Week of November 2-6

Dear families,

I hope you are enjoying this beautiful Fall day. This week the children read and drew accompanying pictures to a "Signs of Fall" booklet with their Grade 2 Reading Buddies. They also made poppies in preparation for next week's Remembrance Day ceremony. We read Todd Parr's wonderful book "Peace is..." several times together and also on the Smartboard, page by page. Then we watched a video of Todd reading his own book and talked about the differences (www.toddparr.com). The children did some very nice written work and pictures this week, finishing the two sentences, "I was brave when..." and "Peace is..." They will be on display in the hall and classroom bulletin boards this week.

In Numeracy, the children are making their own rekenreks (http://www.k-5mathteachingresources.com/Rekenrek.html). These are tools to teach the 5- and 10-frame as well as several other early math skills such as addition and subtraction. The children will bring them home in Friday's mailbag. In Science, we did an inquiry on whether various objects sink or float, and talked about why this happens. We learned about density and displacement. We watched a Sesame Street video on bouyancy and a similar video on makemeagenius.com. We practised being scientists by Predicting, Observing, and Concluding, while testing whether or not the objects sank or floated. I have included a copy of the sheet we used at the Science Centre for you to use at home - a great bath time activity! We also talked about where the idea of Velcro came from (burrs!).

The children had a great time during the GROW presentation in the gym on Wednesday. Lots of energetic teamwork and fun! Thank you Mrs. Norton for organizing this for the children.

The homework for this week is: Seniors are to write in their journals, and Juniors are to do the Numbers Booklet that I sent home.

Thank you so much to Cole and his mom who were our Mystery Readers this week!

This Friday's mailbag included the new words for November as well as homework bingo for this month.

The sight words a.k.a. Popcorn Words for this week are AM and BE.

The due dates for Scholastic are November 20 and 27th. Thank you Stella for collating and stamping the Scholastic magazines this month!

Please remember that I am always available before or after school to meet with you regarding your child's progress.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Tyndall