February Newsletter

Dear Parents:

It’s hard to believe that it’s already February! As you know we have started our Science building unit with Scientists in School and will continue our learning by making cabins, towers, bridges, and so much more! If you have any small styrofoam plates, tin pie plates, plastic containers, or cardboard tubes, please send them to school by February 14^th.  

This month we have started talking about the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.  We are learning about all of the 15 events and will harness the excitement into some writing activities about TEAMWORK in the classroom.  

We also have two more big days to celebrate: The 100^th day of school and Valentines on Friday Feb. 14^th. Thank you to those who have already volunteered to help out with our stations from 8:30-9:40.  We have a combined party on Feb.14 but will open our valentine's on Feb. 13th. Thanks to our generous party snack moms! 

Random Acts of Kindness Week is Feb. 10-14^th and we will be celebrating by writing kind notes to our friends and doing kind acts for our families!  I am planning a whole week around this theme where kids will be asked to perform many acts of kindness for each other in the classroom.  We just finished reading about how to be a bucket filler and this continues along the same theme.  Our writer’s workshop focus is making connections: text to text, text to self, and text to world. We also continue punctuation, editing, poem of the week, sight words, phonics and spelling! Whew!

 

Our focus in Math will be finishing up addition and subtraction to 12( heavy on subtraction for a little longer) , maintenance of counting skills by 1,2, 5, and 10 to 20+ and starting into our geometry unit next.   We continue with problem solving, doubles, review count on and back, odd/even & fact families. 

DATES TO REMEMBER!

Feb. 3	Library day is every Monday
Feb. 4	After school skating 3:30-4:30 at Nicholas Sheran
Feb. 5	Leader in Me Assembly 12:30/Winter Walk 2:05
Feb. 6	Show and tell day is every Thursday
Feb. 7	Professional Development Day: No School for students
Feb. 12	Art mom lesson: Thank you Mrs. McClung!
Feb. 13	Spirit Assembly: WEAR RED DAY Valentine’s Day Party in afternoon/Valentine exchange See class list of names for Valentines below Spelling test will be today instead of Friday
Feb. 14	100th Day Celebration in the gym at 8:30-9:40 Classroom party 11:15-11:45
Feb.10-14	Random Acts of Kindness Week How Full is Your Bucket
Feb. 17	NO SCHOOL : FAMILY DAY
Feb. 18& 19	NO SCHOOL: FALL BREAK
Feb. 20 &21	NO SCHOOL: TEACHER CONVENTION

 

                                          

February Sight Words

Feb3-7	Feb10-14	Feb 17-21	Feb 24-28
birthday	open	No school	think
May	old	No school	thank
again	boat	No school	that
say	mom	No school	this
ate	dad	No school	they

 Thanks a bunch for returning forms already to go on the Winter Walk on Feb. 5th in the afternoon. I imagine if the weather is like today we may have to cancel--will keep you posted. Please bundle your kids really well in the event that we go.

 

and....from the Valentine's list...Summer is a girl!!!! I must have posted that late at night! YIKES!! We have 8 boys and 12 girls!  Still 20 for the total!

 

Doubles update!

I retested most of the kids today and wow! we are doubles experts! If anyone needs extra practise I will send home a sheet for you tonight!  Great job Grade Ones!

 

 

 

 

Valentine's Class List!

                                                                            Amy*

Audrey*

Aiden

Blake

Cambria*

Conner

Eden*

Hayden

Jackson

Lacey*

Lliam

Mya*

Parker

Roxana*

Saba*

Samiya*

Sho

Sophie M.*

Sophie P.*

                                                                         Summer *

                                                           8 boys + 12 girls*=20 total

Check back on Monday for the rest of our classroom February Newsletter!  A hard copy will be coming home Monday after school! Have fun making/addressing your valentines for the big day!

Scientists inSchool!

Thanks again to everyone who helped out! Here's a few pics for everyone!

January News 2014!

 

Welcome back! Hope you had a relaxing break with your family! Starting in January our class will begin having Show and Tell days where your child is in vited to bring one favourite toy, object, or treasure to share with the class. Sharing Day will be every Thursday and your child will be asked to give the class 3 clues about their item (for example:  what is it made of, what it’s used for, colour, size, etc.) and once it is revealed tell us one reason why the item is special to them.  Children are welcome to bring an item every Thursday if they choose or may bring them only once or twice a month. It is entirely up to your family to decide.  I will be taking marks for speaking skills after we have practised a few times and will be looking for good volume, clarity, eye contact, and if your child is able to stay on topic and answer questions from friends. It’s a great way for all of us to learn more about your child and to build confidence in their speaking skills! 

Sight Words for January

6-10	13-17	20-24	27-Feb. 31
he	away	eat	blue
she	come	please	came
we	three	be	make
was	green	me	take
will	see	saw	name

 I want to send out a huge thank you for your support and enthusiasm for our spelling program! The kids are loving it and I’m so excited to see the kids using their lists during our word work time and scoring through the roof on their spelling tests! Way to go! Keep up the amazing work!  You may have noticed that the first 5 words on your list are also our sight words for the week or previous sight words.   Now that the kids are reading these top 5 words easily, it’s great to see them jump into spelling them in their daily writing! Remember the new lists will always come home on Mondays in the green scribblers and the homework gets returned on Fridays. I’m glad many of you have had a chance to try spelling city and love to get emails of spelling homework throughout the week.

Our phonics focus for the month is long vowels, we will reinforce the difference between short and long vowel sounds and learn about Magic E at the end of words which taps the vowel and makes it say it’s long sound, as well as Two Vowels Walking, the First One Does the Talking. These can be a little tricky and the kids need lots of practise both decoding and blending for reading AND writing. We will also focus on editing skills watching for spelling, meaning, capitals, spaces, and ending punctuation! 

In Math we are diving into our next big unit which is addition and subtraction to 12. Within this unit  we will be using all kinds of tools to help the kids get a concrete grasp of how doubles and eventually doubles plus or minus one makes addition and subtraction faster and easier to solve! (ie. If 6+6=12  then 6+5=11 and 6+7=13) We will also be revisiting how to count back. Just like we learned the strategy of counting on for addition we will reinforce counting back for subtraction! (7-5=2 , we would think 7, 6, 5).  I decided to save our 2D shapes and 3D objects unit to be taught alongside our Science Building unit.  

We are finishing up the senses unit first, focusing on hearing, touch and sight over the next few weeks.  After that we will be starting a very hands on and creative Building Unit.  The children will be transforming a variety of materials into recycled treasures over the next few months! 

In Social, we are continuing our mapping unit which includes learning cardinal directions, finding Lethbridge on a map,  landmarks, and rural vs. urban communities and more!

 

Important Dates to Remember!

Jan. 6	Welcome back! First day back to school /Library Day Mondays
9	Show and tell day
10	Spelling test
15	Hot Lunch Day School Council Meeting at 6:30pm
16	Show and tell day
17	Spelling test
23	Show and tell day
24	Spelling test
30	Show and tell day
31	Spelling test

UPDATE: We have a special presentation by SCIENTISTS IN SCHOOL  on Wednesday January 29 from 12:25-3:09.  I will be looking for 4 parent volunteers who are able to come in and help out with Science centres for that whole block of time.  If you are interested please send me an email! Thanks so much! 

Christmas Party and More!

The kids have been having fun with our class "Elf" whose name is Sparky! He does all sorts of crazy things including leaving footprints all over the room! Thanks to Cara Carroll for this "Elf Is In The Building packet



Can't wait to see what Sparky will do tomorrow!



More from "Elf Is In The Building" mini writing project!



Add caption



Enjoying treats and Polar Express!

We had a super generous parent give special Christmas reindeer antlers or Santa hats to all the kids! Looks like Christmas came early this year! We must have made Santa's "nice" list! Yay!



Thanks Mom! Makes me hungry just looking at the picture!



Thanks so much for the yummy snacks! The kids loved them!

This was so delicious it was gobbled up almost before I could snap a pic!

This was part of an art project provided by another extremely generous parent! The kids got to paint real pine cones and we "tied" them in to a special project.  No peeking until Christmas!

GRINCH DAY!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to post a few quick pics for you! The kids looked amazing in their Christmas/Grinch outfits! Thanks for joining in the spirit of our day!

This is Max--the Grinch's dog who thinks he is a reindeer!

 

Grinch Mania! Who could it be?