Sport Fit!

The Kindies had sport trials in the gym and in the field this week. Stay tuned for more information and more pictures.

Love Mrs. App

First week of October

Yikes! It's already October!

I want more time with all my sweet kindies to do all the projects I had planned. Oh well, I'll have to put some crafts aside and move on with the next month. We are not finished talking about our families yet. We are working on family portraits. Once they are finished, they will be displayed in the coat area. We will continue working on recognizing all the names in the class. Of course, we do phonics, reading, and counting together every morning at the carpet. We have started our printing books. At the moment our math (mostly number concepts) is integrated throughout the day.

Our field trip to UBC Farm dates are now confirmed. Division 15 is on Friday October 26. Division 14 is on Monday October 29. I'll update the blog and send out a newsletter for permission once the UBC contact sends me exact times for arrival. I will leave the use of car seats up to parents discretion. If you child is going with a volunteer driver, you may bring a car seat to school on the day of the field trip and we will use it for the trip.

Check the calendar for all the events this month! The link for Kindergarten Calendar is on the right side of the main blog page. There's Halloween Howl, Immunization, Hearing Clinics, and more. This week we are doing 75 minutes of SPORT FIT. Division 14 will be doing a variety of sports trials on Wednesday. Division 15 will have their turn on Thursday.

Feel free to email me at the contact link under my profile. I may not check my email right away, but I will get back to you. Of course, I'm at school every day too, so that's always an option. I aim to get a list of parent emails once the office has them compiled from the brown forms.

See you soon.

Love Mrs. App

P.S. Anyone else finding it annoyingly dark at the classroom entrance and the coat area? I talked to Hugh, our principal, and our friendly engineer, Cesar, today and they will see what can be done to help out.

The End of September

Our class is starting to settle nicely into our routines. Our focus this month has been getting to know each other and feel comfortable and safe in our cozy classroom together. We are working on recognizing our own names and reading peer names too. We have enjoyed new songs, stories, and reading poems together. Thanks to our pocket chart centre, many students are enjoying playing teacher and reading the poems to me! The two students are playing teacher and reading in this photo.

I am presently organizing a field trip for both classes to the UBC Farm. The students will get to learn about growing vegetables and also get to pick a pumpkin for taking home. Division 14 will go on Oct. 29 and Division 15 will go on Oct. 26. I'll be contacting parents as volunteers. Thank you to parents who have already sent in driver forms. Stay tuned for more information.






Here's more some pictures of our darling students this week.

See you soon,
Love Mrs. App

September News!

September is slipping away quickly! I've had a wonderful time getting to know all my adorable Kindergarteners. It was great to see families show up for the Bayview Parents Night last night too. Thank you to Coen for these gorgeous sunflowers. Indeed, I believe they made the class look better than ever for the first week of school.

Here's some important information for the next two weeks.

Thursday Sept. 20: No School. There is a professional development day for staff in Deep Cove. No doubt I would much rather be with your kiddies than fight traffic to get to and from North Vancouver. Nonetheless, it will be an important day of team building with the new staff I rarely see now that I'm teaching in the basement!

Monday Sept. 24: I will be away. A Teacher On Call will be covering for me. I am very fortunate to be chosen to be part of the studio audience for Dr. Gordon Neufeld's filming of The Power to Parent (and Teach) Part II. This two day workshop is Sunday and Monday. It will focus on developing emergence and resilience in children. I'll give a little synopsis when I give back. Dr. Neufeld has been working with families for decades and is recently in high demand by lower mainland school districts. More information about Dr. Gordon Neufeld is at http://www.gordonneufeld.com/

The morning class will also start last part of recess without me this week. I've been watching them and they are ready. (Plus, I need to start taking my break!) Michelle will stay with them in addition to our supervision aide Maria. Maria will come for a class visit on Friday, so they know her better before Monday.

Tuesday Sept. 25 and Thursday Sept. 27: School ends at 2:00 p.m. for intake meetings. Hence, Division 15 in the afternoon has an early dismissal of 2:00 p.m. Only parents who missed the first week of meetings or request a special meeting will need to make an appointment with me. In other words, most families have already had their meeting and will not have another one.

That's it for now! Here's some pictures of our children exploring and discovering in the classroom.

That's all for now! Stay tuned for more!

Love Mrs. App

The First Full Day!

Congratulations to parents and students! Both classes excelled at their first full day of Kindergarten.

Here's a picture of Michelle our fantastic School and Student Support Worker (SSSW) and proud C. beside the castle he carefully built. I have many more photos of our busy day and am devastated to find out that blogger is still having errors that stops uploads at the moment. At least the first photo made it up before it crashed! Tomorrow is Wednesday so I'll see Division 14 at 9:00 am. Division 15 has a day off until Thursday. Both divisions will now start their classes with Book Time.

See you soon,

Mrs. App

The kids have their first hour of school!

It was a great start for all! I should have a lovely picture to go with this, but blogger seems to have trouble posting photos this evening. Regardless, it was a busy hour for both classes today getting to know the classroom, new friends, and me. Ah, but that's not all. Everyone had a chance to meet Michelle. We are very fortunate to have Michelle hired as our full time support staff member in both classes. She has genuine smile and the children warmed up to her easily and quickly.

Tomorrow is a regular day. Michelle and I will take the morning class out early to avoid having recess with the rest of the school tomorrow. The afternoon class will always have recess to themselves. In the morning, the kids will come and meet me on the carpet when they arrive again. However, BOOK TIME will start soon. This means bins of books will be on their desks. We welcome individual book "reading" or time reading a book with family members for the first ten or fifteen minutes. I'll explain it to the children on Tuesday and then try to start their day that way on Wednesday or Thursday.
I'm sure all the children are in bed as I write this. I, too, must do that now.
See you tomorrow,
Love Mrs. App

The First Week: Family Meetings

September is here and I'm delighted to meet each family that comes through the kindergarten door. Meeting times are posted on the bulletin outside the door if you've forgotten your time.
I'm looking forward to Monday Sept. 10 for the first official day of kindergarten for both classes. Remember classes are only one hour on Monday. Classes will be the regular length on Tuesday and everyday afterwards.

*
Stay tuned for posted week schedules and a calendar of September events.
See you soon!

Love Mrs. App

Getting Ready For September!

It's still August and if you peeked in the windows this month, you saw me setting up the classroom. I never would have guessed one month would barely be enough time to get it ready!





This bookshelf in our class library is looking ready for Kindergarteners.


Just two weeks ago, I was still moving furniture, unpacking, and sorting.
My mom came in for 3 days and generously cleaned behind the curtains, and washed lego for us. Here's what passerbys may have seen.



The room looks MUCH better now.
Stay tuned for updated photos.

Moving In & Setting Up The Classroom

I'm moving in!
Moments after the students left for the summer, I started boxing up all my materials and carrying them down 3 flights of stairs to our Kindergarten classroom. Our past Kindergarten teacher, Ms. Foran, has a tricky job of packing up and leaving the school. She's kindly leaving many things behind for us. At the moment the place is a mess and I've recruited family members to help out!
Here's my dad helping with a heavy item.

After many trips up and down the stairs, we decided to leave the remaining 32 boxes for the school board movers. Oh, well! There's plenty of cleaning and organizing to do before the rest of the boxes come. In these photos you'll see my parents, my sons, and me. We are all helping get the classroom ready for September.







Oh, boy! The class is not a pretty sight! I'll keep working on it all summer.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Love Mrs. App