Week of November 20-24

Dear families,

Happy Sunday! I hope you are having a nice weekend.

Last week in room 166 we learned more about bears (real and teddy), hibernation, migration and adaptation. We read "Under and Over the Snow," "The Hibernation Station," "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "Don't Wake Up the Bear!" We watched a National Geographic video about what animals do in the winter. There is another kid video about this on www.makemeagenius.com. The children are enjoying playing in our Hibernation Station and Bear Cave (a tent and a big box), playing with various stuffies such as rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, bears, turtles, frogs, snakes. We are learning several songs and poems about bears, circling the sight words: "Bear is Sleeping," "Are You Sleeping," and "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear." We are also learning about what bears can do, eat, have and their features. The children practiced sequencing a story with Eric Carle's classic "Brown Bear, Brown Bear." The children also made a bear puzzle and we read and are sequencing the beloved story "Corduroy." The SKs learned how to do a word search on the Smartboard, and once they understood that the words could be backwards and diagonal, they had no problem finding BEAR words in two word searches. We also had a fun Teddy Bear Party! We counted gummy bears and danced to the Gummy Bear song! With our Grade 3 Reading Buddies, the children started making a non-fiction booklet about black bears. Next week we'll do more reading and writing about the book Corduroy and "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." We'll also try to write as many words as we can that start with the beginning sounds B E A and R.

Thank you so much to Ethan's mom who was our Mystery Reader this week. Chloe, a former student of mine who is in Grade 2 now, was also a Mystery Reader. She did such an amazing job! The words of the week were GO and TO. The children did an amazing job singing "Yellow Submarine" at the Sharing Assembly. Congratulations to Rielle, Everleigh and Hudson for receiving certificates for Empathy.

That's the news for this week. See you tomorrow!