Week of February 4-8

Dear families,

We have had so many different kinds of weather this week! Rain, freezing rain, snow, wind, sun! The children really enjoyed playing with the little ice rain spheres, and looked at them with their magnifying glasses. They learned that snow flakes are flat and can stick together easily, but ice rain droplets are spherical and can't. We also watched a little video about evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

If the children's mittens, socks and hats get wet, we do dry them in the dryer. Please send in an extra pair of socks for child if you have not already done so. Thank you.

The words of the week were WE and FIND. The letter sound of the week was Vv. We also reviewed the letter sound Jj and Bb, and wrote several words together with those letters/letter sounds. We also did some reading on the Smartboard - reading words with the middle sounds of A, E, I, O and U.

We finished our book study of The Snowy Day this week. With their reading buddies, the children compared themselves to the main character in the story (Peter), and completed and reading/colouring/gluing/sorting activity that demonstrated a text-self connection. Our reading buddies also helped the children sound out many words that can be made with the letter sounds we have learned so far - a copy of this list will go home in today's mail bag.

This week we also celebrated Chinese Lunar New Year! We watched a video about Chinese New Year and the lunar calendar, and the children coloured and cut out Chinese New Year cards. Thank you Edward for sharing your Chinese New Year collection with us!

The children's self-regulation skills are really improving! Each day we have about 20 minutes of guided mindful meditation time. If you would like to practice this at home with your child, the websites we use are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4oS680-Dnw&t=2689s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_qU7l-fcU.

As we approach the 100th day of school, we have been doing a lot of counting! We have been counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. When your child is counting, please help him of her by ensuring s/he is moving each object to the side as they count. This helps them understand one-to-one correspondence between objects and numbers. The children enjoyed counting various objects together at their tables, working together to count 100 by grouping them in bundles of 10. the children have also been playing numeracy games in the computer lab with Mrs. Mosun.

The 100th Day of School is this Monday and we will be having a fun day! Thank you in advance to the parent volunteers who are helping out on Monday! If your child would like to dress like someone who is 100 years old, that would be fun! No worries, though! I have sent a letter home with some ideas.

Valentine's Day is next Thursday and some of the children have already brought in Valentine cards for their classmates. The earlier they bring them in, the better, so that all the children have adequate time to place them correctly in their friend's valentine bags.

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

That's the news for this week! I hope you have a nice weekend!