La lettre 'T'

This week we are working on the letter T, it's sounds, how it is formed and of course, vocabulary words that start with T in French.  Here are our words if you wish to practice at home. . .

Uppercase & Lowercase

Today we added learning centers to our flow of the day.  Most days students will have a short period of time where they have a 'must do' job (their 'travail').  Usually these jobs are hands-on activities that can be differentiated for students depending on their abilities.  We have been talking a lot about how there are uppercase letters (les lettres majuscules) and lowercase letters (les lettres minuscules) for each sound in the alphabet and some of our centers focused on getting students more familiar with this concept.

Drawing letters in salt.

Drawing letters in salt.

Making letters out of playdough.

Matching uppercase and lowercase letters.

Sorting uppercase and lowercase letters.

Sorting uppercase and lowercase letters.

Carp Fair

We have Carp Fair fever going on at Stonecrest right now!  Be sure to check out the craft barn at the fair for our paper bag pumpkins, noodle & acorn necklaces and beautiful JK portraits.  Thank you to everyone who sent back their Carp Fair attendance sheets.  If you are going to the fair tomorrow or sometime on the weekend have fun and maybe we will see you there!

Letter of the Week

Every week we will be focusing on a new letter in French.  We have a castle (un château) with a king (or queen) that only lets words that start with a certain letter into his/her castle.  We practise the words in the castle, as well as the sound and name of the letter.  Towards the end of the week students practise printing the letter and colouring the pictures (JK's) and drawing the pictures and writing the words (SK's).  

We are focusing on printing both uppercase and lowercase letters.  Lowercase letters in particular can prove challenging for students to print, especially if they are used to only using uppercase letters.  Luckily there are many handy resources available to help with practicing this important skill.  There are plenty of free (or inexpensive) apps out there -- one that I have used often with my own children is 'Letter Quiz', found in the App Store.

Dans mon sac à dos

We have been learning some new French vocabulary words using the book 'Dans mon sac à dos'.  The repetitive structure of the book helps students learn the names of many school-related items, and they love that at the end of the book there is a frog in the backpack (sac à dos).  Many students have already learned some of the words and can recall a few independently in French!

Example of a page from the book.

These are the items found in the sac à dos.

Scholastic Book Orders

As you are probably aware, Scholastic Book Orders are a great way to build family libraries – they offer books at your child’s level at very reasonable prices.  As such, you will be receiving monthly Scholastic flyers which you may or may not wish to order from.

For English books there are Early Childhood flyers and Kindergarten & Grade 1 flyers, as well special offers, such as Teacher’s Selection or Holiday Specials.  In addition to these English book orders, most months, you will also find a flyer called Club de lecture filled with French books and resources (unfortunately we did not receive these for September yet, but there should be some with the October book orders.  The Club de lecture is a great place to look for French books.  If you decide to purchase any French books we recommend that you stick with the books that have a number ‘1’ beside them (some number ‘2’s’ may be alright as well).  These are the books most suited to your child’s interests and ability. 

Scholastic has recently added the option to pay by credit card online to help make things easier.  If you choose this method of payment, please note that parents with students in the Green Group should choose Mme Melanie Wilson (NOT Mallory Wilson) as their homeroom teacher and parents with students in the Blue Group should choose Mrs. Jodie Sonnenburg as their homeroom teacher.  The other method of payment available is by cheque.  Cheques should be made out to Scholastic Canada.  Please do not send cash.  Thank you!!

Meet the Teacher Night

Meet the Teacher night at Stonecrest E.S. will occur next Tuesday, September 20th, from 5 to 7pm.  We hope to see you there!

Crowns

Don't forget to send your child to school with their yellow or green crown tomorrow (and every day for the next little while) so that we can easily find them when they get off the bus.

Fire Alarms

What a way to start the year!  Our students who started kindergarten today ended the day with not one, not two, but THREE fire alarms!!  While there was no actual danger we spent almost the whole last hour of the day out in the soccer field while whatever was causing the alarm to go off was investigated. The students did a great job waiting patiently for the signal to go back in. Hopefully tomorrow doesn't have quit that much excitement!!

Welcome to Kindergarten in Room 98!

Welcome to kindergarten in room 98!  We are very excited to be working with your child this year. 

The French Team - Mme Wilson, Mme Kathryn & Mme Behnke

We will be starting our year by learning each other's names and how to introduce ourselves in French (Je m'appelle . . . ).

We are also doing a review of how our day is going in French . . .
     Comment ça va?  (How is it going?)
     Ça va bien. (It's going well.)

     Ça va mal.  (It's going bad.)

     Ça va comme ci, comme ça.  (It's going so-so.)

As the weeks progress we will also be focusing on letter and number recognition in French.  Practice at home is always encouraged to help reinforce what is being taught at school!