Merry Christmas to All!

From the RBES Pre-kindergarten classes

What a Magical week in Pre-K! The room was brimming with excitement these last few days before Christmas. Students enjoyed discovering what our elf Snowflake was up to each morning.

We found her hiding on all kind of shelves, peeking out at us from behind things, and even landed on top of the Christmas Tree! 

We finished making and wrapping gifts for our families, baked cookies, and of course, ended the week with our Christmas party celebration!

Thank you so much to all the parents/helpers who contributed to our party fun! Making icing, sending in candy, assisting at our party... We couldn't have done it without you!

Christmas Fun!

Some of our learning activities this week included painting a giant snowman with cotton balls, Christmas mindful colouring, Christmas games, yoga, and songs, and playing Pin the Nose on the Rudolph!

Here are the words to one of our Christmas songs (to the tune of Wheels on the Bus). Try singing it at home!

The Lights on the Tree

The lights on the tree go, blink, blink, blink… (open and close hands)

Blink, blink, blink… blink, blink, blink.

The lights on the tree go, blink, blink, blink

On Christmas Day.

The presents under the tree go rattle, rattle, rattle… (pretend to shake the presents)

Rattle, rattle, rattle…rattle, rattle, rattle

The presents under the tree go rattle, rattle, rattle

On Christmas Day.

Other Versus:

The bells on the sleigh go jingle, jingle, jingle (shake your pretend bells)

The cookies in my tummy are yummy, yummy, yummy (rub tummy)

Cookies!

Reindeer Sock Wrestling

Students participated in risky play by engaging in sock wrestling. 
The goal is to pull the other competitor's socks off while staying on the mat.

Risky play helps to develop important life skills such as:

• Building resilience and persistence
• Balance and coordination
• Awareness of the capabilities and limits of their own bodies
• The ability to assess and make judgement about risk
• Handling tools safely and with purpose
• Understanding consequence to action
• Confidence and independence
• Resourcefulness
• Creativity and inventiveness
• Curiosity and wonder
• Problem solving

Christmas Party!

Making Reindeer Food

Christmas Scavenger Hunt
 around the school

Gingerbread House making

Click here to see the rest of the pictures from our Christmas week.

Well, that is it for this year! Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas! See you in the New Year!

Here are a few ideas of things to do with your precious little ones over the break!

Surviving the Holidays with your Little Ones

Coming Up

We are excited to begin our New Year with our space theme!  Important January dates:

• January 7th - first day back to school 
• January 9th and 10th - Early dismissal days
• The morning class will dismiss at 10:36 am
• The afternoon class will dismiss at 2:16 pm

Christmas Surprises!

With Christmas just around the corner, the Pre-K's have been busy little elves! We set up a cardboard workshop in our class, have been making and wrapping presents and cards, and participated in a very special community sing-a-long!

Tessellation Christmas Tree!

Students worked on a collaborative art piece. All students decorated a green triangle that we put together to make a giant Christmas Tree!

Santa's Workshop

The Pre-K's were hard at work in the workshop this week building all sorts of things with our new Makedo tool kit. 

Community Sing-A-Long

Our Tuesday morning class shared in some community Christmas spirit this week with a sing-a-long at the community centre. 

Surprise Art!

We worked on some top secret projects this week.  When they come home next week they are a surprise - no peeking!

Click here to see the rest of the pictures from our Christmas week.

Upcoming:

• December 20: Christmas Party for ALL students
• Wear your PJs, bring a stuffie
• Gingerbread house making - each student needs to bring one bag of candy
• December 21-January 6: Christmas Holidays, No School
• January 7: School resumes
• January 9/10: Early Dismissal Days

In January we are embarking on a Space-themed adventure! We would love to make a giant sized space shuttle! If you happen to have an extra-large box after Christmas we would love to have it. Thanks! 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Up went the Tree and out came the Elf! This week in Pre-K was full of festivities! 

Students were excited to meet Snowflake the Elf. It has been so fun to spot Snowflake each day hiding around the classroom! The Pre-K's so far have found Snowflake in the Christmas Tree, on the Canada Flag pole, and stuck to the white board in a ferris wheel built by Snowflake! We wonder what Snowflake will be up to next week?!

Monday students helped decorate the big tree and all students had fun building their fine-motor skills hanging ornaments on our mini-trees. 

Bread Lady 

What a treat! Not only did we become bakers this week, we learned how wheat is ground into flour and met Ted the wheat grinding machine. We also learned how farmers plant and harvest wheat. We each had a turn planting some wheat seeds. We are excited to see if they grow! We worked together to make the bread dough. Kneading the dough was a hit! Then we each made our own bread. While it was baking we made cinnamon knots to eat as a special snack. Delicious! Thanks so much to the Bread Lady for sharing her Farm to Table learning experience and to all our amazing volunteers... we couldn't have done it without you!

Painting Christmas Lights

Here we are at work painting our sparkling Christmas lights art!

Christmas Crackers 

Mrs. Stanski gave us Christmas crackers to help us understand our concert song: Pop Bang Crack! Most of us had never cracked Christmas crackers before. The Pre-Ks were delighted to discover the surprise inside! And of course they all enjoyed the 'Pop!' it made when we pulled them open!

Christmas Concert Night 

Our favourite night of the year... We loved seeing all the little ones dressed up and excited to perform on stage. There are always a few wonderful surprises the night of the performance! They just brought so much Joy that night. We are so incredibly proud of them!

See all the photos of our week by clicking this link.

Upcoming!

Dec. 11 Community Sing and Share 9:45-10:30am
Dec. 20 Christmas Party and PJ Day
December 21-January 6 Christmas Break, No School

Pop Bang Crack!

The Christmas Concert is coming!

We sang our hearts out on the big stage in preparation for this week's Christmas concert!

Art

You'll see the sparkly star art we made hanging on the wall beside the stage.

This week we also made new wintry placemats by blending 2 colours together, blue with white, to make beautiful tints of blue in a snowy sky.

Skills!

We added some squishy pretend snow to our sensory bin. The Pre-Ks had fun building little snowmen, digging,  and piling. Other fine-motor skills we practiced this week included poking pins on dotted designs, and our snipping station. Pre-Ks did a great job operating the scissors. Thumb on top! Snip! Snip!

And we worked on our gross motor skills and body-awareness while participating in this fun obstacle course!

A cool building project this week was trying our new magnetic blocks! We have some very creative engineers!

Zones of Regulation

Miss Kayla shared more regulation tools with us. We got to put on Pete the Cat's groovy glasses to look for a tool that would help us return to the 'green zone' (the best zone for playing and learning). If we were feeling blue, yellow, or red (tired, sad, silly, frustrated, mad), we could try: wall pushes, a hug, jumping, looking at a glitter jar...to help us find our calm again.

See more pics of our Week here!

Coming Up!😃

Bread Lady Tuesday Dec. 4
Pre-K and Kinder concert Wednesday Dec. 5, 6:30pm
Dec. 5/Dec. 6  Early Dismissal Days

Dec. 11 Community Sing-A-Long
Dec. 20 Pre-K Christmas Party, PJ Day
Dec. 21-Jan. 6 Christmas Holidays, No School

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

We had fun with the familiar story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  The students enjoyed acting the story out.  Retelling familiar stories that have been read aloud is an important pre-literacy skill.  

The students explored with oats and water so that they could pretend make porridge themselves.

We also made porridge for a fun snack!  We had to take a walk first, because just like the bears, our porridge was "too hot!"  The weather was beautiful, and it was fun to get outside.

Peeking inside the classroom window to see if Goldilocks found our room while we were out!

Zones of Regulation

Miss Kayla helped us make our own mini zones boards to take home this week!  Make sure to read the handout that came home with the zones board.  This board can be a helpful tool for helping with regulation at home.

Click here to see the rest of the pictures from our bear week!

Coming Up

Next week we will begin our snowmen/winter unit.  Important upcoming dates:

• December 4th - Let's Bake visit.  All students are welcome to attend
• The morning class will attend during their regular morning hours from 8:30 - 11:36 am
• The afternoon class will attend during their regular afternoon hours from 12:10 - 3:16 pm
• We are still looking for parent volunteers (especially for the afternoon class).  Please let us know if you can help out.
• December 5th at 6:30 pm - Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten Christmas Concert
• December 5th and 6th - Early Dismissal days
• The morning class will dismiss at 10:36 am
• The afternoon class will dismiss at 2:16 pm
• December 20th - Christmas Party and Pajama Day
• All students are welcome to attend
• The morning class will attend during their regular morning hours from 8:30 - 11:36 am
• The afternoon class will attend during their regular afternoon hours from 12:10 - 3:16 pm
• December 21st - January 6th: Christmas break.  No School

Hibernation Week

It was a cozy week in Pre-K as our jammie-clad crew baked up some bannock, cuddled with stuffies during storytime, and had fun bouncing bears on a big blanket!

Bannock making

Thanks so much to our parent helpers for this special activity! The Pre-K's were super chefs. They followed a recipe, measured, stirred, and poured. The bannock was delicious plain or with butter/jam. Here is a link to the recipe in case you want to try it at home! Bannock Recipe

Mmm...delicious!

We also learned this chant to build our literacy skills and have fun saying hello in many ways. 

Storytime with Stuffies

We read a funny story called Big Smelly Bear about a bear who doesn't like to take baths. We started painting smelly bears that don't smell too bad at all! Cinnamon in the paint added a sensory element as the students developed their fine-motor skills. We will finish up next week.

More Bear Fun!

 

Loose Parts in the Kitchen

Loose parts is a wonderful term coined by Simon Nicholson. He believed that we are all creative and that loose parts empower our creativity. Loose parts invite endless possibilities.

The Pre-Ks loved exploring in the kitchen with all the different materials (loose parts) we added. 

See more pics of our week here!

Upcoming!

• Dec. 5  RBES Pre-K Christmas concert
• Dec. 5/6 Early Dismissal
• Dec. 4 The Bread Lady In-School Field trip 
• All students are welcome to attend on this day.  
• We will also be looking for parent volunteers, please let us know if you can help out!

From the Office: