Thanks as always to our parent volunteers!
Our January Sharing Assembly is Monday, the children have been asked to wear/bring a pair of mittens to use as props for our poem. Congratulations again to our wonderful recipients Annabelle, Max and Isla! Thursday has been deemed "Flag Day" by the student council, each grade has been given a country to represent and ours is Canada. The children are invited to wear red/white/Canada logo clothing to school on Thursday if they wish.
This week we continue our sounds with "Mm". Remember when you're reinforcing your child's ability to identify sounds in a word; seniors particularly, encourage them to listen for sounds in middle and final spots not just the initial sound. Inventive spelling using sounds is SUCH an important tool for young writers as their bank of sight words is relatively small. Encouraging this as a strategy is HUGELY important. Having to rely on adults to ask "how do you spell..." doesn't help a child get something on paper when they're stumped but asking themselves "what sounds do you hear..." should give them a prompt to begin getting something down!
We continue to work on simple addition and subtraction using concrete manipulatives. As your child becomes adept at this, removing the manipulatives and simply writing number equations is appropriate. Mental math as you drive in the car, wait in lines, etc is a great workout for those able to conserve the value of numbers. You can look online at the Khan academy for all Ontario math strands and do computer practice of the skills with your child - it's a GREAT site for all age students, my high school son has used it for functions and relations in grade 12 math and some of our own classes use it as homework practice for the students!
A new community outreach initiative has been launched by two of our senior students who will be collecting old jeans as donations to teen shelters. The corporate sponsor is Aeropostale and you can send in unused jeans from January 21 - February 4 for the program known as "Teens for Jeans". Check it out at dosomething.org as a bonus if we collect 500 pairs the school becomes eligible for a $10 000 prize!
Reports will come home February 11 for Junior Kindergarten children only. Teachers usually dedicate interviews this term to students with challenges, requesting interviews in these cases, so your Kindergarten team will hold Open Houses that you may attend - look around, ask questions and informally discuss your child. These will be Wednesday, February 20 from 7:45-8:45 AM and Thursday, February 21 from 3:45-4:45 PM. You may choose to attend either one regardless of your child's class designation AM or PM and would not need to attend both!
Information/Permission forms for our field trip will be sent home next week. The kindergarten classes will all be going to see a live performance of "The Cat Came Back". Monday, March 4 for the AM and Tuesday, March 5 for the PM. In order to accommodate the show time and travel time the morning class will come TO school at the regular time but will return OVER THE LUNCH HOUR, LATER than usual, meaning pick up time will be delayed and no school bus transportation home at lunch will be available. On Tuesday the PM class will be asked to ARRIVE EARLIER, OVER THE LUNCH HOUR, in order to board the field trip bus to make the afternoon performance. This means drop off by school bus will not be available on this day. Please make note of this for yourself and any childcare professionals involved in transporting your child to and from school.
This week:
Monday - Sharing Assembly 9:00 and 12:35, Mystery Readers 10:55 and 2:45
Tuesday - AM computers, PM Reading Buddies
Wednesday - PM Library
Thursday - "Flag Day" - Dress in red/white/Canada stuff, AM Library
Friday - PA Day
Have a great week!
