Week of October 5-9

Dear families,

What a beautiful fall weekend!

Last week we continued our units on Signs of Fall in the morning, and All About Pets in the afternoon. The children's homework for this weekend is to complete the page "My Pet" with a drawing of their real (or imaginary!) pet. The Seniors should also write the name of their pet on the lines beneath their drawing, as well as some descriptor words about their pet ("My pet Max is a cute, brown, small, dog.").

With our Reading Buddies we started a Turkey Craft, colouring according to colour words. We have been tying in learning our colour words (more for the Juniors - the Seniors know them) to two booklets we are writing: Colourful Cats (JKs) and "I Can Be" (SKs).

This week we will start our Math unit on Patterning. Patterns are everywhere! Encourage your children to point out colour patterns to you: ABAB, AAB AAB, ABC ABC, ABB ABB, etc. Size and shape patterns work well, too: square, square, triangle/ small, big, small, big/ etc. If your child has patterned clothing, encourage him/her to point out the pattern on their clothing.

The children are enjoying signing in at the Smartboard! We'll also be doing some patterning exercises and colour poems/songs on the Smartboard this week.

This week we will be doing lots of Thanksgiving-related activities: counting turkeys, turkey patterns, turkey letters, etc. We will also be talking more about what "Harvest" means and what we do with the food that is harvested.

We will also be making Venn Diagrams in Numeracy, comparing characteristics of Cats vs. Kittens and Cats vs. Dogs.

A quick note about scissors: please provide your child with child-size blunt scissors at home. We do a lot of cutting and gluing in class and any similar small motor activities your child can also do at home would be beneficial.

So far we have talked about the following letter sounds: S A T I P N C K E H. We do one a day, and will rotate through all the sounds several times this year.

During our Quiet Time from 12:30-1:00, a few children have a small pillow. If your child has a small pillow that s/he can keep in school it would help them rest comfortably. A soft neck-type pillow works well (the kind we use on airplanes, for example).

When your child brings a folder home (the first one was "All About Me"), please keep that folder at home. If is your child's to keep and re-read at home. Your child will be bringing home a lot of work and art this year. If you don't want to keep it, I found with my own children that taking a photo of their work and keeping the special art pieces worked well.

Finally, a big thank you to Claire's mom who was our Mystery Reader this week.

There are still quite a few spots open for Computer Lab volunteers - please let Trudie or Erica know if you are able to volunteer from (9:20-10:00) on Days 1 and 2 each week.

I hope you have a terrific week!