Division 10's News of the Week

Good morning everyone and welcome back to school!! This is our first blog of 2021! Happy New Years to you all! I had the opportunity to listen to all the children this last week share their holidays with me!! What lovely times they had! They were soo excited to come back to school and tell me all about their adventures! All the stories about skiing and playing and eating and movies and friendship just filled my bucket. I was so excited to see them all! WE spent the last week talking about resolutions and what they meant. That another word for resolution was making a promise or setting a goal for themselves. The grade ones wrote simple goals for themselves, but the grade twos worked on a two part writing system, where first off they wrote their goal in three simple sentences (like the grade ones) then they took their simple sentences and expanded them into longer, more detailled sentences. Wow, was I ever impressed by their goals and their writing. These will be included in your child's report card (which you will be receiving at the end of Jan). I think you too will be very impressed! This week we also had to say good bye to Alice and her family! They were here for one year and have now returned to Sydney, Australia. Alice definitely will be missed. The pictures will focus on Alice and her friends. We all wished her a great trip back and I think I know where all the kids want to go for their next vacation...me too!! haha NOt only did we do lots of writing, we also worked on math. The grade ones and twos are working on more patterning, looking at patterns that occur around them. They are learning identify the core of the pattern, count how many terms in a pattern, and to extend patterns. We will be going outside and using found objects to continue our exploration of patterns as well!! For our First Nations component, we looked at two important topics. One is how the First Nations celebrated the Winter Solstice and what it means to them. We watched a few videos on Elders talking about how the Winter Solstice is a time for rest and for animals and humans to take a little break. They would have festivals during this time, share stories and eat up food that might go bad. December 21st or 22nd was officially the first day of Winter Soslstice. We also investigated and talked about the Cedar Tree.There is a beautiful, big Cedar tree that is located at the front of Queen Elizabeth. So we walked there, touched it, looked at the height and shape and then came back and read a book about the Cedar tree, drew it and wrote aobut it. So as you can see we had a busy week this last week. But it was FUN FUN FUN!! Reminders:: 1) Spelling is every Monday with a review quiz on Friday. Please look for the words in your child's pack every Monday and review throughout the week. 2) Home Reading books need to be brought back every Friday as well so we can exchange them on Monday. (unless you have a different reading arrangement set up with me) 3) Library books need to be returned on Monday, that is our Library exchange day. Please make sure that your books come back by then so your child can borrow new books. 4) It is rainy...just saying..your child needs proper clothing to play outside in as they get very wet! Recess and lunch is outside..always. Finally, Thank yous. 1) We have run out of our spray sanitizer and I told the children that we were going to have to use the gel (which they dont like) and on Friday we received some spray from Hana and Laurel. If you have some spray that you would like to contribute, we would gladly accept it. 2) Our soap that everyone donated at the beginning of the year is also almost finished. We do wash our hands a lot and the children sure do love the foaming ones..they love washing their hands with that. And with that, have a great Sunday and enjoy all the pictures!! xo t