Ms Selimos's Blog: Happy New Year 2019 January 7th, 2019 week with Ms. Selimos

Happy New Year 2019 everyone!

We “warmed up” the school week with our first journal writing activity of the New Year. The children wrote about their December holiday break. Who do they play with? What television shows did they watch? What favourite toys and games did they play? What did they eat? How did they celebrate Christmas and/or the New Year? Etc. They were SUPER EXCITED AND MOTIVATED to use their own brand new personal dictionaries, which Ms. Daniels and I gifted to them, as a New Year’s gift of language arts.

Our Writing Traits focus is details and that good details make pictures in your mind. We looked at an ‘Ocean Park’ scene, a ‘Fair’ scene, & The Three Pigs and chose the good details (sentences) in each picture.

On Tuesday afternoon we welcomed Cree Saskatchewan Organization of Heritage Languages (SOHL) teacher, Jane Carriere to our classroom room. Elder Jane wears many hats. She is a Metis storyteller. She is a recently retired Metis nurse, originally from Cumberland House. She is also an entertainer and sings. We are very excited to have her in our classroom for 8 weekly language sessions from January to March 2019. Tuesday’s lesson was focused on a little biography of her life and then learning how to say hello (tansi), introducing ourselves (_________ is my name = ________________ nitisiyihkasan), and learning the colour words in Cree. See attachments.

I hope you have all had a chance to view the January calendar which was sent home on Monday and which is available on line on my class website. Check FUTURE DATE for Boggy Creek Valley day trip (Mon. Feb. 11th), where we will be “camping” and preparing lunch over an open fire. Payment is NOW available on PARENT PORTAL ($3 = bus cost). We WILL need parents to join us on this trip. Our new PWIM (Picture Word Inductive Model) poster, which we will begin next week, will focus on this winter trip experience.

Kate was our cute Star of the Week. Her favourite colour is gold and she enjoys eating noodle soup. She has an older brother named Kolten and a four year old dog named Dash. She love to camp and to travel with her mom, dad, and brother. She is presently taking swimming lessons and is beginning skating lessons this week. She enjoys soccer and cheering on The Pats hockey team. Two of her most favourite hobbies are cooking/ baking and art.

Our phonics letter of the week was Ll. Leila and LaMarcus thought it was an awesome letter. We brainstormed over 20 high level words beginning with Ll, explored rhymes and solved mystery sentences. They children were able to successfully figure out the sentences with “l” words.

We have moved on to UNITS 4 in Gr. 1 and 2 of Math Makes Sense. This unit is the MEASUREMENT UNIT for both grades and involves children reading dates on a calendar and solving problems involving the number of days in a week and the number of months in a year. The children will also use non-standard units to estimate, measure, compare and order objects by length, height, distance around and mass. Non – standard units (no cm rulers) = using cubes, craft sticks, paperclips, and more for measuring.

Our new French unit in January involves winter vocabulary: toque, ski pants, neck warmer, snowsuit, scarf, boots, and more. This week we have had 3 French lessons about winter clothing and have played Battleship and 7-Up, dramatized the clothing, and worked on reading sentences and speaking in a complete sentence (winter strip activity). We sang Frosty the Snowman and learned another song about winter to the tune of Frere Jacques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNstRJIwseg Frosty le bonhomme song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skR9Xqc42Qw Winter clothing words review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnCNKMBO47M Winter vocabulary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_C8JvQi0lk Winter song

Our latest SCIENCE UNIT is MATTER (solids, liquids, gases). Please ask your child to sing you the Matter Song. Ask them some questions: What is a solid? How do the molecules move? Is snow a solid, liquid or gas? Is a bubble a solid, liquid or gas? This week we created a chart on the whiteboard of our background knowledge about matter. We discussed vocabulary including: properties, characteristics and watched the following matter song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C33WdI64FiY

HOME READING PROGRAM: See Daily Reading zip lock bag. Bring back book(s) EACH morning for a new book(s). The children choose book(s) from my HARD, HARDER and HARDEST reading buckets to be exchanged as necessary, depending on their reading level. Ex: Mini phonics books exchanged daily. Early chapter book reading will be kept at home longer. Please take good care of the books, as most are from my own personal collection. Please keep them in the zip lock bags! REMEMBER to record the reading in your HOME READING LOGS. Parents, please help me out by TOTALING the minutes read for me at the end of each month. See on line class calendar for READING LOG due dates each month.

Friendly Reminder: Return your note re: FNMI Art Night being held on Wednesday, January 30^th in the evening. We hope to see you at Grant Road School for this fun, interactive art evening.

We are anticipating your child’s participation in the 100 Day Celebration Project. An email was sent to you this week and I am attaching the Word Document to this email explaining the simple, fun project for you to do with your child at home. Please send to school by Friday, February 8^th.

If any of you are able to donate a ball of wool for a special Valentine’s stitchery project, in the next week or so, we would greatly appreciate it. We are looking for bright colours (red, pink, purple, etc.). We do have ‘child friendly’ sewing needles we have purchased, to stitch with.