We feel so fortunate to have worked with Team Awesome this past year. It has been an amazing privilege to witness the tremendous progress and growth they have made since September. They are now all on their way to being readers, writers and mathematicians, not to mention scientists, and a lot taller than they were 10 months ago! They are confident in their abilities and excited to learn more!
Each child has brought so much joy and happiness to our learning spaces. We were so blessed to have had such a wonderful group of kind, thoughtful, self-regulated children this past year. Our friends and family often laugh at us as we both refer to them as “my kids”. They have all touched our lives in very positive and rewarding ways and their teachers next year will be lucky to have them.
Thank you for all of your support. It has been a pleasure getting to know not only your child, but you as well. Having parental support and open lines of communication is an essential part of any successful school year and we can’t thank you all enough. It is difficult to hand over the care and responsibility of your child to a complete stranger and we hope we have met all of your expectations. Thank you so much for trusting us with your babies. 
As the students move from Kindergarten to 1st grade, there is a lot you can do to encourage growth over the summer. Make sure to take time to engage in meaningful conversations with your child daily. Take time to read to and listen to your child read. Ask questions, make predictions, and make life to text connections as you read. Practice simple addition and subtraction problems and working with numbers to ten. Encourage your child to write often! Writing stories, letters, journal entries, etc. are great ways to get thoughts organized and put onto paper. These little things will lead to big successes next year.
Again, thank you for a wonderful year. We wish all of Team Awesome and their families the best of luck as you continue this wonderful journey and we hope you will stop at the end of the hall and visit us often.
Have an awesome summer and we look forward to seeing you in the fall!
Love,
Mrs. Bowden & Mrs. Farber

​Today was the last of our whirlwind marathon of field tips this June and we hope you enjoyed them as much as Team Awesome did. We would like to give you a heartfelt 'Thank You' for coming and supporting the team. Without your help we would not be able to take field trips and we appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to join us. For those of you who weren't able to come, we hope you enjoyed the pictures and stories the children shared with you. So from Team Awesome- and us- THANK YOU!

​​In years past we invited our moms for Moms & Muffins to celebrate Mother's Day and our dads for Dads & Donuts to celebrate Father's Day. Of course there were always children who did not have or live with both of their parents, or their special parent was not available to attend, and these days caused the children some distress, although they were welcome to invite any special adult in their life to come. To help alleviate some of the discomfort these celebration days caused for some of our little peeps, we decided to do away with both days and amalgamate them into a Family Day. In celebration, we made our families a gift of a family portrait (which went home a bit ago) and a video. While drawing their portraits the children told stories about their families and discussed how they were the same or different. They talked about family meals they enjoyed and special events. They giggled over hugs and kisses and bedtime rituals. It truly was a celebration and they were very excited to make a keepsake gift for you. Enjoy!

This is the last Friday Housekeeping for the school year. Next Thursday will be a blur of emotion and activity as parents and children burdened with shopping bags crammed with artwork, inside shoes and report cards make their way out into the summer heat after hugs and well-wishing for a good holiday. The calm afterward is reminiscent of Boxing Day after Christmas- unsettling, relieving and bittersweet. Another year in the books. And for your reading pleasure, this made me laugh. Sorry.

• Thank you for returning ​all library books! If you haven't done so yet, expect a bill for the missing book next week.
• There will be NO school lunches next week. Please plan accordingly.
  
• Thank you for all the help with our field trips so far this year! They have been such great days! We hope to see you Monday, June 26 at Centennial Park. Info has been posted.
• All student materials will come home on Wednesday, June 28.
• Thursday, June 29 is our last day of Kindergarten with a 12:30(ish) dismissal.  Please send a snack and backpacks to carry our last minute items home. Look for report cards in packs. There will be an end of year assembly on that day beginning at 10:30.​​
• The TNRD runs a great reading program throughout the summer! The goal of SRC is to encourage a love of reading. Any reading done between July 3-August 26 can be counted as part of SRC.
• Register your child for Camp Read-A-Lot with Scholastic for the summer.​
• Don't forget the Bright Red Book Bus will be visiting school locations throughout the summer, July 4- Aug 18, to help facilitate your child's summer reading. Info has been posted.
• We will get the last few photos and videos to you as soon as possible next week. Please don't forget to download any you would like to save to your computer.
• ​If your child will not be here Thursday, June 29, make arrangements to pick up their report cards from the office by July 7. Report cards can not be picked up before Thursday.
• The June newsletter for BEST can be found here.
• Scholastic flyers are available online monthly. June's is available here. Our class code is RC210022.
• June sight words are: day, has, made, off, saw, they, them, went. Please feel free to practice them at home.​​

Go forth and be Anxious/ Sad/ Excited/ Sad/ Relieved/ Sad/ Tired/ Sad for the end of Kindergarten!

​Research has shown that young students may experience a decline in their reading skills if they do not read over the summer. Access to high quality books helps ensure students continue reading. As a collaborative project with Literacy in Kamloops and Boys & Girls Club of Kamloops, the Bright Red Book Bus visits schools and local parks throughout the summer, providing children with free new books and encouraging reading for pleasure. Bert Edwards School of Technology will be hosting the BRBB on Thursdays from 1:00-3:00pm this summer and it can be found at a number of other schools and parks in the district throughout the week from July 4 to August 18. Children can keep one free book and have one free snack each time they visit the bus. Children can also participate in story walks, games, activities, and more!
For more information, see the Bright Red Book Bus Facebook page.
Bright Red Book Bus contributing partners:

• LinK – Literacy in Kamloops
• School District No. 73
• BGC Kamloops
• Raise a Reader Kamloops
• CML Properties

​A few years ago Mrs. Farber and I had this brilliant (we thought) idea to take our classes to Centennial Park in Westsyde by city bus for the day. We could cover some of our socials curriculum (transportation, bus driver, community) and give the children an experience many of them had not had previously. It was a great idea in theory. We filled out the paper work to obtain our free bus passes and dutifully lined our little Ks up at the bus stop on 8th St to eagerly await the bus. And wait. And wait. And once the bus did arrive we learned that the bus driver had no knowledge of us and the bus was already partly full, making it difficult to accommodate 40 small children and 2 anxious teachers. We found it necessary to triple up in the seats and our children were seated all over, making it hard to keep an eye on them. But they were thrilled! The return trip was much the same, with the added stressor of having to cross 8th St at the lights with tired, dragging children who were not up to walking at the quick march it takes to get across the road before the light changes. Thankfully drivers were patient.
This year calmer heads have prevailed and on Monday, June 26, we will be catching the school bus in front of the school for our trip to Centennial Park in Westsyde. We will look at the animals across the street (unfortunately through the fence), maybe feed them some goodies we can buy from a vending machine ($5 a bag- the goats are very greedy!), participate in an outdoor activity or two, play on the playground, have our lunch under the trees and splash in the water park for the rest of the afternoon before our return to school at the end of the day. If you would like your child to go through the park sprinklers please have their suit on under their clothes or in their pack and send a towel. Hats and sunscreen and a plastic bag to put wet things into, as well as a substantial lunch, are a good idea. We will catch the return school ​bus at about 2:00. Please join us at the park for a day of fun and adventure!