Division 10's News of the Week: First blog out there this year!!

Good Morning parents and children,

This is our first blog together this year.

My hope is to do a blog entry every Sunday (time permitted) to share pictures and give you an idea of the shape of our week. I will try to take many pictures as during Covid, the opportunity for you to come in to the classroom just to say hi or volunteer may not present itself this year. Fingers crossed that a vaccination will be in place for next year!

With that, welcome to our class! As I mentioned before we have a grade one two split, with 5 grade ones (lovely sweet children) and 14 grade 2’s. My grade 2’s have shown great leadership already and are embracing and helping the grade ones with remembering the rules and routines. Yes that is what we did for our first week of school. This first week was spent learning the daily expectations as well as following many safety rules for inside and outside the classroom. Some of the rules are typical school rules of respectful behavior and some are the new covid necessary safety rules. I will discuss some of them in this blog with you.

Starting every day we wash our hands. The children come into the classroom, hang up their jackets and put down their back packs and line up to wash their hands. We wash our hands EVERY time we come in from outdoors, and sanitize when we go out. That makes our routine easier to manage.If they sneeze, they wash their hands. They are getting very good at washing their hands, and thus all the lovely soap that has been sent in has been wonderful!! I give them a squirt of it on their hands and they rub it in like lotion and then when they start washing, magically the bubbles appear!! Thank you for the soap…I have appreciated it greatly!!

Once hands have been washed we gather on our carpet where I have tried to space their seating so that they cannot touch each other and are sitting fairly far apart. Once on the carpet we review our shape of the day, and discuss the variety of things we will do. One of my expectations on the carpet, a rule that is one I told them, that they always had to remember, is “when the teacher, is talking, they are listening”. Most are getting very good at this and are requiring very little reminders.

This week we:

1) Discussed Bee Safe Bee Fair Bee Kind

2) Give me Five..eyes, ears, mouth, legs and hands…how one gets ready to listen when the teacher is at the front..see if you can review both of these with the children. As you can see in the pictures, we always do a little project with both!

This week we also:

1) Went outside to our little apple orchard and collected apples. We drew them in their apple tree and also as scientists observed their beautiful skin and shape close up. Then the next day we learned how to lable, we observed the apple in the inside after being cut, and learned how to make arrows and lable the parts. So we were busy.

2) We did a lot of art…making self portraits…a few times! We are reading Todd Parr books, and they are lovely and funny and show the simplicity of portrait making.

3) We learned how to play with our centers and our tubs! And how to clean up afterwards. Friday’s will generally be our afternoon of art and playing with tubs…as tub toys/manipulatives if left for three days are safe to play with the following week. Also prior to playing the children sanitize their hands as well as after playing.

As you can see we have had a busy week and a fun week!

If you can continue to review general behavior expectations, listening to the teacher, playing kindly and speaking kindly to their friends, then I would appreciate it. They are lovely children and I know that after a very long break, that they are excited to be back and will need a little bit of TLC to readjust to the long days! If you have any questions, please email me… I will try my best to communicate with you immediately.

Thank you soo much again for all the lovely supplies. I have received two yoga mats, which I will be cutting up..that will cover about six small squares for the children. If you see any in a garage sale etc…I could likely use about 4more mats to cut up!

Remember that we have gym Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…and that Tuesday and Thursdays are Off To a Running Start…so gym shoes for four days in a row!! A letter about OTARS was sent home with your children.

Home Reading will be starting on Monday, a letter will be sent home with your child as well as some books. Keep an eye out for them!

And with that….I think that’s it for this long newsletter.

Most blogs will not be this long!!

Enjoy the pictures.

And have a happy Sunday.

Teri Taylor