April 27, 2018

Hello parents and guardians,

This week students have been very excited as we dive into mapping activities in Social Studies. We mapped our classrooms separately then put them together.

We borrowed many globes from around the school and looked at various world maps on the Smart board.  We talked about the difference between 2D and 3D maps of the world.  Ask your child the difference between the two.  

In Literacy this week we practiced our new words of the week by completing a cloze (fill in the blank) activity about visiting the new pandas at the zoo.

We did a "making words" lesson which culminated with the mystery word, "chapters".

Our new words for next week are:

• after
• friend
• give
• quit
• talk

Our story of the week was called The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss.  Children listened to the story read aloud twice over two days, and were then asked to create storyboards to demonstrate their comprehension.  Here are a few pictures:

In Math this week we have been teaching various strategies the children can use when subtracting one number from another.  The children learned that subtraction means you are taking something away and that whatever is left is smaller than what you started with.  First, we talked about how to use a number line to find the solution if needed, however we are hoping to get the children to begin using more mental math strategies.  One strategy, when subtracting 1, 2 or 3 from a number is to count backwards in ones head.  Another strategy is to use addition to find the solution by counting up from the smaller number. 

We also did a very tricky word problem.  Ask your child how he/she solved it.

We were so excited by the beautiful weather that finally arrived this week.  We think that Spring is finally here!  For Science, we did an early Spring walk to observe changes that have occurred in the natural environment.  We ended up finding a lot more than we bargained for.  The children discovered two ladybug nests and just happened to be there when they were coming out from their Winter hibernation.  There were ladybugs everywhere!

We hope you all had a wonderful Earth Day!

Ms. Cvach
Mrs. Kenna

April 20, 2018

Dear Parents,

It was great to see you all at our student led conferences this week.  If you didn't get a chance to come in and meet with the teacher, please email so that we can set up a time.

In Literacy this week, we wrote about swimming and other experiences we have recently had in our journals.  Here are a couple of examples:



We made rhyming words with four of our words of the week, and did a making words lesson using the letters a  i  f  h  r  s  s  t.



The words of the week for next week will be:

• children
• did 
• him 
• who 
• am

We are beginning to learn about blends and digraphs now that we have finished our individual alphabet letters.  So far we have learned about ck and sh.




For Art this weekend, we continued our watercolour work by making spring flowers.  We are hoping they will encourage spring to come and stay for good!





In Social Studies this week we figured out as a team the important places that we believe a suburban community should have. After we made our list of important places,  we drew suburban communities together and we were even able to build our very own suburban community using Lego!





Later in the week we talked about the differences between "Needs" and "Wants". Students worked in groups to decide which items where the most important to bring with us if we took a trip to Mars.



Have a wonderful weekend!

Ms. Cvach, Mrs. Kenna, Ms. Maukonen, and Mr. Harney

April 13, 2018

Dear Parents,

This week was a lot of fun.  The children were very excited to go swimming every day.  Here are a few pictures from the pool:

In Literacy this week we made various words using the following letters: a  e  c  c  k  r  r  s  Ask your child to make 2-5 letter words, then make the mystery word using all the letters.  Hint - there is a ck combination in the middle!

The following are the words of the week for next week:

• best 
• down
• his
• fish
• new

In Math this week we continued to work on measurement.  The children have been comparing and contrasting objects using terms such as longer or shorter than.  They have been estimating how many blocks tall an object is, then checking their estimates.  We have also begun comparing mass using terms such as heavier or lighter than, and checking using balances.  

In Social Studies we continue learning about community.  This week we reviewed the difference between rural, urban and suburban communities.  We focussed on suburban communities later in the week, and began to build our own models. 

In Art this week, we read The Dot and made our own dot paintings using water colour pencil crayons.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Ms. Cvach

Mrs. Kenna

Ms. Maukonen

Mr. Harney

April 6, 2018

Dear Parents,

This week in Literacy we read a story called How The Beetle Got Her Colours. We did a guided drawing of a beetle. Here are a few samples of the drawings that were created:

Our new words for next week are:

• where
• kick
• did
• jump
• I

We learned how to print the letter Yy. The letter Yy acts as a consonant at the beginning of a word and as a vowel in the middle or the end of a word.



We did "Making Words" with the letters: o s m k y e n. See what words your child can make using these letters at home.

In Math we have been working on measurement. We are learning how to measure items using different objects. We learnt to measure tip to tip, not to overlap, and to choose a measuring object of the same size. We also learned how to put objects in order from shortest to tallest.

We also played a game called Helicopter Rescue on the Smartboard.  You can play this game at home by Googling "Helicopter Rescue Maths Game".

In Social Studies, we have been learning about different social groups to which we belong.  We started with our family, and moved on to our school, community and city.

We have also been learning about urban and rural communities. Ask your child about the different qualities of an urban or rural community. We also started to build our own community in the classroom. Here are some of our drawings of communities:

In Gym we have been playing with skipping ropes. It has been a lot of fun!

Have a great weekend!

Ms. Cvach
Mrs. Kenna
Ms. Maukonen
Mr. Harney