Week of January 7-11

Dear families,

I hope you’re having a great weekend! The words of the week were HE and SHE. The letter sound was Ll like lollipop. This week we started our inquiry on Measurement and an inquiry on.... PENGUINS!

On chart paper, we started with a schema of what the children knew already, which was a lot! Then we wrote what the children said they wanted to learn. We watched two interesting age-appropriate videos on penguins on the Smartboard which helped answer some of the kids' questions! For our quiet thinking time this week, we did Cosmic Kids Yoga to Pedro the Penguin. We also made a penguin puppet, did dot-to-dot alphabet penguins, did a Venn diagram together comparing kids and penguins, and read some penguin books. I have a terrific STEM penguin game that the children can play with, too. Next week we'll continue our inquiry, and when we're finished the kids will take home their penguin folders. A special thank you to Hope who shared penguin books, toys and photos with her classmates, and even brought little chocolate "penguin" eggs for her friends. Abigail shared her movie "Happy Feet" and the kids really enjoyed watching (part of) it on Friday, as a school-wide reward for exceeding last year's Terry Fox donations.

For our numeracy inquiry on measurement, the children learned the three first rules of measuring: 1) Start at the edge; 2) no spaces between measuring tools 3) use the same tools to measure. This rule is especially important when using non-standard tools to measure something, for example popsicle sticks (they all have to be the same size). We watched two little videos on how and why we measure things, and what we can measure (everything!). We practiced our measuring skills with sticks, measuring tape and rulers, by measuring various things in the classroom. If you have a measuring tape at home, let your child play with it and measure things! The children also measure many things on the first floor of our school with their reading buddies, using standard and non-standard measuring tools. They were a great help. The children also completed a measuring task which involved colouring, cutting, and gluing 7 groups of cub-a-links in the correct order, from lowest to highest. This was a relatively simple task for the SKs and challenging for the JKs. We will do this task again next week. I sent some extra rulers home for the kids to keep and use. We will continue learning about measurement next week.

Thank you so much to Emerson's mom who was our Mystery Reader!

Please ensure your child has enough healthy snacks and lunch to last the day. I do have extra goldfish crackers in case of a "snackless emergency :) ). Thank you to Arlo's mom who generously donated a box of goldfish crackers to the classroom! We will use some of those next week when we measure how tall penguins are with goldfish crackers, since penguins eat fish!

The online booking system for first term interviews will soon be available. As has been the case for the last few years, a teacher requests a term 1 interview only when they have a concern or feel the need to further discuss a student's progress, although any parent can request an interview. I will contact you if an interview is necessary at this time. Thank you!

That's the news for this week. I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Let's hope for some snow for the children to play in!