March 31

Many of you may have seen this on Facebook but here is our Courage Book...

Hopefully you have already seen our field trip notice for the Lion King at the ACT.  If you haven't checked and filled out the information on the portal please do so as soon as possible.  Thanks!

Div. 7 & 8 parents/grandparents are amazing!  We made over $500.00 at our bake sale for the SPCA!

Scholastic orders went home but I forgot to include the due date, it is next Thursday, April 6th.

We started new explorations this week which the students are excited about especially using the Ipads or computer to do some coding!  I have added this link on the blog under useful links.

Spelling next week will be a review week, it will include all short vowel words so if you wanted to start practicing this weekend you could review the words from previous word lists.

March 10th

Thanks to all of you for sending in baked goods for our SPCA fundraiser!   We are so lucky to have your support and help whenever we ask.  Special thanks to Mason, Ashton, Averyelle, Nathan and Sienna's moms for helping to organize and sell all of these treats!  Speaking of bake sale - we made close to $500.00.  We had a great math lesson of sorting, counting money and then adding the totals together!  We will need some parents after the break to re-count and roll the coins.

Thank you to our parent/grandparent drivers for taking us to/from skating.  It's exciting to see how much the children have improved since our first skating in the fall.

I am not sure you all had a chance to check out our buddy activity that we did based on Martin Luther King so wanted to share this photo!   We have a Dream!

The permission for our field trip to the ACT Theater will be coming out after Spring Break, we will need parent drivers for this trip on Thursday, April 20th (leaving the school at 12:00), returning around home time.

I didn't send home the report cards today, my apologies, with our Club RED celebration it was a very busy day and they got buried on my desk.  Our club RED celebration was a big success and Div. 7 came in second place so we will be planning a walking field trip to Starbucks for hot chocolate!

Hope you all have a fun and relaxing spring break.  I am looking forward to going to Alberta to spend some time with my parents.

February 24th

PAC Treat Days next Monday and Tuesday - Chips and Popsicles $1 
Please remember to have your child complete their Club RED calendar if they are reading each day and you should also be initialing each square.  Completed calendars (with their names on them) should be returned at the end of next week.  Monday the 6th at the latest.  Our celebration will be March 10th when your child should wear red! 

Monday we had our SPCA visit which focused on Kindness. In our Poetry and More books today we added a sheet that is homework based on what we learned about how to act around a stray dog.  Please ensure your child does this and discuss it with them as this is a very valuable lesson.  Thanks   
We will be having our bake sale on Wednesday, March 8th. We are hoping that every student from both Div. 7 & 8 can bring in baked goodies or treats of some kind and we will also need some parents to help out with the sales at recess and lunch.  Also on Thursday at recess if we have any leftovers. 

A few of you have still not signed up for conferences next week so please do so asap.  Please note that there is an early dismissal on Thursday (11:00) and there is no school Friday except for conferences.   There will be no spelling next week due to the conferences.

100 Day was a success!  I was so impressed with all the creative 100 projects that the students brought in! Ms Affleck came and did a cool lesson based on the book The Hundred Pound Problem.  The students worked in partners to show their thinking and how they thought the problem could be solved.  We also had 100 day stations so they rotated from our class  where we did 100 actions,  to Mrs. Roberts for a 100 Building Structures and then Mrs. Hutchins for math games.  Please note we are trying to collect 100 cans to give to the food bank so if you could donate that would be great!

Some of you maybe noticed that I am now marking words in their spelling wrong if they have a capital letter when it isn't needed.  We have worked on this extensively so feel that this might help them to realize the importance of only using upper case letters when needed. 

Our skating field trip on March 9th went out on the portal this afternoon.  We do need parent drivers - thank you in advance.  This is our last skating for the year!

Feb. 17th

Our Valentine's celebration was fun, all the students were so excited to both give and receive and read their valentines.  Thanks to those who brought in the food snacks and goodies!
We focused on friendship this week and looked closely at two great books.  Owen and Mzee - The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship.  I have included the Owen and Mzee website on our useful links as your child would probably love to explore this!  We also listened and watched the book Enemy Pie - have your child tell you about this focusing on the problem and the solution of the story. 

The SPCA presentation on Monday is called the Kindness Counts program to teach children empathy towards animals, people and their environment by discovering their similarities and differences and how our actions can have positive and negative consequences.  This fits perfectly with our courage unit. A special feature of this program will include the inclusion of a classroom visit by a well socialized dog (the dog will be under adult control).  The students are really looking forward to this.  Please send in $2.00 for this presentation.  Thanks to those who have already paid.

If you haven't already signed up for conferences please do so as they are only a couple weeks away.

Club Red is well under way.  Remember that you need to sign each heart after your child reads and then he/she can colour it.

Please see the calendar on this blog for other special days happening this month, next week is another crazy week as we have 3 special celebrations in a row!

Also please bring in 100 day representations by Thursday the 23rd.  Thank you!

Feb. 9th

This has definitely been our shortest (and craziest!) week ever with both Monday and Tuesday being snow days and now we are off tomorrow.  Remember as well there is no school on Monday because of Family Day and Tuesday because of the Curriculum Implementation Day.  Our Valentine's celebration will be on Wednesday, Feb. 15th in the afternoon.   Students are welcome to bring valentines for their classmates - all the students names were posted on last weeks blog post.  Thanks to the following students for providing our yummy snacks.   Rachel - Fruit Tray, Luca - Veggie Tray, Charlotte - Cheese/crackers or small sandwiches, Mason - Sweet Treat,  Adam - popcorn/chips or pretzels, Shayla - other??.   We didn't get a chance to go on Spelling City for lesson 2 so it would be great if you could have your child practice over this long weekend.

Club RED Number Day was a success with lots of creative ideas for ways to display numbers. We had lots of numbers represented here but #5 seemed to be a favourite!

Today we were really lucky to have Claire's mom Lisa come to our class to teach us all about the importance of hand washing and whether Bugs Need Drugs?  Your child should have brought home a booklet about this - please review this with your child.  Div. 7 were great listeners during this presentation and seemed to really enjoy it!  Thanks again Lisa! 

Upcoming dates...
Wednesday, Feb. 15 - Valentine's Celebration
Friday, Feb. 17 - Dress up as your Favourite Book Character
Wednesday, Feb. 22 - Anti-bullying Day - wear pink
Thursday, Feb. 23 is 100th Day - *all students are encouraged to bring in a collection of 100
Friday, Feb. 24 is Poem in A Pocket
March 2 Early Dismissal - student led conferences
March 3 Conferences (No School)
March 8 - Bake Sale for SPCA (bake goods needed)
March 9 - Skating in the afternoon
March 10 - Club RED Celebration (wear red)

February 3rd

Spelling started this week as you hopefully have seen from the planner, the letter and/or from your child bringing their duotang home to finish up their spelling activities.  I have also included Spelling City on the useful links on the front of the blog - this is a great way for your child to practice their words and the spelling focus for the week.

Club RED also started on Wednesday, so hopefully everyone one from Div. 7 is reading every day and recording it by colouring in their heart calendar (parents please remember to sign each dated box after reading).   Everyone participated in pajama day today and hallway reading was a big success - Div. 7 were all big buddies which they loved!

For  anyone who wants to get started on their valentines below are all the names of the students in Div. 7...

     Alanna     Melissa   Claire     

Angelina   Eli  Sienna  Sarah    

Gavin   Rachel    Averyelle   Sam

Carson   E.J.   Nathan  Mason   Luca    

Adam   Shayla    Joe     Ashton   

Brooklyn   Gianna   Jake  Charlotte

Hundred Day is on Thursday, Feb. 23 - so you can also think about some kind of collection that you want to make.  I will be handing out paper after Valentines is over.

We are completely out of Kleenex so if anyone could donate some boxes to the class that would really be appreciated.

January 27th

Our field trip to Save On Foods was excellent.  Thank you to Adam, Mason, Sienna, Luca and Ashton's moms and E.J.'s dad for helping with out this trip. Not only did we learn so much about the 4 different food groups but we also followed Mrs. Roberts class' coding instructions to make sure we went the best route and reviewed the directions N S E W plus left and right.  Yesterday we calculated all those steps and discovered that we walked 2,928! We added all the steps together and then multiplied it by 2 to get our total.  This didn't count all the steps we took in the store so we were well over 3,000!
Please continue to send in cereal boxes and food flyers for our buddy project and nutrition unit. 

I was away today at a workshop on Performance Standards (our district is trying to have every teacher attend this year) but I heard that Twin Day was a big success.  All week we have had many students away due to illness.  Hopefully everyone is feeling better soon and please remind your child of the importance of washing their hands well. We have also had lice reported so please do regular checks and treat if needed.  Thanks.

We will be starting our spelling program on Monday.  You will be receiving an important letter in your child's planner which explains the program we will be using.  We realize that the words on the list may appear quite easy for some children but we will be doing a variety of activities around these (adding prefixes, suffices, defining, looking for word patterns etc.) and will also have surprise 'Bonus' words each week that follow the same pattern.

'Club Red' will be starting on Wednesday.  Papers will go out Tuesday. Students will be expected to read every day for the month of February and parents will need to sign each day as it is completed.  There will be a big school wide celebration at the beginning of March and there will be an opportunity for prizes to be won for those who participate.  There is also the possibility of winning a class pizza party if all of the calendars are signed/coloured/returned at the end of the month.

Looking ahead...
We will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Feb. 15th and I will be putting a list of all the names next week so students can start to work on valentines if they wanted.  Please note that if your child is going to bring valentines it is important that they have a valentine for every child in the class so that everyone is included.  Thanks for your support with this. 

Hundred Day will be Thursday, Feb. 23 (students should be thinking of collections of something ?? be creative that they'd like to bring in).  More info on this soon. 

We have now confirmed a third opportunity to go skating on the afternoon March 9th and we are going to see a play at the ACT theater on April 20th.  You will receive portal announcements on both of these events closer to the date.