Friday, May 6, 2011

Friday, May 6

Dear Families,

First of all, I would like to wish you all a very Happy Mother's Day on Sunday. The children worked very hard to make special cards for you. They did a wonderful job!

I would also like to thank all the families that have contributed to the Tombolas for Springfest! We have earned 52 leaves so far! Wow! Next week is the last week to contribute. Thank you!

Thank you as well to the families to brought in a loonie or twoonie for "Get Loud" Friday to support the hearing impaired.

This week we continued to work on our Phonics duotangs and I am happy to say that many SK children are on Set Four! We are now learning about the blended sound "ai" as in "rain", "snail", etc. and we will be learning the sounds "or", "ou", "j", "ie", and "ee" next.

We also reviewed our written numbers 1-31 and completed our May calendar. We reviewed 1-100 orally and the children had fun calling them out from our chart. If your child is writing at home, please remind them to always start at the top when forming letters or numbers.

When your child has completed a set of phonics sheets (that we work on in class) I check them and send the sheets home for you to review. The children work carefully on them and I am very impressed with how their writing/colouring/small motor skills have improved!

With their Reading Buddies, the afternoon class drew pictures in response to listening to the Aesop Fable about a fox and a stork. The pictures represented the lesson that we should treat people as we would like to be treated. This activity blended the Kindergarteners and Grade 3s nicely because the Grade 3s are currently studying Fables. The morning class will complete this activity next week with their Reading Buddies.

Our 100 + Painted Lady caterpillars have really grown and soon they will be forming chrysalids. What an exciting addition to our Science Centre! This week William A.'s "mystery bag" item was terrific because it was a small toy caterpillar that turned into a butterfly! Thank you William.

A special thank you goes to Lola's Dad in the morning class for painting the Springfest table that we decorated with our fingerprints. It looks beautiful! Thank you as well to our afternoon grade parents Mrs. Busch and Mrs. DeLonghi, and our mornign grade parents Mrs. Rankin and Mrs. Giancos, for organizing the items for Springfest (as well as all the other help they arrange). The afternoon class decorated a large platter with their fingerprints and it looks lovely!

This week's Reading Clubs were done by Griffin's mom and Jamie's mom, our Mystery Readers were Paige (Sarah's sister) and Sarah's grandmother helped too, and the afternoon Mystery Reader was John's dad. Our white bags and snuggle books were done by David's mom and . Thank you very much as always.

Thank you to the parents who submitted Scholastic Orders for May 1st. Your books should arrive shortly. Our next Scholastic Order is due June 1st.

Pizza lunch-on-the-lawn forms are in your white TDSB bags. Please send them in by Wednesday, June 1st. The Artist-in-the-Classroom money ($10.00 cash or cheque payable to Janeen Brownrigg) is due May 9. Thank you.

I wish all of you a very Happy Mothers' Day and a wonderful weekend.

Mrs. Tyndall