December 12-16, 2022

 

I can't believe we are getting so close to the end of 2022! Only 4 more days remain until our Winter break. This week students worked hard on demonstrating some growing independence in both academic and free choice tasks. 

This week students continued building on math concepts from last week. Students completed activities that focused on sorting different shapes. Activities that require students to cut around and paste various objects also helps to further develop their fine motor skills. Our students also completed their December colouring journal page.

Students explore many types of play throughout the day like supported play, social play and independent play. Each type of play helps to build different skills. Supported play helps to build skills like communication or developing a new skill set while social play helps build skills like turn-taking, patience and sharing. Our focus for this week was on independent play.  Independent play does not mean unsupervised play. In independent play the student is engaging in activity without the interference from an adult.  Independent play helps to foster  imagination and creativity, promote problem-solving, learn more about your own interests, and maintain self-regulation. 

Next week we look forward to having some fun for the last week before our break. We will be learning more about the Winter Solstice, with the story Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter, and festive activities that celebrate the season. We respect everyone's religious and cultural beliefs and family traditions, if you have any questions about activities that your child might participate in, like reading the story Pete the Cat Saves Christmas, writing a letter to Santa, or you would like to share some traditions that are important to your family around this time, please feel free to reach out to me rlmyroniuk@cbe.ab.ca. Please take note of the Holiday Fun Days that the whole school will be participating in.

Holiday Fun Days: 

December 19 – Festive Hat day 

December 20- Ugly sweater day 

December 21- Winter Solstice Day  

December 22- PJ day  

Upcoming Dates

• Dec 15 - Healthy Hunger Lunch (Mucho Burrito)
• Dec 15 - Gingerbread House Decorating Night
• Dec 22 - Last day of classes (8:00 am to 2:30 pm)

December 5-9, 2022

This week students were greeted with new morning table tasks, celebrating different winter festivities.  During this time, the students continue to further develop skills in the areas of task independence, task stamina, fine motor, communication and academics.  Students are supported to complete three or more targeted tasks before moving onto a high interest activity, an activity that they are working for. Skills such as colour recognition, one-to-one number correspondence (counting each object in a set), visual  discrimination (the ability to detect differences and sort objects accordingly), letter and word recognition are just a few of the skills being targeted this week. 

 

Students gather together multiple times a day in whole group shared learning, our circle times.  Every shared learning starts with a choice regulation activity, this activity is meant to prepare our bodies and brains for learning. These activities focus on calming movement, breathing strategies, and activities to enhance focus. After our regulation, students are reminded of learning expectations with our group plan and whole body listening.

 Monday and Wednesdays our focus for our shared learning is on building reading readiness with activities such as developing a greater understanding of our Sound Wall (see previous posts for more information).  Tuesday and Thursdays the focus shifts to our number sense and math concepts. We start our circle time with a choice of number songs that target counting by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's. Then we participate in our interactive number talk. Students are shown a number on a dice, currently numbers 1-12, and we practice the multiple ways that we can represent that number in words, on a number line, using tens frames, in quantity, and with place value.  Students have been learning about 2D shapes and patterns. Next week we will learn about 3D shapes and continue working with the shapes in various patterns. 

Students were excited to get to enjoy time outside on our playground equipment. Next week, we will go on another community walk on December 13 or 14, weather permitting. 

Upcoming Dates

• Dec 10 - Deadline to order for Dec 15 Healthy Hunger Lunch (Mucho Burrito)
• Dec 13 or 14 - Community Walk - weather permitting
• Dec 15 - Gingerbread House Decorating Night
• Dec 22 - Last day of classes (8:00 am to 2:30 pm)

Festive Days Ahead

• Some of our Grade 6 students have taken a leadership role and proposed to their teachers and Ms. Clark and Ms. Elies-Guss. From the 19th to the 22nd there will be theme days.  While participating in the theme day is optional, we are encouraging all to participate!  The days are as follows:
• Dec 19: Festive Hat Day
• Dec 20: Festive Sweater Day
• Dec 21: Winter Solstice - Student are encouraged to wear blue or white
• Dec 22: Pajama Day

Nov 28 - Dec 2, 2022

Brrrrr, was it ever cold this week! We kept warm indoors all week with lots of different learning activities and free choice play. 

This week we introduced our December calendar. Music is incorporated into almost every aspect of our day. The students all love combining music with their learning. Here is another example of how we incorporate music into key learning outcomes, such as with our December calendar song https://youtu.be/XGwIXvG1fjQ. Students are learning the functional skill of how to create a calendar by numbering each day of the week, labeling important personal dates, like our two friends who will celebrate their birthday in December, and other important events as a part of our morning shared learning. 

We are continuing to build our classroom sound wall, working first with the consonants. This week we introduced the sounds /n/ and /m/. Part of our time working with these sounds is learning what our mouths, lips and tongues are doing.  These sounds are highlighted on our classroom mirror, that hangs above our sink. Students are encouraged to practice these sounds while at the sink washing their hands throughout the day. One of the activities that the students enjoy is our interactive sound sorting game. This week they had to sort the sounds onto the different pirate ships. When the correct sound was put onto the correct ship, the pirates fired their cannon! We also continued to learn how to write these sounds using both horizontal and vertical writing surfaces. 

This week we viewed another silent animated short High Diving Giraffes, https://youtu.be/nPrWo5pEvyk. Similar to last week, we followed a predictable writing format. After viewing the video together on the first day, we then brainstormed some vocabulary.  On the second day we watched the video again, highlighting our vocabulary words while watching. We worked on creating different sentences together.  On the next day students used picture symbols, our classroom AAC devices, traditional writing, and typing to create their sentences. The last day after viewing the video, students presented their sentences to the class in our special Authors Chair. During our Author's Chair, our students are also learning how to listen carefully to each other, look at the speaker, and clap appropriately after the author is finished reading their sentence.  

Free choice play is an important part of our program. During play, students are supported by our team in many different ways from regulation to cooperative play. Here is an example of how communication is being supported during play. The student is presented with a preferred toy, enclosed in a container with a see-through lid.  As the student is trying to get into the container, a visual for the word 'help' is shown. The supporting adult might say "it looks like you need help opening?" while emphasizing and pointing to the visual for help. When the student points or visually focuses on the word help, the supporting adult will open the container and the student can access the preferred toy inside. After some time with the toy, the adult will put the toy back into the container and start again. 

Next week we look forward to the weather warming up a bit so we can finally enjoy some outdoor time! 

Upcoming Dates

• Dec 5-8 - Scholastic Book Fair
• Dec 5 - Deadline for Gingerbread House Decorating Night
• Dec 10 - Deadline to donate to Christmas Hampers
• Dec 10 - Deadline to order for Dec 15 Healthy Hunger Lunch (Mucho Burrito)
• Dec 15 - Gingerbread House Decorating Night
• Dec 22 - Last day of classes (8:00 am to 2:30 pm)

Book Fair: December 5-8

• Volunteers Needed: The Library is looking for Volunteers to help out during EMJ’s In-School Scholastic Book Fair 8:30-12:00 noon, Monday, December 5 to Thursday, December 8.
• If you are able to volunteer, please contact Ms. Belisle at cdbelisle@cbe.ab.ca .
• Students will be able to shop and purchase items from the In-School book fair December 5-December 8.
• We will share more information in the weeks ahead for the Online Virtual Book Fair.