Happy Halloween

Enjoy these Halloween tunes with your goblins and ghouls!

Ojibway Nature Centre

We had a great day! Loads of fun learning about animals preparing for winter, walking in the woods and seeing the snake up close! 

Firefighters Visit Kindergarten!

We had a visit from the fire department today to teach us about fire safety and remind us what to do if we experience a fire. Students were able to see a firefighter in all of his gear and climb aboard a fire truck. 

Social Justice News

 Millions of people go hungry every day, even in our own backyard. From Oct. 15 Nov. 6, St. Gabriel School will be hosting a food drive to once again support the Downtown Mission. Classrooms will be collecting nonexpired cans and boxes of cereal during this time period. The class in each division with the most food items collected by Oct. 29 will win a Halloween party!! This is our second campaign in conjunction with Free the Children. Let's be Hunger Heroes and SCARE hunger away this Halloween!

Milk Bag Collection

Starting next week we will be collecting milk bags. This initiative was started by a local teen who has been able to turn thousands of milk bags into sleeping mats, pillows and school bags for children and families in Haiti. Please send in any bags to school throughout the school year for this collection!

Battery Collection
Each year, nearly 450,000 children die due to complications associated with zinc deficiency. One AA battery contains the amount of zinc that can save the lives of six children. Let’s help keep batteries out of landfills and help get zinc to the children who need it most. For every battery recycled, Teck will donate the value of zinc it contains to UNICEF in support of our Zinc & Health partnership. Used batteries can be sent to the school for recycling. We will collect batteries throughout the year. You can also take any uses batteries to Staples for recycling collection.

For more information on our Social Justice Club please click here

October News

Much of our time in Kindergarten in October is spent continuing to build relationships with  each other, exploring the many beauties of Autumn, recognizing all that God has given us and the importance of being Thankful, new songs, poems and stories, as well as patterning, counting and our Pals sounds.

Students will explore a variety of leaves, plants, and pumpkins, gourds, and squash at the science table.

We will begin to collect leaves and bringing them to school, we will sort, compare, and measure while appreciating their similarities and differences as well as beauty! We will also take a Fall walk through our school neighborhood and use our five senses to find signs of Fall.

Free play time has allowed our students to continue to develop team work through our  many different building projects, to build skills in conflict resolution, sharing and taking turns, encouraging each other and working together for a collective goal- clean up!

Reading and Writing activities have included sight words, being a "the" detective in the newspaper, student names, big books, and Thanksgiving and Halloween books (fiction a term that they are learning means made up or pretend) and books about Autumn and growing pumpkins (non-fiction a term they are learning means real) and various Pals sounds (a, m, f, b, s,t, c) and words (the, is).

Math activities included counting turkeys, pumpkins, students, leaves... Patterning continues to be popular as well including the numbers on our calendar, students practicing during free play, and stamping patterns. 

Homework Corner:

- read a fictional story to your child. When finished, ask questions about who the characters were, what happened in the story, what was the problem?, how the problem was resolved, where the story took place...

-read a non-fiction story. Children love to learn about how things grow, live, are made. You can ask questions about what was learned.

- use household items to count, and pattern (silverware, cereal, small toys like cars, Lego, beads...)

Reminders:

Ojibway field trip is Tuesday, October 27th.

Fundraiser card sales continues. Please support our school by selling boxes, $20. Our kindergarten goal is to sell one box per student and then we will celebrate with a pyjama day for our kindies!

Social justice is collecting cans for the poor and milk bags to create sleep mats for people in Haiti. Used batteries are also being collected. Please help us learn to be charitable! See link!

Thanksgiving Songs

These are some of the Thanksgiving songs we have been learning in kindergarten.

Terry fox walk!

Thank you to all who sent in a donation for our "twoonie for Terry! We had fun walking as a tribute to Terry's marathon of hope!