Week of January 19 - 23

Dear families,

This week we completed and wrote about our science experiment, worked more on our unit on The Snowy Day, and focused on our sight words on our word wall: I, is, can, and, am, like, me, my. Next week's Popcorn Words will be CAN and SEE.

We also did a lot of practice with tally marks, graphing and counting. We talked about text-to-self connections when we read books, and how stories can relate to our own lives. "The Snowy Day" was a perfect book for this. We also talked about how stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the children sequenced The Snowy Day. They also coloured and sequenced a little copy of The Snowy Day to take home so that they can read it to you, as well as key pictures from the story to help them with the skill of retelling the story in the correct order. The children also listened to the story with their eyes closed so that they could visualize what was happening. We also talked about making predictions and about their opinions of the story. All important literacy skills moving forward. The children will bring their folders home on Friday. Next week we'll read Munsch's funny classic "Thomas' Snowsuit" and we'll make text-to-text connections together.

We also had fun re-reading "Aliens Love Underpants" then "Aliens in Underpants Save the World." The children helped me write as many words as they could make from the word U-N-D-E-R-P-A-N-T-S which was 45! They also did that activity with letter cards at their centres.

Our "first-thing-in-the-morning" books are now Bob Books. Bob books (Scholastic) are such an excellent series to teach children to read. The kids really like them and feel so accomplished when they can read them and read them to their friends.

On the Smartboard, we focused on beginning sounds, ending sounds, and double consonant sounds. It's terrific how things are really clicking for the children!

The children played at the snowflake centres for the last few days before I changed it to a numeracy centre with small blocks.

The homework for the Juniors is to complete the counting exercise "Frosty Friends" and "It's Winter Weather." The Senior homework is to write the compound words with 'snow.'

Since the weather has been a bit mucky please have an extra pair of mitts or gloves in your child's backpack. When their mittens get wet they don't want to put them on!

Thank you very much to Anderson's mom who helped out in the Computer Lab, and to Olivia's dad who was our Mystery Reader this week.

It's not too early to start counting your child's 100 items for the 100th Day of School which is Friday, February 6. Please have your child put the items in a small water bottle. It's also not too early for your child to start writing Valentine Cards with their name "from" on each one.

On February 9 the Juniors will receive their first report card. Both Juniors and Seniors will receive another report in June. Please read the LKS Bulletin regarding online interview booking.

I hope you have a terrific week!