Dear families,
My apologies for not being able to update my blog last week due to illness -
A lot has been happening in Room 166! The week before last it was our turn to use the iPads. Each child had 15 minutes to play educational games on the device and we can't wait until it is our turn again! Thank you to Parent Council for providing the iPads.
It was a pleasure meeting with you for parent-teacher interviews. If you didn't get a chance to book an interview just send me an email and we will coordinate a time.
The 100th Day of School Party was a terrific success - thank you so much to the volunteers! The children stacked 100 cups and pennies, dabbed 100 dots, ate 100 snacks, paint-dabbed 100 dots, and also made two Valentine crafts. They also wrote "A friend is..." and "If I had 100 dollars I would..." We also did a dance to "Zero the Hero" (on YouTube). The children did an amazing job writing 100 words, and also wrote about something they didn't know 100 days ago but that now they do.
We are almost finished our book study of Ezra Jack Keats' Caldicott-award winning book "The Snowy Day" to honour black history month. Published in 1962, this was the first children's book to have a black child as the main character. The children have made several text-to-self connections in different formats, they have compared this book to Munsch's classic "Thomas' Snowsuit," making text-to-text connections. Thank you Theo for sharing your copy of "The Snowy Day." The children also made text-to-self connections by comparing what Peter does to what they do, and made a pop-up scene to help them retell the story. The children also painted themselves using various skin-coloured paints. This story lend itself very well to learning about the beginning, middle and end of stories, and we connected this to watching real snow melt. We also made Olaf puppets to celebrate finally getting some snow!
Some of the centres they did were monkey math, marshmallow math, snowball numbers, bananagrams, and popcorn words. The JKs also traced wooden letters with whiteboard markers. The SKs also wrote -IT and -At family words.
It is quite wet outside this time of year - it would be a good idea to put an extra pair of pants in your child's backpack, as well as waterproof mitts/gloves. Thank you.
The next Scholastic order is due March 4.. Thank you to Stella for preparing the booklets. Thank you also to Avery's mom who helped in the Computer Lab. Our Mystery Readers last week were Tessa's sister and Theo's cousin
The l;atest sight words of the weeks are FROM, UP, WE, FIND, BY and CAME.
Next week I am introducing a "take=apart centre" in the Measuring Centre, with out-dates electronics. Contributions are welcome! Please ensure what you send in is not toxic (i.e. no batteries) and is suitable for the children to take apart with screw drivers. Thank you!!
The children did a beautiful job at the Sharing Assembly on Friday, singing "What a Wonderful World."
That's the news from this week - we'll enjoy this early Spring weather!!
