Class Visitor

Today we had a visitor from the Village Square Dental Centre!

Dental hygienist, Crystal Toth came to our JK class to talk to us about how we can take care of our teeth and keep 

our mouths healthy.

She showed us the proper way to brush and floss, 

and we worked on a colouring page together.

We were all given a new toothbrush
and some flossers to take home, 

so that we could practice what we learned.

Crystal showing us how to brush and floss our teeth.

Thank you Crystal for sharing with us today!

Did You Know?

Came across this little fact...explains why I'm tired at the end of a school day...

If you'd like to see a sneak peak from this past week, click here to see the FB page!

Little Eyes

We are having a fun month talking about "Healthy Me!" 

This past week we had a visitor in our classroom. 

Dr. Cynthia Merritt, the optometrist, came to talk to us about how our eyes work. 

She told us about ways to take care of our eyes and keep them healthy and what we can expect when we go to the eye doctor for an appointment.  

Dr. Cynthia also brought along a model of the eye for us to see.

(I was so busy enjoying the presentation that I forgot to take any pictures!  Sorry...)

I do want to tell you about a wonderful program called 

"Eye See Eye Learn."  

It's a program designed to make parents aware of the importance of having their child's eyes examined at a young age.  

Eye exams are covered under OHIP, and should your four year old requires glasses, they can be provided a pair free of charge, courtesy of the sponsors.  

From the website:

The Eye See...Eye Learn program was developed to raise awareness among parents of the importance of having their children's eyes checked upon starting school. Children, who cannot see the board, focus on a picture or follow words in a book may struggle to achieve their full learning potential. Vision problems can also impact their hand-eye coordination for physical activities and even impact their social development. In fact, 80 percent of learning comes directly through vision.

To find out more about this program, click on the picture below.  It will take you to the "ESEL" website, where you can read all about the program and click on a link to show you which eye doctors are participating in it.

Click Here


How well does your child see?

Buddy Craft Time

Last Friday, we spent some quality crafting time with our grade 4/5 buddies. They came to our class to help us make a "name" snowman craft.  It was a wonderful cooperative activity with beautiful displays of creativity and gentle friendship. The team-work was so fun to watch.  I loved being a spectator and letting the "big kids" take charge and help out their little JK friends.  

The finished products were hung up in the hallway for all to enjoy.

Saturday Morning Coffee and a Ha Ha

It is a lovely Saturday morning, I woke to the sound of singing birds, I have my first coffee, and I found something to make me laugh.

It's been a busy couple weeks preparing report cards.

I am trying to book a campsite for our family summer get-away (not having much success in that department), and I also need to go grocery shopping (not my favourite way to spend a Saturday morning).

So when I came across this little gem I just had to share.

I needed a laugh this morning.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Alpha Picture Flashcards Freebie

I'm always trying to come up with new ways to drill the letters and sounds into my students' memories, so I created a couple new ABC flashcard sets.  These have pictures that start with the letter sounds.  The first set is a FREEBIE!!!

You can find this freebie {here} or {here}.

 The second set is to be used with letter tiles. 

The children find the capital and lowercase letters from the letter tile collection, to match each flashcard.

You can find these flashcards {here} or {here}.

It's a fun literacy activity that helps them work on their letter matching AND fine motor skills.

I'm looking forward to using these in the classroom!  

"You Really Should Clean This Ear!" (some new freebies too)

Ask a bunch of four year olds if they've ever been to the doctor and you will be entertained with wonderful stories and anecdotes about what "goes down" during such a visit.

Today we talked about doctors, and about experiences that we have had while visiting our doctors.

I loved the discussion and everything the children had to share, but for them, the most exciting part of the day was the opportunity to put on the nurse and doctor apparel, and play the part of such a care giver.

There wasn't enough time in the day to accommodate everyone's desire to play with the newly introduced doctor's kit.  I had to assure several worried students that the doctor's kit would in fact stay in our room for a while, and that they would get an opportunity to play with it at some point.

I had a hoot watching them interact and get completely absorbed in the imaginative play.  They had such a wonderful time. 

(The EA and I may have shared several laughs together while watching them.)

The funniest thing I overheard today was from one of the JK doctors as they were performing an examination of one of their patients. 

"You should really clean this ear......it's hard for me to see in it!!"

To accompany our "healthy me" theme, I added some themed activities to our math and literacy centres.  The following is a great hands-on literacy and fine motor activity which I made to give the children an opportunity to do some letter matching while forming words we've been learning about during our theme time.  

You can find these letter tile cards {here} or {here}.

The words are built using letter tiles.  

The new letter tiles have been added to our class as a result of credit earned through Scholastic orders.  I love getting "free" stuff!  

(You know you're dutch when......)

Newly posted to my stores is a collection of my ABC flashcards.  All the themed flashcards are in one handy pack.  The themed flashcards go along with the free ABC highlighting pages that you can also find in the free stuff collection.  They are great for whole class activities, small literacy groups or individual practice.  The kids love the different seasonal themes.......it makes ABC practice just a little more interesting.  Set includes Fall/Halloween, Teddy Bears, Christmas, Winter, Valentine/Monster, and The Mitten.

You can find this pack {here} or {here}.

New freebies available:  Winter Alphabet ABC Highlighting page......

Freebie available {here} or {here}.

AND

a multi-use pattern colouring handout.

Find this freebie {here} and {here}.

For anyone interested, I am throwing a FEBRUARY BLAAH'S STORE WIDE SALE at both my TPT store and Teacher's Notebook store right now!!!  Nothing takes away the blaah's like some new teaching material! :)