January 19-23

Important Reminders:

Skating starts this week. Scroll to the blog update I posted a few days ago with the link for permission slips. Your child must have their permission slip signed in order to take part. We skate every day this week except Friday.

Pokemon - We are now a Pokemon free school. See the message Mrs. Kloshinsky posted for more details.

Agendas - Good news! The agendas came faster than anticipated. We will start using them on Monday. Each day your child will update their agenda with any important information. It will be to the point. More detailed information will be posted here on the blog or on the school website if needed.

At the end of each day, I will sign the agendas and ask that you do the same. At the end of each week, each student who has all their parent and teacher signatures will have their name entered into a class draw. Winners get to choose a prize out of my prize box.

Home Reading - There are still quite a few students who haven't taking part in home reading. We talk a lot in class about the importance of practicing reading to become better readers. Please encourage your child to practice even just for 15 minutes at night. I have been getting them to sign out good fit books from the library so that they have books in their reading levels to start them off. Knowledge is power and books are full of it. :)

Math - This week we have been continuing to add double digit numbers to 100 and started introducing strategies when counting money. Next week we will explore subtracting double digit numbers to 100.

Language Arts - Learning about adding details in our writing was fun this week as the class created unique snowmen who...uh oh...got lost. They had to write "Have You Seen My Snowman?" paragraphs describing the fine details of their snowmen. I have hung them in the classroom so that next week we can read a few descriptions each day. They will have to listen carefully to the details to try to figure out which snowman belongs to that  piece of writing.

Science - I emailed a letter to each of you about our upcoming experiment where students will build insulators to keep an ice cube frozen the longest. This week we will play around with different insulators to see which work better than others. Please check your emails for details on this.

Chick, Chicka, Boom, Boom Exchange - Our class was asked to take part in a national Chicka, Chicka, 123 number exchange. So on Friday we created the #18, 18 times and invited 1L to do the same (but #14). On Monday we are writing a letter to go with our numbers and they are being sent all over the country. What a fun way to learn about kids in other parts of the country.

Star Student - This weeks Star Student will be Angeline.

Here are some picture highlights from our week:

Grade 2's used thumbprint art to create their number 18's. Then they helped the grade 1's decorate and glue their 14 snowmen.

 We played a new spelling game creating words that begin with the rolled letters.

 Dilana was our Student of the Week. We love her warm smile and kind heart.

 Making combinations to add to 7 is way more fun with dice than with a worksheet!

 One of our Daily 5 word work center activities this week was to create and complete words by rolling a letter die and finding a place on our word race sheet that it would fit.

 Lincoln was our Star Student this week. He shared pictures and told us all about his fun adventures.