Fall is finally here!!

Happy weekend!!

Hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful Fall weather!

We were able to take advantage of it and go on our Fall community walk this week.  We payed close attention to what we saw, heard, felt and smelled!  Even though most of the leaves have fallen off the trees, we were still able to admire the beauty of colour from our view at the ridge.  At the end of our walk we found and area of grass will lots of leaves!  Time to feel, crunch and throw them in the air!  It was a wonderful time.

This week we worked on the letters L, P, O and G!  Since we now have 2 vowel sounds, we are learning that we are able to spell even more small words!  

We are getting really good at our POPCORN words.  Parents, we encourage you to continue working with your child at home.  These words will be a foundation of your child's reading and writing skills.  Next week at interviews we will get a new list!!

Our math centres continue to engage us in reinforcing our sorting, patterning, and number skills.  We have had a chance to go through 4 of our 10 rounds so far.  Ask me what my favourite station is so far!

In writing we are learning about what happens First, Next and Last in a story.  We read many "If you give a ......" stories to show students how many things happen in a story and in some they come full circle!  

CLUB FRIDAY was this week.  Students had an amazing time and were very independent in getting to and from their club.  Ask me what I liked best about my club!

Reminders

Parent teacher conferences are Thursday evening and Friday morning.  If you haven't booked an interview there is still time!!

Home Reading is an important program for your child.  Please read with your child daily and use the sheet we sent home to help you with the ways you can support your child. 

Parents, we could use more volunteers to do home reading.  Spots open are Wednesdays or Fridays.  Please sign up in you can!  It usually only takes an hour of your time any time of the day!!

Home reading begins!

Hi Mom and Dad!!

We enjoyed sharing all about our Thanksgiving weekend this week.  We sure do all have a lot to be thankful for!

This week we continue to work on isolating letter sounds.  We added letter ‘a’, our first vowel.  This will help us begin to spell many words during our writing time and help us with our reading.  The letter A looks like we are biting in to an apple, with a big wide mouth. 

We also introduced the letter ‘R’ and did a really good brainstorming words that begin with this letter sound.

In math we continue to work on different ways of showing numbers.  We have also begun working on math centres to reinforce our learning!  Each day we get to do a new centre, patterning, sorting, and working with numbers.  Ask me what my favourite centre is so far.

Home reading started this week!!  We made special reading sticks to stay in our bags.  Please make sure I use this to point to each word to stay with the story.  Our books should be brought back each day to exchange and read with the teacher.

Reminders

Our volunteer site is up and running.  Please sign up if you can!!

Parent teacher interviews are October 25 in the evening and October 26^th.  Please stayed tuned for sign up times.

Please make sure you are practicing your popcorn words!!  A new list will be coming soon!!

Have a great weekend!! J

Letters, Math, Thanksgiving and More!

Hi Mom and Dad!!

What a crazy snowy week!  It wouldn't be Calgary without some unexpected weather!!  Thank you to all the parents, for dressing for the weather.   We sure did have fun playing in the snow (even if it was wayyyy to early).

Even though the snow came, we discussed how it is still fall and sketched our fall trees in our journals with pictures we had taken of the trees around the school before the snow fell.  We love the colours that fall offers us and represented that in our art work.

We continue to work on our letter and sound recognition and focused on the letters 'T' and 'C'.  We learned how to correctly print upper and lower case letters and found out that lots of words begin with these sounds!!

In writing we continue to work hard and 'try' to kid spell our words without teacher support.  If we need some help we raise our hand and work it through.  It's amazing how much growth we've made in 22 days of school!!  Everyone should be proud of themselves.  

In math we worked on how to represent the number 20 and 10 in four different ways.  We could use pictures, tally marks, equations, ten frames and base 10 blocks as a few examples.  We have also been working on different ways we can sort objects.  When were at home, we can practice showing you how to us these ways to show you any number from 1-20!

Our popcorn words have been a big hit.  We've been practicing them during the week and can tell all the hard work the students have been putting in at home!  Thank you parents for practicing with them.  This is building a fantastic foundation for reading and spelling.

With Thanksgiving coming up this weekend, we read Todd Parr's The Thankful book and discussed how we were all thankful for many things and why we were.  We understand how lucky we all are to come to school and have amazing families. We are all looking forward to spending quality time with them and eating lots of good food ;).  In our visual journals we made turkey handprints and learned how to use leaves and crayons to create a leaf rub page to showcase our turkey poem.  

Question of the week!!!

What are you thankful for?? :)

Reminders

- Home reading will go home next week.  Please send your child with a large ziploc bag for Tuesday.

We will be needing parent volunteers every day to read and do book exchange.  We are looking for about an hour of your time whenever you are available.  You can sign up with this link:

  

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080E4FA4A823A3FF2-reading 

Please don't block book yourself for the year so that we may make sure everyone has a chance to volunteer. 

- Thursday October 11 will be STUFFY DAY!  Your child is welcome to bring a stuffy to school for that day.  Please don't bring a stuffy that is so special that it would be horrible if it was lost.  As well, please make sure the stuffy has your child's name on it.  They do get misplaced!

-  We need magazines to cut out of!  If you have any magazines at home that you can donate, please send them in next week!!

Have a great Thanksgiving Weekend!!!

Terry Fox, Letter F and B !!!

Hi parents!!

Things were really busy in room 52/53 this week! 

We began with our letters of the week.  Letters F and B, trying to listen and isolate the sounds within words to help us learn how to spell.   In our word work journals, we practiced our letter formation and drew pictures of many things that began with each letter sound.

During our quiet reading time after lunch we continue to build our stamina and are really working hard and ‘TRYING’ to read the words and the pictures.

In our journals we brought home a sheet of ‘POP CORN’ words.  These are words we are beginning to practice at school and at home.  We call them POP CORN because after some time they should just POP in to our heads!!  This will help us with reading and with writing.  Please help me practice at home!

In math we continue to work on different ways to represent number.  We added dice to our repertoire!  We are understanding how place value works and working on skip counting as well.

We also learned how to graph items and see which one was most liked!  We all pick a question about “What is your favourite……” and were able to go around the room asking our friends.  Each time they answered, we put a check mark.   Everyone did a great job asking and answering questions and we were all excited to see our results!!!

Orange shirt day is on Monday October 1^st.  We spent some time exploring why we honour this day and read some stories that helped us understand how we belong at school, home and other areas in our community.  On Monday we encourage students to wear orange to school.

Our Terry fox was a great success!!  We discussed how Terry was a hero and talked about the hero’s’ in our lives. 

Reminders

Orange shirt day – October 1st

Picture day -  October 3^rd

Toonies for Terry!

Hi Parents!!

I forgot to add in our blog this week that we will be collecting Toonies for Terry in anticipation for the Terry Fox run on Friday. 

Students will be able to bring their donations down to the office!

Thanks!!

Grade one is great!

Hi Parents!


What a great week!!

We are reviewing our letters and sounds starting with M and S.  It's been good to practice where we hear these letter sounds in certain words.  Do we hear it in the beginning or at the end of a word?  Then we have been practicing proper letter formation and brainstorming words that begin with the letter sound we're working on!  It's been fun trying to figure out the sounds!

Learning how to do new things and get better at them is a big part of grade one.  We started working on setting a goal, things we want to learn or get better at over the year!  We'll put our goal in our time capsule and see if we were able to achieve it!!

Your children are really using our motto "I Can Try".  They have been working on kid spelling independently during our writing times, knowing that it's ok to make mistakes and give it a try.  We are really encouraging the students to take risks outside of their comfort zone!!!

We read the book Stick Man.  He went on quite an adventure and visited many different places, and was chased by many different characters.  We created our own stick men!  Each one was different, doing different things in different places!  We also wrote about it.  Ask me what my stick man was doing!

Thank you parents for coming to our OPEN HOUSE this week.  We enjoyed meeting you and showing you our space.  You children have been working so hard at adjusting to grade one and we hope we were able to give you some suggestions and advice to help them at home.  If you brought a tile home with you, please return it next week with your hope or wish for your child!!

Notes

We will have Home Reading up and running for the beginning of October ideally.

Our sign up genius will have slots for volunteering.  Mostly for book exchange, field trips and large prep items.  Look for the link on our blog shortly!

Please remember that your child has approximately 20 minutes to eat lunch before they go outside to play.  Sending items that are easily consumed will ensure that they get the fuel they need for the rest of the day! 


Have a great weekend!!

Mrs. McIntosh and Mrs. Dei Cont :)

Discovery Archeology!

Hi Mom and Dad!

This week we continued to get used to routine and being at school for the whole day!

Our classroom mantra is "I CAN TRY"!  We've learned that it is important to try even if we make mistakes, helping us build our confidence.

It was our turn for Discovery Archeology this week!  Thank you to all the parent volunteers that helped out.  We learned how to put a Bison skeleton together, the difference between Human bones and Animal bones,  what is an Eco Fact and what is an Artifact as well as learned how archeologists gather information about ancient artifacts by weighing, measuring and observing.  Ask me what my favourite station was!!  Did you know that bones aren't white?  Strong bones are actually tan or light brown in colour!

We are learning many different ways to show numbers during our calendar.  Tally marks, ten frames are just some of the ways!

We are beginning to build our confidence during writing journals.  Sounding out the words and putting the first letter sound we hear.  Sometimes we can put more than just one letter sound.  We really are trying and building our confidence!

Important Reminders

Please send in your baby pictures if you haven't already.

Mrs. Dei Cont bought  some Pringles to eat all weekend, but we could still use some more containers!

Our open house is on September 20th from 6:30 -7:30pm.  This will be an opportunity for you to listen to a short presentation about your child's class and what grade one looks like for the year!  You may chose to come at 6:30 or at 7pm.  Afterwards, our parent council is putting on an outdoor movie!!!  Information is in the weekly update.

With the colder weather sneaking up on us, please make sure your child is properly dressed for outside play time.  We go out during the day for body breaks and at lunch.  The only times children do not go out at lunch is during heavy rain and extreme cold.

Please label all belongings!!! Our lost and found is already getting full!!!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. McIntosh and Mrs. Dei Cont :)