​Another snowy start to our week!  My fingers are crossed that some warmer weather will come our way soon.

This week we will continue with our multi age group rotations during purposeful play.  The students really enjoyed this new approach last week and made some suggestions today for future groups.

I am sending home a list of questions that can replace “How was your day?” and “What did you do today?”  Often children have trouble narrowing in on details so these questions focus on specific things. 

Today we began our unit on states of matter.  We made a list of solids, liquids and gases.  Winter is the perfect time for this unit as there are lots of experiments we can conduct outside.

Literacy:  Please continue to listen to your child read/read to them each night.  The goal is not only to build their skills as a reader, but also to build on their love of reading. 

Our No Excuses words for this week are: away, don’t, I’m, them and what.  We practice spelling these words correctly and also how to use them correctly in sentences.  This week we will continue learning about contractions.  Our read aloud, Thelma The Unicorn, featured lots of contractions that students were quick to spot.

In writing we are going to begin learning about dialogue.  This is a skill we will work on for quite a while as using quotation marks takes lots of practice.  Mrs. Burnett and I have a special project in mind once the students are comfortable with writing dialogue.

Math:  This week our numbers will be 81-84.  You can ask your child to show you the number as tens and ones, get them to skip count to that number, make an addition or subtraction equation with that number as the answer, etc. 

We are continuing to work on doubles and doubles plus one facts and on representing numbers to 100 in several different ways.  Please practice skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s.  Last week we learned about how coins are made and looked at our play money and real versions of the coins.  The students liked discussing the similarities and differences (different images of Queen Elizabeth, special edition coins).  Today we set up a store and had the chance to ‘buy’ things with dimes.  When someone encountered a 25 cent price tag we worked together to figure out how much money they should pay me and what I should give back for change.  We are also working on words problems.  Some students are beginning to work on adding two digit numbers while others are continuing to work on building their mental math strength with sums to 20.  We are also working on answering questions about the calendar.

Dates to Remember

Monday, January 21: Papa John’s

Tuesday, January 22: Tots n Taters, Tuesday breakfast program

Wednesday, January 23: Library Books due

Thursday, January 24: Great Canadian Bagel, February lunch orders due, DECH meeting at FHS 

Friday, January 25: Tots n Taters, Mrs. Davis will be away and Mrs. Dobbelsteyn will be in

Sunday, January 27: Family Literacy Day

Have a great week!​