today.
Have a wonderful evening.
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