Week of November 13-17

Dear families,

It was wonderful meeting with all of you this week to discuss your child's progress!

Last week the children practised their numeracy and literacy skills with several centres. They made patterns with various manipulatives, sequenced objects, practised their letter sounds with letter games, counted and sorted, played a "what number comes next?" guessing game (i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, ??), and made shapes with elastic bands on peg boards. We also completed a Venn diagram, labelled a drawing, and started working on our Jolly Phonics Duotangs (which the kids will work on all year).

Thank you to Alex who shared his books on "Empathy" and "Respect" with the class. November is Empathy month at the TDSB and we have talked a lot about this in class. With our Grade 3 Reading Buddies, the children each had a picture of people and were asked to think about how they were feeling. Then they drew a picture and wrote about when they felt the same way. Alex also brought in a Monarch butterfly he found and we watched a video about their migration to Mexico each fall. We talked about how to attract butterflies to our homes and, with prompting, the kids came up with "plant flowers" which was terrific! Again, thinking about how we can help other things, creatures, nature, and so on. Wonderful! The children also did a symmetry exercise by drawing and colouring the right side of a monarch butterfly. Good work!

This ties in very well to the new nature inquiry we will be starting on Monday about Hibernation/Migration/Adaptation. This will be followed by a big inquiry on bears! This kids will love it. Fiction and non-fiction, lots of learning, terrific books... It will be fun! Look for a new bulletin board display in the hall in the upcoming weeks all about what animals do and where they live in the winter!

The Mystery Reader this week was Kate's mom - thank you Tara!!

A quick note regarding cold weather clothing - mittens are easier for your child to put on than knitted gloves. Tube scarves are safer than wrap scarves and are much easier for your child to put on. Also, please remind your child to not go on the monkey bars with mittens or gloves - they won't be able to grip it and could fall. With rain and freezing temperatures the wood chips and ground beneath make for a hard landing!

The words of the week were THIS and WILL. We are also finishing a LIKE Read and Write mini book. Next week we'll do CAN. An extra copy of this year's Popcorn Words was sent home in yesterday's mail bag. This is review for the SKs.

I hope you have a very nice weekend!