Friday Update!

Hi everyone!

We hope you're having a great evening :) We had such a great week in room 110 and we can't wait to share it with you :) We had quite the exciting week with our Terry Fox run and our first Tribes assembly! We also introduced 2 new learning centres and began our Literacy lessons and bins :) 

Tinker Table

After we introduced the listening centre, we opened up our last permanent centre which is the tinker table! The idea behind the tinker table is for students to explore different types of tools and electronics. To start off, we have some wood with pre-drilled holes, screws and screw drivers, an old hard drive, and an old circuit board. We went through everything very thoroughly and made sure that safety came first. Students know that they need to use tweezers to pick up certain things and to wear safety glasses when handling certain equipment. We want to make sure that you feel comfortable with your child using these materials, so please don't fret as Mrs. Tortola and I keep a very close eye on students at this centre, and all screws and screwdrivers are quite dull. It's been a huge hit so far! This centre is awesome for fine motor skills (the skills necessary for adequately holding a pencil, using scissors, etc.). We are so excited for this centre and we hope it stays this popular!

Our friends here are enjoying themselves as they pretend to be electricians and carpenters ;)

Learning Centre Fun

I was so happy to see that the listening centre was still being used by the end of the week! I'm excited to start adding some Fall and Halloween books for the students to listen to. Sand continues to be a big hit with our JK students :) And of course, all of our technology centres are always being used! That pizza sure looked yummy, girls!

Literacy Centre Fun

Here are some more shots of students during literacy activities :) I love that David and Vienna used the stamps to spell out their name in the play-doh, and Daryl and Aaron took turns spelling out their names on the iPad! Kevin and Izze take turns putting the letters of the alphabet in order, Lara practices printing her name, and Alex and Owen are listening to a book :) 

Character Education

At least once a week, we will having a character education lesson which focuses on important life skills such as listening, respect, using your manners, accepting others, etc. Mrs. Tortola and I have decided that we are really going to focus on our listening skills in room 110. Today, we played a game called "You Said, I Said". We all sat in a circle and one at a time, we had to share what our favourite food was. However, before we could share what ours was, we had to restate what the person next to us chose as their favourite food. For example, Miss Pliura says, "My favourite food is chocolate". Mrs. Tortola then has to say, "She said her favourite food was chocolate. My favourite food is pizza". Then, the person next to Mrs. Tortola would have to restate what she chose, and so on and so forth. This was a really interesting activity to watch, as some students could remember what the person next to them said and some could not. Every so often, we would stop and choose a random student who had already had a turn and ask someone else in the circle NOT sitting next to them what they said. We will continue to play games like these to work on our listening skills :)

Here are a couple of updates you should be aware of :)

• Our milk program will begin on Monday, September 29th, so if you have purchased tickets, you may begin to put 1 in your child's lunch bag as of then
• The calendar for October will be handed out early to mid next week
• Our home reading program will begin the first week of October (Oct. 6th - 10th)
• Trip forms for our trip to Fortinos will be going home on Monday, September 29th - we will need approximately 2 to 3 volunteers :)
• If someone else is picking up your child, you need to write a note. Please don't mention it to me in passing, for I will definitely forget!

Thanks for checking in on the blog- have a fun, safe weekend and we'll see ya on Monday! :)

~ Miss Pliura & Mrs. Tortola