Week of October 15-18

Dear families,

I hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! We finished our unit on farms and for the next two weeks will be focusing on Signs of Fall and Patterns. The children are already talking about Halloween and we will start all our Halloween related activities and learning the week before the 31st. With October and the coming of Halloween a tremendous amount of learning can take place. Thanksgiving also offers endless opportunities to teach not only reading and math skills but also important values about being thankful. It was so sweet that many of the children drew their families on their "I am grateful for..." Thanksgiving plates.

Please take time to sit down with your child and review the poems, songs and finger plays that I teach at school. Copies of these are sent home I your child's white bag each week.

We are going to complete a fall-themed art project using the "resist" technique of oil pastels and watercolour. It is called "Falling Leaves on a Sunny Day" and I will display the art on our hall bulletin board. We will also be doing leaf rubbings on tracing paper this week - please bring in one fall leaf that your child can use. Leaves that are not very dry work best. Thank you.

This upcoming week is the Book Fair in the Library. Both the morning and afternoon classes will be going on Wednesday. If you would like your child to be able to purchase a book/books, please ensure their money is in a zip-lock bag clearly labelled with your child's name. Thank you.

Please take time to read each night with your child, picking out familiar words i.e. high frequency words such as is, the, a, mommy, daddy etc. to help build a sight word vocabulary. For the Juniors, practice printing your child's name and play games recognizing the letters of the alphabet. Magnetic letters are always fun and work well. These can be purchased at Mastermind or any department store. Also, www.starfall.com is an excellent website for learning how to read and the children really enjoy the activities. If your child says that his/her snuggle book is too easy, try the following: work on intonation, predicting, drawing conclusions, retelling and talking about why they like the book. Reading is so much more than reading the words on a page.

A special thank you to our parent volunteers this week; Quentin's mom did the white bags and snuggle books and was Mystery Reader, and in the morning class Rhys' mom was Mystery Reader and Lily G.'s mom did the white bags and snuggle books. Thank you so much!

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

Mrs. Tyndall