Week of February 19-22

Dear families,

I hope you had a wonderful Family Day weekend!

The children and I have found all the new snow fun and exciting. Hopefully it will stay a little while longer since the children love shovelling the snow and making forts and snowmen. It reminds me of the winters I had as a child growing up (not that many years ago of course!). Lots of snow and lots of fun. Please remember to dress the children in snow pants each day and to provide them with indoor shoes.

We have continued to learn about the calendar, the months, the days of the week, the new year of course and the seasons. We continue to count the days in the month by tens and ones and have learned there is a pattern to the numbers from 1 to 100. As well, the children continue to learn about graphing and taking a tally. Learning how to make and read graphs is an important problem-solving skill. We are also continuing to work on more complex patterning. Not only are we looking at the patterns all around us (in clothing, nature, music, etc.) but we have been looking at the calendar a lot to see different patterns with numbers. This helps the children see the pattern of counting by ones, tens, fives, etc. We now starting our unit on measurement.

In language arts, we read a lot of books and did activities about Chinese New Year, Valentines Day and 100th Day, and have been continuing to read a number of books on snow and winter. Young children love the whole idea of snow so I have capitalised on this (especially with the snowstorms we have had!). Some topics we have discussed are: all the compound words you can make with the word snow, how snow forms, winter activities, winter words, and so on. We will be making cute little books about animals that thrive in cold weather with our Reading Buddies and we will also do a 3-D craft activity with the scenes from our story The Snowy Day as a culminating activity. With this project the children will be able to re-tell the story.

Our Popcorn Words are LOOK, AT, and THE and the children continue to make books using these sight words. They are a doing a wonderful job writing little sentences!!

This week the children are very excited because I am doing a new little unit on Pirates! I will be incorporating measurement and language arts activities in this unit and have prepared fun activities for the children to do. I encouraged the children to dress as little pirates this week.

The children did a wonderful job at today's Sharing Assembly, celebrating the TDSB Character trait of "Fairness." A big thank you to the parents who took the time to attend.

Thank you also to the parents who made our Valentines and 100th Day celebrations such a success by helping with our crafts and little language arts and numeracy centres. I couldn't do it without you!

I look forward to seeing any parents who are able to drop in to my Open Houses on Wednesday February 20 from 7:45-8:45 and on Thursday, February 21 from 3:45-4:45.

Please continue to read with your children each day - read to your children, and they will read to you!

Have a wonderful week!

Beverley