October 1 - 5

This Week:

Monday, Oct. 1st - Beautiful Stuff bags due today.

Tuesday, Oct. 2nd - 1st Visit to the Learning Commons

Wednesday, Oct. 3rd -

Thursday, Oct. 4th -

Friday, Oct. 5th - PM class attends 9:10-1:10pm. Orange Shirt Day for PM class  (No school for AM class)

Last Week:

Fine motor activities are our daily focus.  We continue to attend to demonstrating a proper pencil grip so that we may strengthen our hand and finger muscles as well as develop good habits for writing.  We have worked on various directional lines as well as lines that have a particular start and stop line.  Ask me how to make a ladder! Down, down, left to right with a start and a stop.

Check your child's pencil grasp:


We have now been exposed to sorting items by colour, shape and size.  We will continue to focus on these three attributes over the coming weeks and challenge our selves to choose our own sorting rule, sort by multiple rules and create our own sorting rules all while using our math language to orally share our thinking and learning.
"I sorted by small, medium and big."
"I sorted the animals.
Here are the big animals and the small animals."


As we continue to explore "I am unique", the students used loose parts to create themselves. We talked about how we are all different and how our differences make us special.

"I think these ears are the same size as mine. They are perfect!"
"I made my smile so big!
Sometimes I smile inside my heart, even if I am not on the outside."
"I made my hair blue and black. I didn't want any pink on my hair!"



Orange Shirt Day
"What does it mean to belong?" As a school-wide activity, we each received a fall leaf and drew a picture of what belonging means to us. We then connected our leaves together.

The Circle of Courage

"I feel belonging when I am with my family."
"I feel belonging when I am with my hockey team."

Important Dates:

Monday, October 8 - Thanksgiving Day - NO school
Thursday, October 11 - Student Photo Day 
- Parent Night - Disciplinary Literacy
Friday, October 12 - AM class attends
Monday, October 15 - School Council and Fundraising Meeting at 6:30 PM
Friday, October 19 - PM class attends
Friday, October 26 - PD Day - NO school for students

Orange Shirt Day


Royal Oak Students are invited to wear an orange shirt on Friday, September 28th in recognition of Orange Shirt Day.  

“Orange Shirt Day is also an opportunity for First Nations, local governments, schools and communities to come together in the spirit of reconciliation and hope for generations of children to come.”
Orange Shirt Day Website

To learn more about why we are wearing an orange shirt, we have provided a link that explains Phyllis’ story below:

September 24 - 28

Orange Shirt Day Sept. 28th

This Week:

Thank you to all of the families that attended conferences again.  We enjoyed meeting each of you and learning about your children.  We look forward to November when your child will share their learning with you.

Monday, Sept. 24 -

Tuesday, Sept. 25 -

Wednesday, Sept. 26 - Scholastic orders due

Thursday, Sept. 27 -

Friday, Sept. 28
  • AM Students Attend (NO School for PM Students)
  • Orange Shirt Day

Fun lunch/snacks
Kindergarten children are welcome to purchase fun snacks but DO NOT participate in the fun lunch as they do not stay over the lunch hour.  We ask that you still send a snack as usual as these fun snacks will be taken home. Fun snacks are held on Friday's, so before you order, please check if your child attends school that day as the items can not be kept in the classroom until your child returns to class.

Last Week:

We practiced strengthening our fine motor muscles by practicing holding our pencil the right way, making wavy and zigzag lines and using our name card to write our name using an uppercase letter at the beginning and lowercase letters for the remainder of the letters.


In math, we continued sorting.  We learned about the attribute "shape" and discovered that we can sort by colour and shapes at the same time.



As part of our Royal Oak Safety Week, we went over the procedures for a Fire Drill, an Evacuation, and a Lockdown. We had discussions about how we can be safe at school.

Important Dates:

Monday, October 8 - Thanksgiving - No school

Terry Fox Update

Congratulations to Royal Oak students on a successful Terry Fox Run! As a school, we raised $729 and ran 1029 kms!!! We would also like to send out a MASSIVE THANK YOU to Royal Oak Sobeys for their generous donation of bananas. Our students were able to enjoy a healthy snack after their run.

You can also add a link to my PE blog if you would like. There are a few pictures of the run. Thanks!

Conferences

Student Centered Conferences
On Thursday, September 20th and Friday, September 21st we will have our first Student Centered Conferences. A reminder to parents that:
·      Thursday, September 20th is a regular school day for Grades 1 – 3.  9:10am entry, 3:50pm dismissal.
·      There will be no school for Kindergarten students only on Thursday, September 20th.
·      There will be no school for Kindergarten – Grade 3 on Friday, September 21st. 
Additionally, the School Conference booking system will close TONIGHT, Tuesday, September 18th at 11:59pm.
The following instructions will help you find the My CBE/PowerSchool Parent Account link to book conferences:
Booking School Conferences
  • On the Calgary Board of Education website, scroll to the middle of the page
  • Click on “My CBE/PowerSchool Parent Account” link
  • Sign into your PowerSchool Parent Account
  • Click on myCBE Apps (left hand side of screen)
  • Click on my School Conferences (right hand side of screen)
  • Select the conference day/time and submit to book your child’s conference
***NOTE: You will receive an email confirmation only if your booking was successful***
If you have not created a "My CBE/PowerSchool Account", the instructions to do so can be found here Create MyCBE/PowerSchool Parent Account

Weekly Update September 17 - 21

This Week:

This week is Safety Week.  We will be practicing how to stay safe in our school, get out of our school safely in an emergency and talking about tricky people.

Have you booked a conference?  Please make sure that you access your CBE PowerSchool account to book a time to meet with your child's teacher this Thursday or Friday.  Evening time slots fill up quickly so it is best to sign up as soon as possible to get your preferred time.

Monday, Sept. 17 - PM students will practice a Fire Drill

Tuesday, Sept. 18 -

Wednesday, Sept. 19 -
AM students will practice a school evacuation.  We will do our best to be back in time for our dismissal but please be patient if our little legs take us a few extra minutes to get to our dismissal door.
Please return all blue conference questionnaire forms by today.

Thursday, Sept. 20 -
No school for Kindergarten children.  Conferences will run in 15 minute sessions from 9:00-3:00 PM and from 4:30-8:30 PM.
There is a Beakerhead Assembly today at 1:20pm.  Kindergarten children may attend WITH a parent/guardian.

Friday, Sept. 21 -
No school for all children.  Conferences will run from 8:00am-12:00pm.


Circle of Courage - Independence
Well the cold weather has arrived much earlier than we would like.  This means that you should send your child to school each day prepared.  Please ensure that you label every piece of clothing that your child brings.  We do our best to make sure everything has left the classroom at the end of the day but items such as hoodies, mittens and hats frequently go missing into the abyss.  A challenge to the cold weather is all of our winter gear.  Children in kindergarten are expected to be independent in dressing themselves for the weather.  As a parent you can help your child by providing them with a warm jacket with a working zipper and plenty of time and opportunities to practice this lifeskill.  Teachers will provide time, verbal and visual prompts to assist students with dressing themselves before leaving the classroom.

This is the order that we encourage children to get dressed in.  Once snow pants enter the mix they will be first.

1. 
2.  3.

4. 
 5.


Last Week:

In this section, we will recap learning targets that we covered last week.  We try to capture our learning through photos.  Our learning usually involves hands-on activities where children have worked with manipulatives and have talked about their learning.

You can help your child at home by reviewing the pictures with them and asking them to tell you what they see independently.  A great follow up question to student learning statements is "How do you know?"  We encourage you to use this question when children provide you with both a plausible and different response as it helps them to verbalize their learning and provides you insight into their line of thinking.

We talked about the word "attributes" and learned about sorting items into groups by the attribute of colour.

"I made piles of colours."


"I put all the colours in a line."


"I sorted these by colour.  I put four in each group."


"I put these green ones in a line.  These blue ones are with other blue ones and I did the same with the red ones.  I made the yellow ones fancy by putting them together in a circle."



We learned about "Mat Man" this week.  We sang the song, and practiced creating shapes with whiteboard markers on whiteboards and in our journals with pencils.  We started to explore being an artist by adding details to our drawings with pencil (hair, clothing) and then used realistic colours to enhance our drawings.



PLAY 

Play continues to be an integral part of how we learn in kindergarten.  We explore, create, read, write and socialize through various centres.

 Our dollhouse is a physics experiment.  Cylinders roll off of the rooftop and crash into the other blocks.

 Our house centre is serving up the bears from the sorting centre.  Children sorted the bears into similar coloured bowls then cooked them and served them up to their friends.

Kapla blocks are building materials that are the same in shape, size and weight.  We love these blocks as they allow our imaginations to flourish.

We explored apples in many ways different ways.





Important Dates:

Monday, October 8, 2018 - Thanksgiving - No school
...

Calgary Reads


We are a  Calgary Reads School and we are looking for VOLUNTEERS!

Calgary Reads offers several school-based reading and tutoring programs for young children. And we need your help. Each program relies on volunteers to make them successful. Visit www.CalgaryReads.com for more information about how to get involved.




Volunteers must have a valid police check completed with the school’s office and need to attend training provided by Calgary Reads. You also must have experience with Wee Reads prior to taking Read-Up training.

* If we have enough parents interest we can run a Wee Reads training session right at the school! *
                                     
If you’re interested in volunteering please reach out to our Resource Teacher, Heather Mitschke at hmmitschke@cbe.ab.ca

Mrs. Heather Mitschke
Resource Teacher/Kindergarten Learning Leader
Royal Oak School

403-777-6279 ext:2030
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