Hello out there, it's Madame Moustique...

This week, as you may have discovered in your child's communication folder, these last few days of October we tackled letters
  J j,   L l and M m (thus the teacher-dressed-as-a-Mmmmm-osquito, I concluded after trying to figure out how to dress for Halloween that "moustique" would be a relevant word for us second-language learners here in Manitoba : )

A big           Thank-you! to 2 Halloween elves who helped us celebrate Halloween with the mummy wrap game and some really beautifully presented and tasty snacks.   Thank you also to parents who sent Halloween pencils for us to share...not required but a nice way for us to practice giving and receiving!


Please note calendars for "novembre" in your child's communication folder.   

Also if you have not sent back photo consent or non-consent form from the back of the student handbook, please do so ASAP and send back to school in your child's COMMUNCATION FOLDER.

Parent-Teacher Conferences will take place the evening of November 26th and morning of November 27th.   You will recieve information on how to sign up for your interview spot.   THERE IS NO SCHOOL FOR YOUR CHILD ON NOVEMBER 27th.   For Maternelle, this first report card reflects an assessment of your child's learning behaviours.   (Subsequent report cards will include specific academic criteria and assessment reflecting foundational pieces for second-language acquisition.

The main goal for Maternelle is that your child has an overall positive experience while listening and singing, running, counting, writing, doing actions, and crafting in French.

Merci beacoup!    Madame Moustique for Madame Esther

HALLOWEEN mini-fête THURSDAY Oct 29th

We will be hosting a Halloween mini-fête in MATERNELLE on after lunch on         October 29th.   This means will be doing a Halloween craft, educational games, and other vocabulary-building activities with a Halloween theme.  

costumes: 
*Please SEND your child's COSTUME in a SEPARATE BAG and NOT WEARING the costume as we will be putting them on after lunch. 
*Your child must be able to GET INTO and OUT OF their costume more or less BY THEMSELVES.
*If your child DOES NOT WANT TO WEAR a costume, that's okay.   We will have some craft supplies on hand for children who want to make a decoration to wear.

food: 
*If you have a fun idea for a Halloween or Autumn-themed snack, PLEASE COME IN and SHOW us how to make it.   Ours is a class of students who LOVE to do things with their HANDS and their BRAINS.   Please do not BRING US A PREPARED SNACK.   But COME IN WITH THE SUPPLIES AND MODEL HOW TO MAKE IT.   Then WE CAN MAKE IT OURSELVES.   It is a MORE VALUABLE LEARNING EXPERIENCE if we DO IT OURSELVES.        

source: pinterest

Paper Plates and Numeracy cont.

For anyone to REALLY learn something, the chance to play and the chance to make mistakes are essential.   For our paper plates and numeracy, it's important that especially in the home environment, your child can play with the numeracy plates as they wish.   This is because we do not always have enough time to play and really integrate new concepts at school.  (That sounds somewhat ironic but I do believe that equal amounts of learning happens at school and outside of school : )

Playing means that we are not always correcting them or saying, do it this way, or like this.   If they ask for help we can certainly make A SUGGESTION or asking them a leading question.   

So…when your child brings the set of plates home, you can ask them to show you what to do with them.   

At school, we will be: 

1. putting them in order

2. corresponding the number with the same number of objects 

3. using them to count objects (so if you want to know how many leaves you have, you can put one on each plate and see how many numbers are used)   

Offer some objects to your child to use at home with the plate.  

After a bit of play, encourage your child to COUNT IN FRENCH if they are not already.   At school we are practicing counting exclusively in FRENCH.  

Taking it a step further: 

- mixing objects (like photo or mixing objects on each plate)
- if your child needs more of a challenge, encourage them to set up the plates in reverse, from 8-1 and to count backwards also in FRENCH 

Paper plates and numeracy…

Hello parents and students, on Thursday we each made our own set of plates number 1-8:

  

These sets of plates will be traveling back and forth to school in the next weeks and will eventually be evolving to represent higher numbers.   One of the LEARNING OBJECTIVES for Maternelle is counting 1-30 in FRENCH.   As a first step, your child can put the plates in order.   Ideally since they are in school to learn French, if they are saying the numbers out loud, encourage them to say them in French as well as English if they start in English.  

If want to help your child but are concerned about your French pronunciation, just try anyway and your child, being the brilliant young language-learner that they are will correct your accent if it doesn't sound right.   If you really aspire for them to learn to speak French, attempting a few words yourself is ABSOLUTELY THE BEST THINGS you can do towards that goal.   And being corrected by your child is evidence of their learning and prepares us adults for things to come….: )   I am a parent too : } 

Madame Esther's focus (a disclaimer)

Before too many more posts, I just wanted to mention that although I've posted twice this week on the our Maternelle blog, my main focus of teaching is on providing an engaging, positive, and structured learning environment for your children while they are in our classroom with me.   As reminder to myself also, the blog is here secondarily to the classroom as a communication tool with written and visual mediums.    So please excuse the occasional typos, cases of poor grammar, or less than beautiful posts on the blog due to me rushing to post something so I can get back to the other tasks of being a teacher : )  

And feel free to provide comments in the comment section below with awareness that all the other parents will also view your comment…I expect this will be in most cases an advantage because your children and I are all in this together.    My goal is for all of us to learn together.

Mme Esther

Supplies needed...

If you have these items and do not have a use for them.   Please send them in your child's backpack in a plastic bag.   We'll know it's a "supply" if it's in a plastic bag.    THANK YOU !

1.  Embroiderly hoops (JUST THE HOOP).   If you have one and are okay with your child using it, LABEL (with tape ?) with your CHILD'S NAME  and send it, if you have extras that you want back, just label them all your child's name or if you don't want them back, just send them unlabelled.  

3. coloured balls (big or small) of yarn or wool

2. dinky cars: the ones that have a long hood or at least some 1"x1" surface area.   (Please do not send them if you want them back : )  

3. empty toilet paper rolls  (ALWAYS USEFUL HERE)

4. cereal boxes (ALWAYS USEFUL HERE)- Please just send boxes that aren't specifically geared to kids so we don't get distracted.   We are using these for an alphabet game.   

Annuals last days, send them to school...

Dear Parents,  I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving.   I asked the students yesterday how we say "Thank you" in French and they impressed me by responding with "Merci !"  

We have had such a gorgeous late summer and early fall, haven't we?

We have been thrilled to bring objects from nature into the classroom for making the alphabet letters and numeracy activities.  

On Tuesday afternoon, we went into the narrow strip of forest on the east side of the schoolyard to collect leaves for sorting, counting, and science and art activities.   Some of the comments I heard were:  "Is this a forest?" "How do we get out of here?" "I love school!" "Are there alligators in here Madame Esther?"

The students went home with their own "sacs d'automne" for collecting artifacts from nature wherever there are.  

They are predicting a frost for tonight so I asked students to pick some flowers to help us make our letter I's (and i's) on Thursday.   Send your child with the flowers fresh picked or press them in between a book overnight.   I'll have extras also.   

REMINDERS

SEPTEMBER is over, OCTOBER BEGINS:

In September, we practiced writing our names, made new friends, met our teachers, and learned some of the rules (sharing) and privileges (painting, free play) of school.

REMINDERS:

**Label Clothing- Especially as the weather warrants more layers of clothing, we WANT your child to come and leave school with the same clothing.   To avoid losing clothing, please label every shoe, sock, and and mitten with the child's name.

**Toys at School- We encourage all students to keep their toys and other personal items (e.g. makeup sets) at home.   If students do bring a toy to school, we encourage them to keep it in their school bag.   We are not responsible for what happens to toys at school.   There will be an opportunity for students to bring something from home to show at school in the coming months for Montre & Racontre (Show & Tell).    

A call for supplies...

I am going to keep a list going of supplies we need/want for doing crafts in Maternelle.   If you have anything on the list that you don't need at home anymore, please send it with your child for use in our classroom.   Thank you in advance.

At this point, we are looking for:

 - thick yarn (it doesn't have to be a nice colour : ) but it's great if it's thicker than average   

Pourquoi (Why) do we have FRIDAY SNACK ? And should we continue ?

I implemented FRIDAY SNACK for several positive reasons including (in order of importance):
1. having the student participate in the preparation of their own food (building ownership into their  learning and fine-motor practice) & the clean-up
2. eating real food- practicing what we teach (Canada Food Guide)
3. reducing garbage in the school
4. it's nice to eat together and to share the same food (and for example if we all eat something new together e.g. sweet peas, radishes etc., it normalizes it)

I used the word "implemented" on purpose because my typical practice (as someone who has worked in community development for many years) is to present and discuss the idea with families first.  So I apologize for implementing it without a discussion process.  I DO want parents and families to feel free to share their ideas.   You are welcome to comment below.  
    As a parent, teacher, and Canadian, I have strong values around food and environmental protection.   Canada is a beautiful, resource-rich, country with an internationally respected public education system, we need to teach our kids to how blessed we are to have the resources and choices that we have and how to protect them and each other.   Canada (and USA) are the few countries I have lived where children's food is radically different than adult food and the food we want our children to eat as adults.   My own children lobby me to have packaged snacks in their lunches but I want them to learn what real food tastes like when they are young just because it's easier to learn than to unlearn and I want them to be conscious consumers.   Sometimes I send packaged food in their lunches so that they can feel like they fit in.   But I want real food to be the norm not the exception in the lunches of children in Canada.

Here's a great link to the many benefits of treating children and youth to real food:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AmericanFamily/story?id=125404&page=1

 in France and Canada: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/karen-le-billion-french-children-eat-anything 

 
 
Now that we've started Friday snack, we can still stop it.   After our first FRIDAY SNACK, I realized that in an effort to encourage participation, I may be pushing out parents who enjoy sending a special snack to school for their child's birthday.    I know from experience that it's fun to send something special for your child's birthday.    I don't want to stifle any excitement around events such as birthdays.   I wonder if families who want to send something specific for their child's birthday do and those who don't want to send something special or who's child's birthday is during the summer can send FRIDAY SNACK as scheduled?   And we can open up FRIDAY SNACK to be apples or any other fruit and cheese or any other source of protein.   Ideally you the parents are asking your child what they want to bring e.g. "Which fruit or vegetable to you want to bring to school to cut up and eat with the other students?"  I am open to other ideas that meet the 4 criterion from above (re-listed here):  
1. student have to be able to do some level of preparation themselves (anything we can cut ourselves and we have knives and cutting boards to cut: cucumber, carrots, tomatoes, pears, melon, radishes, any other vegetable or fruit you want your child to try : )
2. we all prepare/eat virtually the same thing
3. it's real food (the ingredients come from plants or animals, the less ingredients the better)
4. limited things to throw into the garbage

Again, my apologies for the lack of discussion process in the design of FRIDAY SNACK.
If you have THOUGHTS or COMMENTS at this point, you can share them below or write me an e-mail anytime.

Thank you! Mme Esther