Monday, October 9, 2017

Week of October 2-6

Dear families,

I hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

Last week we did a lot of numeracy and literacy activities related to Thanksgiving, and we'll top it off on Tuesday with a graph about which foods the kids ate for Thanksgiving! The children made a table decoration plate called "I am Thankful for..." with six pictures and accompanying pictures. We also read several books about Thanksgiving, including Todd Parr's wonderful book "The Thankful Book" and a lovely chapter books called "Gracie's Thanksgiving." The children made turkey finger puppets, did turkey pattern matching and sequencing, coloured a turkey by reading the colour words, and learned a really fun dance called "All You Turkeys Dance Around!" The kids loved it! It's easy to find on Youtube.

All the children's Mo Willems' work went home in Thursday's mail bag. When folders go home, your children will enjoy sharing and reading all the work they did. It's an excellent opportunity for them to review what they learned at school!

The popcorn (sight) words of the week are FOR and WENT. Our October words and October Homework Bingo were sent home in the mail bag as well. We practice those words every day in class.

We had two Mystery Readers this week! The first was my former student Hannah who is now in Grade One! The second was Alex's dad! Thank you so much for being Mystery Readers!

The Scholastic Book Fair is next week. Group One is going on Thursday, and Group Two is going on Tuesday. To avoid confusion, simply send in money (in a labelled zip-lock baggie) tomorrow, Tuesday. We will keep it in a safe place in the classroom until the kids go to the Book Fair. October's Scholastic Order is due tomorrow, October 10. Thank you for supporting Scholastic!

Each week your child brings home a Snuggle Up and Read book. If the book is "too easy," you could ask your child to spell words from the book. If it is "too hard," you could ask your child to find the beginning sounds of words or find sight words a.k.a. popcorn words.

Next week we will start learning about Signs of Fall in the mornings (science/nature) and ALL ABOUT MONKEYS in the afternoons (nature and fiction/non-fiction). If you can find an oak tree nearby, please bring in 10 acorns (or more!!) to use on 10-frames we are making and playing with. Thank you! We will also be making 3-D Autumn Tree Art and Pumpkin art.

Last week was photo day. Photo retake day and sibling photo day will be on November 1.

That is the news for this week! I hope you are enjoying the lovely weather this weekend. :)