Greetings Parents and Students,

It was a quick week before the 2 weeks of holidays! Great Grant Road School Spirit with gingerbread house making, Golden Mile bowling, Ugly Sweater Day, & carol singing.

Kintley was our incredible Star of the Week. Her favourite colours are pink and purple and she loves to eat apple pie. She enjoys spending time with her mom, dad, and older brother. She often goes to the farm to visit her grandparents and loves to ride on the combine with her grandpa. She likes to play soccer and baseball. She went camping to Buffalo Pound and is a lucky girl, as she went to Disney World and met two princesses. She shared her very first stuffed animal for Show and Tell and her first baby clothes (when her parents took her home from the hospital).

On Tuesday Ms. Holtby read the story “The Bead Pot” by Thelma Poirier. Students discussed the various articles of beaded Powwow regalia. As a class, they looked at beaded moccasins, earrings, broaches and more. The students then had the opportunity to bead their very own bracelets. They were reminded to think about using beads for meaning and creating a pattern. Some students decided to write their name or make a surprise for a special person! We hope you enjoyed your surprise!

We wrapped up our Grade 1 Math Unit; facts to 12 and will complete the Grade 2 Math Unit; facts to 18 the first week of Jan. 2019. Please practice +/- facts to 12/18 over the holidays with your child. Many of the photos this month were of math strategies we have been working on over the past weeks. Have your child explain the DOUBLES STRATEGY, NEAR DOUBLES STRATEGY, MAGIC 9 STRATEGY and TENS STRATEGY. Use the photos to help your child explain. You can easily make ten frames at home using paper/pencil or an egg carton with 2 parts of the egg carton cut off.

The children used TEN FRAMES as a visual to SEE ten in numbers.

EXAMPLE: 7+6 = (7 + 3) + 3 = 13 EXAMPLE: 5 + 9 = 4 + (1 +9) = 14

Math photos are based on a math lesson reinforcing minus 1 and minus 2 math facts (NEAR DOUBLES). Try some of these questions at home with your child. Please send Unit 3 Math Makes Sense booklets back to school, completed (if your child missed a lesson) and SIGNED in the New Year.

We began Wednesday morning with a school parade honouring Mrs. Bonnie Ewing, our amazing Administrative Assistant who is retiring. She was presented with roses and cards from each of the children at Grant Road School. We took this opportunity to sing her our LOVE SONG about her, once more.

On Wednesday morning we held our Multicultural Feast in the classroom. Delicious! Informative! Fun! The children are doing a fabulous job sharing about their own personal celebrations this week, presenting their written articles, and enjoying our breakfast feast. They were extremely proud to share and to tell us about their dishes. We used our Starblanket mats as settings. Thank you VERY much parents, once again, for your help in making this special feast such a success.

Our French focus this week continued with Christmas vocabulary through LOTO/ BINGO, French story about a lonely Christmas tree and the song:

Notre Arbre de Noel; www.youtube.com/watch?v=h81AK0-s7xM and Quand le Père Noël https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynt7aO8CuGw

We also created ‘Garfield’ PWIM cartoons.

We had an incredible time at Golden Mile for bowling gym fun on Tuesday afternoon. Glow in the dark bowling and dancing for 90 minutes was the best! It was wonderful to meet Saria’s new baby sister, Pippin and her mom at the bowling alley.

Ms. Holtby ended her First Nations Traditional Art Expression unit with a fun lesson of

‘beading’, on Monday afternoon. What a beautiful keepsake! Ms. Holtby will be returning to the University of Regina, back for classes, for one more semester, before she receives her degree. We hope she enjoys the book of pictures we created and ‘love letters’ we wrote to her. We will miss her SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!

Thank you parents for the beautiful Christmas cards, wishes, baking, chocolates, gift cards, ornaments and so much more. We look forward to continuing our Grade 1/2 journey with your children in 2019!