Week of November 21-25

Dear families,

I hope you've had a lovely weekend - it was gorgeous weather today! Hard to believe it will be December 1st on Thursday!!

Last week we continued our Dr. Seuss Author Study. We started with Green Eggs and Ham which is a lot of fun to read. Dr. Seuss' books combine rhyme, rhythm and fun into stories that children have loved for over 60 years. They also have wonderful messages in them that children understand.

As a follow up activity to Green Eggs and Ham, the children named 26 foods from A-Z that they would eat, and 26 places (starting with the same letter sound) they would eat them i.e. Sarah would eat a sandwich on a slide, Gregory would eat gum on a goat, Victoria would eat vegetables on a vase, etc. The children will complete their written work this week.

The children also started their Cat in the Hat name art; first, they counted how many letters in their name; next, they wrote each letter on equal numbers of white and red trips of paper; then they organized them in an ABAB pattern, reversing the starting colour on one side of the hat. This was quite a challenge for some of our little ones! They glued them in order on both side of their hat and chose a skin colour for the face (some children are not at this stage yet). Lastly, they will draw their face, and on the other side they will glue a photo of themselves. Following simple instructions and remember the order of operations is an early math skill, as is patterning and sorting. When the hats are done they'll be proudly hung in the classroom :) .

One of the great things about teaching with Dr. Seuss is the many word families in his books. For example the CAT in the HAT, I would not eat them SAM I AM, HOP on POP, and so on. On the Smartboard, the children came up with several words that had the root -AM. We will do a lot more of this word-family study next week. With our Grade 4 Reading Buddies, the children were interviewed and drew a picture of them reading. This week they will hep our little ones with several word family roots, i.e. -AM, -AT, -IN, -IT, -OG, -OP.

The children also came up with ideas about what would happen if Thing 1 and Thing 2 (from The Cat in the Hat) came to LKS! They will write down their ideas and draw a picture with their Reading Buddies this week.

The homework for this week is to complete the "____ my name is ________ and I like ___________" with a thing your child likes that starts with the first letter of his/her name. We do this each day with the Special Person of the Day, too. The SK homework for the week is to complete the drawing on empathy (when they feel like other people do), and to complete other side of the work sheet on Feelings: "ictoria feels _____ when..."

The children also enjoyed doing Cosmic Yoga as a fun calming activity. Self-regulation is an important skill in the early years and Cosmic Yoga is an awesome way to teach kids about the benefits of Yoga.

Thank you so much to Ruby who collated December's Scholastic orders! They are due on December 1st to ensure they arrive before the holidays. Of you would like your order to be a gift, please just write GIFT on your order form and I will be sure to hand your order to you personally so it is a surprise for your child. Books make wonderful gifts!

Thank you so much to Andrew's mom who was our Mystery Reader this week, and to Hannah's mom and Hudson's mom who helped with Friday's pizza lunch.

November's Sharing Assembly will be on Wednesday, November 30th. The children will be singing "Baby Beluga." We hope to see you then!

That's the news from Room 166! I hope you have a terrific upcoming week!