Happy Weekend to everyone!! I hope you all enjoyed your extra day off! It is always so special to get that extra day with your littles! I so remember that when mine were young...i cherished every extra day and I hope you do as well! Your children are marvelous! The grade twos have all been such super stars! They are such good role models. They are helpful, they share their knowledge, they listen to the grade ones read, they are patient and kind! I am so proud of them. I am also so proud of the grade ones! They all try so hard!!! This thing called reading and writing is so confusing!! And they are all doing so well! To facilitate this learning (grade ones and twos) continue to do home reading daily! And practice and review the spelling words! Yes, they are easy..but to challenge those who have mastered the simple word...use that word in another word..so if the word is "and" ask them to write sandwhich all little words are important!! This week we learned about the chestnut and the chestnut tree. In fact we spent our Learning outdoors (on Wednesday) underneath a beautiful oak tree. We drew it. We labelled it. Then we collected chestnuts and put them under the tree for any squirrel who might come by!! Gosh they were cute..as you will see in the pictures. I am so enjoying their enthusiasm and am so happy to be teaching your child!! For next week: 1) Early dismissal on Tuesday and Wednesday...we will be doing parent teacher child conferences on TEAMS. I have sent you an invite, i hope you got it. If you have not signed up for a conference please email me and I will fit you in where there is room. If you would prefer a phone call and no teams, we can do that too. 2) Next week is pumpkin week. We will be looking at the life cycle of the pumpkin and doing a bunch of things around the pumpkin. As my Halloween gift to the children I will be bringing them each a pumpkin. We will be painting them and they will bring them home..their works of art!! 3) Next Friday is Bayview Halloween. Your child is invited to wear a costume. Please send them in a costume that if it gets wrecked due to art, walking, playing...will not devastate them. Often parents might send them in a former years costume and save their this years costume for trick or treating..but it is your choice. If it is a costume that is really hard for them to work in, please send them with a change of clothes. 4) The children will be getting lots of treats for Halloween. Yay! But..please do NOT send them to school! Save them for a treat when they get home. I love treats myself, but i know (being a parent for many years) that candy and chocolate etc...makes it very hard for children to focus and continue learning. So save them for hometime. Thank you! And with that..enjoy the copious amount of pictures ...looking at chestnuts and then our day of outdoor learning!! xo teri

Good Morning Families and a happy rainy Sunday to everyone! Did you all sleep as well as I did with the rain coming down? Such beautiful music!! Raining at night is fitting, but we have been lucky so far that it hasn’t been raining toooo much during the day, so the children have been able to have a great play without being soaking wet in class. But, if you haven’t sent in a ziplock bag with a change of clothes, it is a really good idea. I house them in the bathroom in our classroom in a big plastic bin. So if there are any “accidents” then they can just change in there and bring home the wet clothing. Easy Peasy!! We have had a great week! It was short in days, but we were busy busy! We had our first Earthquake Drill. The kids were awesome. They heard the very quiet pretend rumbling, went under their desks, held onto the desk leg, covered their heads, closed their eyes , counted to 60 when the rumbling stopped and went outside very quietly. Our group was the quietest!! Very proud of them!! This week was the week of the garlic. We watched some garlic videos, listened to some garlic stories, planted garlic together, looked at the lifecycle of the garlic, mulched the garlic and now are just waiting for the garlic to grow! And Luke has requested some garlic bread in the spring!! Im on it!! As you can see we have talked about the different things that are being harvested right now or planted in gardens right now. Planting, gardening and all life growing is something so near and dear to me and it is something that makes learning so much fun and hands on for the children. They are getting very good at writing about all these plants that we are looking at! Tomorrow we will be looking at chestnuts and chestnut trees. We will draw the chestnuts, look at the chestnut trees that are on Queen E property, talk about the lifecycle of the chestnut and do some writing and drawing outside. We have some small sit mats for the children as it is getting wetter..thank you to families who have donated yoga mats for me to cut up! This makes sitting outside so much drier and cleaner! Besides a lot of science and hands on exploration going on, we do math daily..the grade ones are working on numbers to 10, numbers that belong and don’t belong in a set, sorting and sorting rules. Grade 2’s are working on their jump math books at their own pace, while also working on numbers that are more or less or equal to another number and exploring the use of the symbols that go with those words. Everyday the children read in drop everything and read, we read around the classroom, and our daily message. We read poetry while we do the poems together and every day we write! They are definitely getting better. Please continue to do the daily homereading! Send the books back on Friday for a reload and I will send them to you on Monday. If they finish their book early, either hang on to it till Friday, or send it in and I will hold onto it till Monday. Just because they have finished this set of books, does not mean you cant read daily from material at home. Read read read! Spelling is important too. Every week the children (grade ones and twos will get spelling words) Practice them, read them, write them, put them in sentences. The more you read and practice them, the easier writing gets on a daily basis. A little quiz on the last day of the week (either Thursday or Friday) will be given to the children. It is one on one and shouldn’t be stressful. It just gives you an idea of what they need to work on at home. Reminders: 1) There will be an outdoor day of play on Wednesday. Dress appropriately. It will be school wide. I will likely have them outside after lunch for the entire afternoon. Fingers crossed that there will be no rain. 2) Please sign up for your parent/teacher/child conferences. The email was sent home to you yesterday. 3) At the beginning of the year I gave everyone a brand new sharpie..we use black sharpies all the time outside. Some of the children’s sharpies are beginning to run out. Please if you can, send your child to school with another sharpie for drawing. We use them a lot for all of our outdoor drawing activities. If you cannot, let me know I do I still have a few left! Finally a thank you for all the wonderful things donated to our classroom. For the yoga mats, thank you. For the lovely smelling soaps for their little hands thank you…and for our newest addition of a rechargeable vacuum thank you.we get little messes and this is awesome to have in our class. I appreciate it all !! Take care and have a great day. Enjoy the pictures! Xo Teri