Weekend Update - Sunday, September 25

All ready for week 4 folks? September has blown by and now we're at the end of it already. Just a few reminders for this week.

Terry Fox Run Day: This Tuesday we will participate in our annual Terry Fox event. The kiddos should come prepared to spend lots of time outside depending on the weather—hats, sunscreen, sweaters, etc.

Open House & BBQ: Wednesday evening from 6:00 - 8:00 is our open house and BBQ. I'm looking forward to mingling with the 1/2 parents—especially the ones I haven't met yet.

Last Call for Scholastic: Technical difficulties made me unable to enter the Scholastic order last week. I'm ready to go for it now, and any last minute orders will be entered on Monday. If you don't have the flyers, but still want to place an order, you can do so by looking them up at http://www.scholastic.ca/clubs/ and providing me with the following information:

• Name of the flyer you're ordering from
• The title of book and book number from the order form
• The price including tax from the order form
• The payment (online payment number or cash) 

Have a spectacular week!

Ms. S

Weekend Update: Sunday, September 18

I hope everyone is well as we wind down the weekend. Just a few things to mention...

Picture Day: I almost forgot. Picture day is tomorrow (Monday). Hopefully everyone brings their most beautiful smiles.

Scholastic: Our first round of Scholastic forms went home last week. The due date for orders is Thursday this week. I'll place the order that day and we should receive the shipment within about a week. Sometimes it's faster than a week!

Shoes: We are getting into mud season. At this time of the year the field the kids play on is often very muddy. Please ensure your child has a pair of indoor shoes so we can keep the mud off the carpet and out of our learning spaces.

Call for Building Materials: We would like to fill a bin with building materials for our classroom building space. For the next couple of weeks, please send in the following household items as they come available:

• paper towel and toilet paper rolls
• empty tissue boxes
• clean plastic bottles/jars and lids 
• empty egg cartons
• styrofoam trays from the grocery store
• anything else you can think of that might be useful in our building supplies bin 

International Day of Peace: There will be discussions at school this week about International Day of Peace (which is this Wednesday). This web site, http://peaceworks.tv/index.html, should be useful in helping families continue the conversation at home. 

Raz-Kids and Dreambox: Still waiting for the board to sort these out for us. Stay tuned. Login details will be taped into everyone's agenda once they are available.

 

Weekend Update: Sunday, September 12

I hope everyone enjoyed the first weekend of the school year. This week we will continue to work on getting to know each other as well as setting up the norms and expectations we will follow in our classroom. We started working on the contents of our class time capsule that we will open in June. Ask your child about what we are including in the time capsule.

Parent Volunteers: Please remember that any parent who wishes to interact with students in the school (in the classroom, on field trips, etc.) must have a current vulnerable sector police check on file with the office. Contact the local police for information on how to obtain a police check. They often take several weeks to be processed, so the sooner the better.

First Week Forms: Thank you so much to all the families who have returned the massive package of forms that were sent home on the first day. For those who have not yet returned them, please send them to me ASAP and I will forward them with my class set to the office.

Onward! Have a great first full week of classes.

First Day Back!

Welcome to 2016-17! What a pleasure it was to meet the wonderful members of class 1/2. 

We had a busy day learning about lots of procedures and expectations and getting to know each other. We met our two French teachers, Madame Tscherner and Madame Kreczko. We also met our coverage teacher, Mr. Cuthbert. We read a picture book called First Day Jitters and had a discussion about what emotions we might have been feeling on our first day of school. We even spent some time drawing our self portraits, which family members will have a chance to see when they stop by during our open house on September 28.

Stay tuned for more updates as the week rolls on. I don't update the blog every day (who has time for that when we're having so much fun in grade 1/2?), but I do try to provide an update at least once per week. In order to be notified of the updates, I encourage parents to connect to me via Remind.com (the link to instructions is on the main page of the blog).

A stack of forms was sent home with the kiddos today along with their new agendas. Please return those to me ASAP and I will forward them to the office.

Big thanks,
Ms. S

Setting up Remind Notifications

Remind is a notification system that many teachers use to keep their families updated about the goings on in their classroom. I would like to use it to notify the 1/2 parent community when there's a blog update. I will also use it for urgent messages, such as when we have a snow day or if a field trip is cancelled due to bad weather.

Our class code for Remind is: 3kk33g
You can click this link for easy access: https://www.remind.com/join/3kk33g

If you would like more information about Remind, please check out their FAQ at: http://help.remind.com/hc/en-us

What is Remind and What Makes Remind Safe? is a particularly good place to start: 

http://help.remind.com/hc/en-us/articles/201342445-What-is-Remind-and-what-makes-Remind-safe-

Wednesday, June 15: A Great Day at Country Heritage Park

"I liked the chicken on the loose because it was funny."

"It was fun because we got to see animals."

"It was funny because I put my finger in the milking machine."

"I liked the John Deere place because a girl pretended to use an old phone."

"I liked that we got to go in the house where they shot Ann of Green Gables."

"I liked the milk machine because it was useful for farmers with lots of cows."

"We saw some cool stuff there."

What a great day we had at the Milton Country Heritage Park! The quotes above are from a journal activity we did today as we recapped our experience. 

Everyone was on their best behaviour and we learned so many interesting things. It was wonderful to see how the kiddos were asking amazing questions throughout the day. 

We toured four buildings: 

• Barn (caring for farm animals, the difference between straw and hay)
• John Deere store and service department (farm equipment and simple machines)
• Lucas House (what houses looked like in the 1800s)
• Milk on the Moooove (dairy farming)

Here are a few pictures from the John Deere building and the Lucas house (no pics of kids are included for privacy reasons):

Friday, June 12: Homework post

(Apologies for the delay on this. I just noticed that it didn't publish properly when I posted it on Friday.)

How can you make 83 cents with 7 coins?

How can you make 17 cents with 5 coins?

How can you make 39 cents with 8 coins?

How can you make 99 cents with 12 coins?

How can you make 50 cents with 6 coins?