Week of November 30th

Hi Mom and Dad,

Our Hip Hop dance residency was this week!  We had an amazing time with our instructors and put on a great show for our audience. Sound Kreations did  a wonderful job.  Look for their link in the weekly  update!!

We continue to work on our literacy centres, creating story with stop motion, writing letters to others and making words.

We read the book My Many Coloured Days by Dr. Suess.   In the book it talked about colours representing our feelings.  After, we did some writing about how colours make them feel.

In Math centres, we continue to work on number sense, ordering numbers, playing race to 50 and other fun games!!

In science we are working on the colour wheel and created some cool mixing jars.  We added oil and water to 2 primary colours of our choice.  When we shake it it makes the secondary colour!  Ask me how we created the jars to get them to work and what colour I chose to make!   We also did a cool experiment that used plastic cups and paper towel.  Ask me to tell you about it!

Reminders!!

Our Christmas concert is Thursday December 13th at 6:30.   The afternoon dress rehearsal will be at 1pm in the afternoon.   More information to follow later!

We are really improving at reading!!  Please continue to do your Home Reading every day!! As well as popcorn words.

Please start bringing in items for our Christmas Socks if you are able to paricipate!!  We appreciate it!!

Colours, Colours Everywhere!

Hi Mom and Dad!

We spent this week exploring Primary and Secondary colours.  Ask me which colours are which!!
Mixing colours was a favourite part of the week.  We got to paint our hands with primary colours and mix them with a friend!   We read the books Little Blue and Little Yellows, Harold and the Purple crayon and the Day the Crayons Quit!

Our blends of the week we learned were CH and TH!  Knowing these blends help us when spelling!  Did you know that TH can make 2 different sounds? Ask me what they are.

We finished our first round of literacy centres!! Working with groups and focusing on letter sounds and recognition have helped us in our reading and writing.  Our next round of centres will start this week!  We will be focusing on word work and guided reading.  

Math Night was a great success.  Thank you to all that came out to play and learn new math games.  All the games that were shown can easily be played at home!!  We showcased our Show Me and Number bingo games.  Ask me to explain them to you, they are part of our current math centres!

Friday was a fun day!!  We learned out to use stop motion animation with the ipads.  Using some plastecine, we focused on using small movements and taking pictures to make a small story.  We will start using this technology to tell stories in our literacy centres.  We had a lot of fun!!! 

Reminders

Library day is on Mondays - please remember to bring your library book back to school to take out a new one!

Popcorn words are finally posted on the side bar of the blog.  Let us know if you need another sheet!

Thank you to all that have been bringing in their home reading regularly!  We love reading with the kids everyday and seeing how much they have progressed!  

Clubs will be this Thursday as we do not have school on Friday!!


Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Remembrance Day

Hi Mom and Dad,

This week we talk a lot about Remembrance Day and what it means to remember those that fought and kept the peace so that we are able to live in a peaceful country.   We read the Todd Parr book 'Peace is..." and "A Poppy is to Remember".    For our assembly on Friday, we created a wreath of poppies and wrote a message of peace on a paper poppy.  Our assembly on Friday was a wonderful way to end the week, reflecting on how others made sacrifices.

Letters Y, Q, X, Z, E and Blend 'SH'

We finished our letter work this week, finishing it off with the last vowel E!  We love being able to use our knowledge of letters sounds to spell small words and sometimes words up to 5 letters long!!!  After we finished the alphabet we started to work on letter blends starting with SH.  We will continue to explore more blends to help us in our reading and writing.


We started a new round of Math Centres this week!  This round we are focusing on number sense to 10.  Ask me what centre I did on Friday!

POPCORN WORDS AND HOME READING

Parents,  it is very important that your child is practicing their popcorn words and doing their home reading daily.  Both activities help with their writing at school and allow them to explore new books and become more confident in themselves.  Please have your child bring their Home Reading books back to school every day, unlike kindergarten, in grade one we are reading and exchanging your child's book daily to give them exposure to different text.

Reminders

Math night is Thursday November 15th from 6 -7 pm.  We will be showcasing many different games and ways to help your child with math concepts we are working on.  There will also be a bake sale run during this time.

There is school tomorrow Monday November 12.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend :)

Halloween extravaganza!!!

Happy weekend parents!!

I apologize for no blog last week!!!  Apparently the week got away from me!

This week was full of fun and frivolity!! 

We worked on the letters H, J, V and U!!  Were are getting close to the end and then will work on blends!!

We had fun writing about about our Halloween experiences, working with our pumpkins and using them in different math scenarios. 

Our math and literacy centres have been a hit!  We have been working so hard at becoming confident with letter sounds and popcorn words and working on patterns, sorting and number.  Stay tuned, some new centres will be coming shortly!

We ended our week talking about Remembrance Day.  This will be a large focus of our next week with our assembly happening on Friday.

Reminders


Popcorn words went home at parent teachers.  If you have lost your list look to the side page of the blog for our  new words!!

Please continue with your home reading!  The more you practice at home and exchange your book when reading with the teacher the better you will get!! 

Happy Weekend!!

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!!!