Ms Selimos's Blog: Dec 10th, 2018 week Gingerbread Houses and MORE

Dear Parents and Students,

We have a lot of fun activities occurring over the month of December! On Monday afternoon, students engaged in a FUN-TIVITY in the gym with Grade 1 to 3/4 classrooms where they participated at 3 interactive stations; Mike and Ike, Dice Stack, and Save Fred (gummy worm & lifesaver). There was a lot of laughter, group participation and cheering.

Austin was our amazing STAR OF THE WEEK. His favourite colours are red and blue and his favourite food is a cheese burger with ketchup and mustard from Burger King. He loves his parents very much. He enjoys camping with his dad and spending time with his mom and ‘Hammy’ his hamster. He is a fan of the Calgary Flames and loves collecting Batman toys and more.

Open the Bonnie Ewing attachment and have your child ‘sing’ the love song to our wonderful, amazing Admin. Assistant, Mrs. Bonnie Ewing, who will be retiring at the end of 2018. We will MISS HER SO MUCH! On Wednesday morning we sang the song to her and videoed.

REMINDER: Food hamper donations until Dec. 19^th.

This week’s writing traits lessons focused on DETAILS and supporting your TOPIC with details. Wednesday’s lesson involved providing details about themselves.

Ms. Holtby continued exploring First Nations and Metis art expressions and Traditions. The students are learning that art can be expressed in various ways that illustrate their feelings, portraying a message or passing on knowledge. The class explored a webpage that provided information about artist Leah Dorion. Then, Ms. Holtby read Leah Dorion’s story The Giving Tree, and discussed the artwork. Pointillism was introduced. The class had the opportunity to create their own art piece using pointillism. The class reviewed as a group what pointillism means in art. Ms. Holtby provided the students with examples of Leah Dorion’s work. She then shared with the students an example she created. She described the meaning and the symbols used to portray the message of her artwork. Students chose an animal and were provided the symbolic meaning according to the Michif (Metis) culture. The students then created their own art piece using paint and Q-tips.

The Grade 1s continued to play the “cup game” for math to reinforce subtraction. Example: There are 9 bats flying. 3 are still flying. How many went inside the bat cave (cup)? 9 - __ = 3 We also used dominoes to create addition/subtraction facts. Grade 1; Unit 3 Math booklets will go home next week. Please review with your child, sign, and return.

Grade 2 parents: Check out the Roller Coaster question the children solved for math using subtraction strategies and drawings on Monday. We had a blast taking a “rollercoaster” ride on GoNoodle to begin the lesson. Subtraction vocabulary was reinforced: difference, subtract, how many more. Addition and subtraction of 1 and 2 was another target area. The children played the ONE LESS, TWO LESS GAME (see purple game card in attachments). We used POWER OF TEN CARDS too. If you want to place some games at home with your child, Google or check out ‘Power of Ten’ sites like:

http://poweroften.ca/concentration/

Our phonics letter of the week was Kk. Kate and Kintley thinks it’s an awesome letter. ;) We brainstormed words beginning with Kk, explored rhymes and solved mystery sentences. They children were able to successfully figure out the sentences with “k” words.

On Thursday afternoon, the children had a BLAST creating their gingerbread houses with their Grade 4 Learning Buddies. Our classroom smelled amazing! We hope the houses made it home safely.

For French we learned a new song; Quand Le Pere Noel Vient Me Visiter. We used a Santa puppet to review prepositions vocabulary in an interactive way. See photos.

NEXT WEEK:

1. Mon. 17^th (Day 5) Multicultural December Celebrations homework is due. I have ATTACHED IT TO the weekly e-mail.

2. Tues. 18^th (Day 1) Bowling in p.m. & School Carnival from 6 to 8 p.m. Grade 1 parents; See your child’s Unit 3 Math booklet. Sign and return.

3. Wed. 19^th Multicultural Breakfast - send 6 to 12 portions.

4. READING LOGS #4 due THURS. 20^TH BEFORE BREAK! To receive 4/4, you will need to read 160 minutes or MORE, as 2/3 of month will have passed.