Division 10's News of the Week

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