Safety Village and Halloween

Safety Village
It was a dark and stormy day when we headed out to Oakville to visit Safety Village. We listened to information about street signs and traffic rules. We learned that signs that are yellow mean 'caution' and red signs mean ' stop or danger'. Then it was off to drive those jeeps! 

This is us learning about driving on the right side of the road. Easy if you know your left from right. Not so easy for all of us :)

Here is the mini- village where we rode our jeeps. It had real working traffic lights and even a railroad crossing complete with a working crossing arm that came down in front of the jeeps (thankfully no train drove through!).

Our next trip will be on November 15th to Mohawk college to see the Boris Brott orchestra. This is a fun trip as they usually combine their music with art and drama. A purple permission note went home on Thursday October 27th. Mrs. Kirk our music teacher organizes this for our students and it is a wonderful opportunity!

Hallowe'en at Florence Meares P.S. 
So in keeping with our FM tradition, we will begin Monday, October 31st with a costume parade for staff and students from K-5. Teachers and students in Grades 6-8 are more than welcome to dress up, if desired, and are encouraged to line the hallways during the Hallowe’en parade. Costumes should be appropriate, respectful, and promote the fun and pro-social aspects of Hallowe’en celebrations. As you can appreciate and understand, costumes should not incite fear or anxiety in any way. 

Students will begin the parade usually right after announcements 
(9 ish). The upstairs students (my grade two class) will parade in the upper hallway and do two loops around the hall. If parents wish to visit and take pictures you are most welcome to do so. You will need to sign in at the office prior to coming upstairs. The parade is over quickly though so timing is everything! Students are asked to come to school wearing their costume over their clothes or bring a partial costume that is easy to assemble. The parade is optional so wearing Halloween colours or not dressing up is fine. 

Report Cards
Progress reports go home on November 14th. As you can imagine this is a busy time as I am doing a lot of skills checks, conferencing and testing with students. Not to mention getting my Hallowe'en costume ready! I'm also spending a lot of time on the computer. So, I might be a little late updating the blog but I'll be back soon. 

Have a Happy Hallowe'en (even on a Monday night...yikes, that is scary in itself!). Also, thanks to Hugh's Mom for helping take pictures at Safety Village :). Another thanks to all the parents who volunteered.

Developing Empathy, Art and adventures.

Developing Empathy
Many small issues that arise in a primary classroom are due to students needing to further develop their understanding of 'how others may feel' or 'identifying their own anxious feelings'.We have been learning about 'Empathy' through the new series out by Class Dojo. We have watched series one and two and look forward to the final chapter next week. We are all wondering how the character 'Mojo' will solve the problem of being in the 'Maze' (or how will he handle his frustrations with his friends and still keep his friends?).
Here is the link if you would like to view it with your child at home.

Empathy series Class Dojo 


Eventually we will be using Class Dojo as a communication tool between school and home. I had great success with using it last year and look forward to refining the process this year. I will not be using the point system individually but will be using them collectively (e.g., I will not be taking points away instead we work towards a class goal). Don't worry, it is a lot of fun for the students and highly motivating if used properly. 
More information to follow :) 

Fall Art and the Open House
Here are some pictures of our work and activities.

A well attended Open House! Our turkeys graced many Thanksgiving tables and the students told me the cider was the best part. Thank you for attending :)

Getting ready for the Terry Fox run. If you look at the wall you will see Grade 8 students. These are our FM ambassadors. They led us through a warm up activity and then we were off and running (or in my case walking). The students did a great job and thank you for sending in a Toonie for Terry. 

Learning how to shade and create a composition. These were supposed to just be fall pumpkins and the next thing I knew Jack-O-Lanterns were popping up everywhere. 

Investigating nature on one of our 'Walk and Talks'. We discovered a pile of rabbit poop, a dragonfly that followed us our whole walk, Sumac trees and of course so many grasshoppers. We discovered that grasshoppers eat grass...hence the name. We also decided that if birds don't eat sumac berries then probably they are poisonous and that nature has a great way of figuring things out. We will be doing some art with some of the finds we discovered in the outdoors behind our school.

Quick overview
Mr Cann the science man, is starting his 'Liquids, Solids and Gas' unit. We are learning about 'Recount' writing during Writer's workshop. In math we are developing better answers when we interpret and compare graphs. Our next unit will be developing addition strategies for number sense. 



Please check the Homework section for weekly updates. Have a great week!