February

First of all, thank you all so much for your kind words of congratulations to our family. We are so thrilled to be expecting our second child at the beginning of July. The kids have been so sweet and excited to hear about the baby. I promised them that we would have a pool to see who chooses the correct gender... and 17 out of 20 children were convinced it's a girl. They were right indeed! Some reminders.... Candygrams (hershey kisses I believe) are on sale. Students can buy one for a friend and then it will be delivered on Valentines Day! They are 1 for 25 cents and 10 for two dollars. Report Cards- If you have not already done so, please send in your child's signed report card (last page). Its a great opportunity for you and your child to sit together and dicuss goals for the rest of the year. Also, I do need to file them in each child's student record. Thanks so much. Container Donations: It would be so greatly appreciated if you would consider doing a small job for our class. We are always in need of little containers such a yogurt cups, fruit cups, margerine containers etc for our painting and craft projects. If you could please wash them and send them in throughout the rest of the year, it would be a wonderful help. It saves me from washing a million paint trays and its a good way to recycle your trash! Supplies: I ordered an abundance of pencils for the children before the year started, however the quality was not what I expected and the kids have become frustrated with how frequently they are breaking. To save us from living at the pencil sharpener this year, please consider sending your child with some new pencils of their own. Thanks :) The Curriculum This Month: We will be starting a new project that will need some support from home. The primary division will be holding a storytelling competition. Children will be choosing a favourite book and will have a chance to re-tell the story to the class in their own words. We will be choosing winners from each class to go on and tell their story in the gym with the other winners. I had some grade ones and twos who were incredible last year! I will be working hard with the kids to teach them important elements of a good re-tell and we will even be watching storytellers online who have done a good job, and a not-so-good job. This is an excellent way to develop oral communication skills that are so important in life. I know that it can be a bit scary to children the first time, but I will do everything I can to encourage and support each child. We will have opportunities to practice ahead of time and only children who feel confident enough and would like to try to go on to the gym competition will do so. There will be a letter coming home soon, so please keep an eye out in your child's agenda. It should provide you with greater details of the assignment. If you still have further questions, send me a note in the agenda and I am happy to discuss it with you. Math: We have been working hard on addition and subraction skills. An important area of focus for each and every child is further practice in solving word problems and challenges that are open ended. Here are some questions that you can do together at home. They are excellent at building problem solving skills: 1. ?+?+?=19 What could the missing numbers be? How many answers can you give? (Alternate with a new sum) 2. There are 10 cows on a farm. How many cows did they once have and what could have happened to them? Write subtraction sentences.... 3. Make up different ways to add 8 and 5 in your head. How many ways could you think of? 4. The answer to a subtraction question is 5. What could the subtraction sentence look like? Money: We will begin a new unit on money this week. Children will be adding coins and learning valuable life skills. We will be "playing store" to help children practice some of the pricipals. If you have a play cash register you would like to send in, we would love to borrow it. A great way to support your child through this unit would be to encourage them to count change at Tim Hortons etc. Science: We have be learning about the 5 senses and will begin to explore a new unit on living things and life systems. Children love to learn about plants and animals. I am hoping to take some kind of field trip soon where we can learn more about various creatures! The expectations of this unit are that kids will learn investigate characteristics of living things and needs of plants and animals to survive. We will look at what might happen if we lost species of living things(e.g "what would happen if we lost all the cows, all the insects etc"). The class will have a chance to explore characteristics of different plants and how some produce flowers while others do not. Finally we will invesigate parts of the human body (our hands have thumbs that help us to carry things, our ears are shaped like cones so that we can hear better). Art: We will be choosing an artist to study and create specific works based on the style and principals of that artist!