March Newsletter

Dear Parents,

We started off the month of March with a fun visit from Starr Gymnastics.  Each Kindergarten class had two gymnastic sessions in the gym (March 2 & 3) which were led by enthusiastic instructors.  The students had the opportunity to practice many skills on a variety of equipment. We are also going to be participating in a Luv to Groove dance workshop on Wednesday, March 9 and Friday, March 11.

Math

This month in Math our focus is Geometry.  The students will have learning opportunities to describe, sort, classify, build and compare two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional figures. We have started the unit by exploring 2-D shapes and after the March Break we will introduce the 3-D figures (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, pyramid and rectangular prism).

Our Classroom Bucket

A few months ago, we read the book,  How Full is  Your Bucket?  By Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer.  You can find the book on YouTube at this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5R6-2m_qHk . The bucket represents your mental and emotional state. When your bucket is full you feel happy and confident.  When your bucket is empty, you can feel sad, angry or insecure.   The students took to this idea very well so we started a classroom bucket.  The students have been working together as a team to fill our bucket to the top with pompoms.  The students earn a pompom when they fill someone else’s bucket by doing bucket filling things like sharing a toy, helping a friend who needs help, comforting someone who is hurt.  We are trying very hard not to dip into someone else’s bucket.   Examples of bucket dipping actions would be saying unkind words and excluding others from play.  We are very happy to say that our bucket is now full.  The students are very excited!  To celebrate we will be having a pajama day this Friday, March 11.   

Language

We have been practising rhyming and breaking words down into syllables.  The students are asked to identify or predict rhyming words in songs and stories.  We also play games like clapping the syllables in our names.  

We are continuing our Jolly Phonics Program.  We learn an action and song for each sound/letter.  You can find a lot of these resources online.  The link for the songs is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2YAqhzaheE .  So far we have learned the following letters:

S,  A,  T,  I,  P,  N,  C,  K,  E,  H,  R,  M,  D,  G,  O,  U,  L,  F,  B

The students are able to use this sound/letter knowledge to write using inventive spelling.  I am often coaching the students to write the sounds they hear.  Inventive spelling is highly encouraged.

We continue to practise our sight words.  Sight words are high frequency words that we recognize by sight (we know off by heart).  This helps tremendously with reading fluency.

These are the sight words we have done to date:

I,  me,  the,  like,  a,  to,  we,  are,  it,  is,  do,  you,  see, and

The next ones will be:   he,  she

French

In French, we practised the play of the Three Little Kittens who lose their mittens and we named things that we like (J’aime papa, j’aime maman, etc…).  When we come back from the March Break we will be talking about Easter and spring! Please continue to check the blog (http://stgeorgek3.blogspot.com/) for the French songs we are singing as well as the vocabulary words we are learning in class.

Important Dates

Friday, March 11 -  Pajama Day with a movie & popcorn

March 14 -18  - March Break (no school)

March 25 - Good Friday (no school)

March 28 - Easter Monday (no school)