We all wore the colour blue to support World Autism Day. We watched the Sesame Street show about Julia a little girl who has autism. Julia has bright orange hair and big green eyes and is friends with Elmo and Abby. Her friends are introducing her to Big Bird. Big Bird learns that Julia likes him and she has autism which sometimes takes her longer to do things. She also sometimes needs to take a break. We decorated a class puzzle piece along with all Fieldcrest classes showing our differences. These all are on display upstairs and joined to make a large school puzzle. We chose to decorate our puzzle with our favourite colours.

We have been counting down the days until the Toronto Blue Jays opening game and we are excited it has arrived. We wore blue to show our support and excitement. We have been removing a number each day and our chart was empty so we held up the number zero. Now we will begin tallying the Jays’ wins and losses. We have been working on tally marks and know that they come in groups of five. The children have had great fun asking their friends such questions as, “Do you like muffins?” or “Do you like pickles?”, etc. We are hoping we see more tally marks under the Jays’ wins! Go Jays Go!

We celebrated Clifford’s Birthday party and enjoyed many activities and of course food and drink. We made party hats with big red ears, made a bone pattern, an ABC book and a Clifford Can Book. Thank you to those families who helped during our party and helped prepare items for our party. Clifford the Big Red Dog is a children’s book series about a giant red dog named Clifford. Clifford has been teaching us many life lessons about being kind, loyal and helpful. He is a dog who sometimes gets into trouble because of his size but means well.

We had our Chinese New Year parade lead by the large dragon made by some of our older students. We carried our fans and bells and walked through the halls wishing all “Gung Hay Fat Choy” (Happy New Year). Chinese New Year is the Spring Festival. Days before this holiday, families clean and prepare their homes taking away any bad luck allowing the home to receive good luck. The colour red is used to decorate as this is a symbol of happiness. Fireworks light up the sky symbolizing the end of the old year and welcoming the brand new year. Children receive a New Year present from their parents. They receive lucky red envelopes with money inside. Gung Hay Fat Choy to all our families in our community celebrating Chinese New Year!

We had so much fun on Valentine’s Day. We opened our valentines from our friends. What great excitement as we read the names and hollered across the room such things as “thank you . . . ” and “I love it!”. Thank you to our families for taking the time to help your child to read the names and copy them onto their valentines. Mrs.T. and Mrs. McLeod loved them too and the planning time teachers as well. Hope all had a Happy Valentine’s Day!

We celebrated Pancake Tuesday. We thought this would be the best day ever because everyone loves pancakes! Oops we were wrong. We created a bar graph and found that 5 of our friends did not like the pancakes. Our custodians did though and came for a few. Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday is the last day before Lent and is the perfect time to get rid of any last minute indulgences and use up any fatty foods. Thank you to our Fieldcrest families for donating our pancake mix, syrup, plates and cutlery.

Today we celebrated 100 days of school. Some of us dressed up like we were 100 years old. We counted many collections of 100 items brought in from home such as buttons, corks, cheerios, beans, etc. We built a tower of 100 cups and did a puzzle with 100 pieces (well actually only 99 as we lost a piece). We made party hats (“I am 100 days brighter”), necklaces with 100 Fruit Loops and tried to make a Love Bug with 100 hearts. We did 100 exercises and did the macarena dance by counting to 100. Wow what a busy day!!

A great big thank you goes out to our Custodial Staff here at Fieldcrest. We wrote a message for our wonderful and hard working custodians who keep our school clean. We made a list of all the things they do from cleaning the floors and washrooms, washing our tables, emptying the garbage and recycling and to shoveling all the snow. Our school SPARKLES because of you!

The children have helped create a pet shop in our dramatic play centre this month. They have brought in many pet stuffies, pet supplies (e.g.leashes, bowls, brushes, etc.) and pet carriers. They have learned what all pets need such as love, play, food and water. We have been singing a song “I Have a Pet” and they noticed that a lion in the song is not a pet. “That is wrong,” said one of our friends. Not many of us have pets at home so we are learning lots about pets. We can’t wait for our “Pet Presentations” to learn more facts about them. We have been also putting our pets up in order and saying which pet is first, second, third or fourth.

We have had fun sharing the many 3d shapes we found at home. A cube looks like a dice. A sphere looks like a ball. A cone looks like a party hat. A cylinder looks like a can of peas. We filled our sensory table with all these shapes and have been creating towers with them. We described our towers using the names of the shapes and predicted if our towers would remain standing once we turned on a large fan. We created some artwork by pressing the faces of the 3d shapes in paint. We sorted our 3d shapes from home and went on a shape hunt outside. 3 D shapes are everywhere! 3 D shapes are fat, not flat!