Fantastic, Fun, (Frantic ?) , February!

Despite the disrupted schedule, we certainly had a busy, and fun-filled month here at school with a number of special events and activities to enjoy.  Keep reading for the highlights and photos below.

Reading and homework: Please continue to make reading homework a priority for 10 minutes per day.  Reading the little books, practising the mots outils cards, and reviewing work in the blue dutang all count towards credit on your child's tracking sheet.  After a few times, please send the little books back to school for exchange.

Sight Word Snakes and Ladders:
Please look for game board in your child's agenda. Children had a few sessions in class to fill in each square on the game board with sight words.  If this is not finished, please complete for homework and play together for review!  A reminder that there are nine sight word cards in all.  Students should aim to be on at card six or above by the end of March.

This week, we celebrated the 100th day of school with a variety of activities linked to the number 100.

The children made a list of 100 words they can read!

They were challenged to "think outside the box" with the number 100.  Look at the creative ideas!

 

I challenged the children to make 100 different colours in this cool process art project.  They sure loved mucking in the paint and getting creative with colour!

We continue to work with complex sounds such as oi, an.em, ou, on.  Please look in the blue duotang for support materials and games you can use at home.

We made accordion books of all the things we love.  We are working on using complete sentences with proper spacing, letter formation, spelling and punctuation. The children are getting very good at using the classroom resources such as visual dictionnaires, the word wall and sentence starters. 

In Science, we continued to investigate the needs and characteristics of living things.  

We enjoyed watching and discussing bits and pieces of a fantastic PBS documentary series called "Animal Homes". We also ventured out into the forest to look for possible places animals might be living.

We made good use of our time with Harmon the bunny to make observations about his appearance and characteristics.  

 

We enjoyed learning about Lunar New Year.

We labelled body parts on a Chinese Dragon.

 We used Tangram puzzles to create some of the Chinese Zodiac animals.

 

 We acted as illustrators, adding appropriate pictures to a text about Chinese New Year traditions.
We then chose a page to practise and read to Mme accurately and with expression.

We coloured by sound to identify and practise our complex sounds.

We even had our very own Lunar New Year parade!

We are getting to be such good readers that we can read aloud to a friend!

Students are working on tracking the text with their finger while reading.

Have a great weekend!

Winter fun!

Welcome back to school and to a brand new year!

A couple quick housekeeping notes for everyone:

Library - We now have brand new carpet in our library!  Books should be sorted, put back and the library open for circulation next week.

Scholastic - January orders are due by Tuesday, January 21st, please.


Curriculum/Homework Notes:
We are on to the next step in our reading journey! Students should have come home with a booklet for the complex sounds in French (in blue duotang).  Please practise these sounds together at home as often as you are able.  You can sign the tracking sheet for this too!  We will be studying each of the complex sounds more intensively in our weekly centers, but it is important for the students to have exposure to them so that they can decode effectively. Practice makes perfect!

                                                      


I am currently doing formal reading assessments with all the children to determine their appropriate reading level.  You many notice a jump in the level of the little books coming home.  Please aim to read and exchange the little books every 1 or 2 days.  It will likely take me most of the month to read with everyone. Once finished, I will send home a detailed assessment to share with you.  Your continued support at home is appreciated.

Sneak a Peek!
Our inspiration for the month of January will be WINTER!

We read "La vie secrete des bonshommes de neige" by Caralyn Buehner.
As a follow-up activity, rhe children enjoyed writing about what a snowman should NOT do!

In Math, with Ms. Kirby the students had fun creating and then measuring paper snowmen.  They sure look great on the bulletin board at the end of the hall.

In Visual Arts, we tried creating snowflakes.  We started by learning how snowflakes are formed, and looked at many examples of real snowflakes captured with macro photography.  We also tried a new technique using watercolour paints on wet paper.  We then used salt to make a cool crystalline effect on our paper.   I love how every snowflakes and finished product turned out differently!

 Our winter vocabulary word wall.  The children use these words for a variety of language tasks.

We are looking more closely at words with complex sounds.  Here are some 'OU' words we came up with together.  You can review the 'OU' sound at home by playing the "tic-tac-mots" and roll a word activities sent home on the green sheet.

We are learning the following strategies and tricks for decoding. Always put your finger under the word.  Look at the first letter and get your mouth ready to make it's sound. Slide the first letter sound into the next sound you see. 

 A fun little comptine using winter activities and a repetitive structure.  The children are also using
the complex sounds ette, in, and eau.

The children are designing their own snowman and will work on a descriptive writing task. They will use sentence starter prompts, and words posted in the classroom to describe their snowman in four sentences or more.

In Science, we have been exploring the question "Where do animals go in winter ?"
We enjoyed some beautiful weather earlier in the week to go on a nature walk to see if we could see any signs of animals in the forest.  This lead to a great discussion about what animals do in winter.  Ask your child to share some of their thoughts with you at home.

That's all for now!  Hope everyone stays bundled up and warm this weekend.  

As always, and particularly in the current climate, your support is greatly appreciated.