Happy Holidays!

Dear families,

I hope you are enjoying the first day of your winter holiday!

Thank you so very much for the wonderful gifts - you are very kind!

This week was all about the holidays; we read Deanna Jump's story "The Christmas Grumps" (a very simple version of The Grinch story) and wrote how to make a grumpy grin on the back of our art. The children helped me make word web inquiries about Santa, Snowflakes and The Grinch. We compared The Grinch book vs. the movie and the Grinch vs. Santa using Venn diagrams. The children did a tally and graph about candy canes, started a winter word wall which we'll continue working on when we return from the break, practised reading our words ending in t, n, and r (see the Ho Ho endings sheet), and learned how to make paper snowflakes. All the children's December work went home in their green folders along with some crafts they made and their Eric Carle art.

Thank you to our parent volunteers this week: Chloe's mom was our Mystery Reader and read "Where the Wild Things Are and "The Night Before Christmas." Martel's mom helped in the Computer Lab, and we had lots of help for our Holiday Craft Party from the moms of Martel, Claire, Izzie, Anderson, Lauren, Christopher, and Megan. The crafts were terrific and the kids had a great time making them! Thank you so much for your time and energy! Thank you also to Chloe for donating the book "The Gruffalo Child" to our classroom library.

We practised writing our popcorn words "I" and "am" on our mini dry-erase boards. The two new popcorn words are "is and "and." They should go in your child's popcorn word folder at home. Some parents have asked me where to get these. I bought our class set through www.reallygoodstuff.com.

On Friday the whole school sang carols in the gym, accompanied by Mr. Samotowka on trumpet and Mr. Norton on flugel horn.

When we come back from the break we will do inquiries on measurement, signs of winter, snowflakes, winter weather, and, just for fun, an Alien Invasion!

I hope you have a fun and happy holiday with family and friends, and I look forward to seeing everyone again on January 5th!

Mrs. Tyndall