Bravo Mes Amis!

Well the pennies are finally rolled!! We had a grand total of $456.00 to purchase turkeys this year. The class ended up buying a total of 40 turkeys. Superstore was also very good to us and donated 40 boxes of stuffing and 40 cans of cranberry sauce! A big thank you to Bill Bray from Superstore! Also a big thank you to all of you for the support! The students had the chance to load the Salvation Army truck with all the turkeys, they were very excited!

We had a couple of guest readers this week. Several members of the Summerside Capitals Hockey team came in to read Christmas stories to the students as well as Brenda Meisner. We will be having a sing along with a parent as well as a holiday craft on Monday. Thank you very much to everyone who has come in.

We only have a two days left before the holidays and they are going to  be very busy! If you would like to send in a treat with your child for Tuesday you are more than welcome to.We will be having a holiday celebration along with fun activities.

Every penny counts

Merry Christmas to you all,  be safe, be merry and have a very Happy New Year!!
Cheers see you in 2012 :)

December is here!

December has arrived but you would not know it with this weather that we have been having!! Not complaining though :)
Our first week of the penny drive has been great. We already have one bucket filled. We also have been getting dimes and nickles which has helped out. The kids are excited because we have at least one turkey! I have chatted with the people at CBC Radio and they would like us to come down on the 9th of December which is the same day as our Christmas concert. They said around 4:00 o'clock and we would sing at 4:15. Please let me know if we can make this happen, if we can not get everyone there we might have to decline.  We have decided on two Christmas songs to sing, one is more up beat (Deck the halls) and the other is soft and slow (Noel, c'est l'amour). Iam hoping that we can have the down before next Friday, so we are practising every day in class.
We will be selling candy oh grams at the concert as well as hot apple cider. I am still in need of some volunteers. The students will go in shifts to help sell them with you. You also do not have to be there the whole day just before the concert starts and after. I need someone for the AM and the PM. Please let me know if you can help out.

We are finishing up last months theme and moving right into the Christmas theme. A big THANK YOU to all of you who sent in fruit and veggies. The students loved it and were asking today what they were going to have! I will send home their booklets in the next couple of days. I hope that this helps in packing lunches, I know it can be hard to get ideas!

We are still working on numbers in math and will be starting addition and subtraction up to 20. We have also been counting to 100 and by 10. Once we start to count the pennies your child should be a pro on counting to 50 in French!!

We also have looked at prepositions and verbs and will cover adjectives this month. The class has started guided reading and are doing very well. They are learning some great strategies to help them read.  (to blend sounds, pick out sounds they know and work backwards to sound out the word)

We have had some volunteers to come in to class over the next couple of weeks to do a sign song and holiday craft. If you want to read a Christmas story or decorate cookies let me know, theres still time!!Also the class has won another 50 points and have chosen to do show and tell. We will do this next week on DEC 7th.

I think that's all for now. Have a great week end
Laurie Anne

First snow fall!!

We had our first bit of snow today! Even though am not a fan of snow I was excited to see it this morning. It gave me a little extra bounce in my step. It means Christmas is around the corner and I love Christmas!!!

That being said with the first snow fall comes wet feet, mitts, pants and so on. If you could please send in a couple of extra pairs of mittens, socks in a plastic zip lock bag with their name on it. I have extra mitts and hats here just in case your child does not have them, but please make sure they come to school prepared.

Next week we will be starting our penny drive for the CBC Turkey Drive. We have already received some pennies, so please keep them coming in. We will also be selling candy canes at the Christmas concert which is December 9th. If you would like to volunteer to sell them at this time please let me know. There will be two showings of the concert in the morning and afternoon. If you can do one of those times that would be great! I had a chat to them today about why we are doing the Turkey Drive, some of them had some great answers and questions. Feel free to talk more about it at home.

Reports are going to be sent home on the 24th so keep your opens for those.
We are having a great time trying different fruits and vegetables. The students ask me every morning what they are going to have. I hope that they are coming home with positive comments about what they are trying in class. We had a Nutritionist who came in today to speak with them about healthy eating choices.They learned all about the food groups and got to play some games.

We are also learning about Domestic animals in class. We discussed who had pets at home and what type of pets can they be. If you could send in a picture of your animals that would be great. If your child does not have any pets at home they can bring a stuffed animal. We will be playing a game of Guess who and the students will be able to have a chance to introduce their classmates to their pets or favorite animals.

For the month of December I wanted to know if anyone was interested in coming in to read Christmas stories to the children (probably the last week of class) to make holiday crafts, treats or to sing some songs. If you are interested please let know.

Also I will be sending home the Decembers Scholastic order next week. They will be due on the 6th of Dec, that way if you are purchasing any Christmas gifts they will be here in time for Christmas. I can email you or send you a note in the agenda to let you know that your order is in, so that you may pick it up without your child knowing.  They have some great Holiday books. Mike and I have started a tradition where he gives me a Christmas book each year I love it!! Last years was Charlie Browns Christmas I wonder what it will be this year???

Everyone is continuing to speak french in class! They have won another 50 points! We have not yet decided what we wanted to do with these points I will let you know.

That's all for now. I hope that everyone has a great weekend!
Laurie Anne

Our fruit and veggies adventure begins

Hi folks,
We have started are new theme of fruits and vegetables. Yesterday the students had a chance to try pomegranates. To my surprised they all pretty much loved them and were asking for more!!. Today we are trying plums. We were also suppose to try peaches but I was told they could not find any. If this happens feel free to substitute it with another fruit or vegetable. Just make sure though that it is not already on the list. Sobeys have a great section with different exotic fruits, if you ever get stuck.
We are also keeping a tally of who has fruits and vegetables in their lunches. We will continue to do this for the whole month of November and will be used as a math lesson later on.

We are still working on numbers 1-20. We had a chance to estimate how many pumpkin seeds were in the pumpkin last week and had the chance to count to 200. The students loved pulling out the insides of the pumpkin.

We only have 2 days of school next week (Nov 7,8), due to parent teacher interviews and a PD day. I hope that all the interview times are good for everyone. If not please let me know and I can work something out. We will not be covering any new words and there will be no home work sent home. All I ask is that you go over the sight words with your child that we have already covered and practice counting and matching the words to the numbers. I will also send the song books home to practice.

The last week of November we will be starting our penny drive for the CBC Turkey Drive. It will run up until the last week before Christmas holidays. Last year I did this with my class and had great success. As a class we were able to buy 38 turkeys for island family's with the 530.00$ raised through the penny drive and the candy cane sale at the Christmas concert. My goal last year was to buy one turkey, but my students told me that was not a good goal. I asked why and they informed me that there is more than one family in need of a turkey on Christmas. I was shocked by that response and their compassion for others.  I understand that we might not get 38 turkeys this year, that's not what matters. What matters is that we learn how to give back to those in need even if its just one turkey, we are doing something. So that being said start saving those pennies and pass the word out that we are collecting.

That's all for now if you have any questions feel free to drop me a line. I hope that you all have a great weekend. See you next week.
Laurie Anne

Halloween is around the corner!!

Hi folks,
I hope that you all had a great weekend. We had a couple of great speakers at our convention if you want to check them out there names were Martin LaTulipe and Dr.Steven Van Zoost. 

We are on our last week of October, I can not believe how fast this month is flying by!! We will be wrapping up our family and fall theme and moving onto En pleine forme avec mes amis les animaux. Students will be learning about domestic animals as well as fruits and vegetables. I will be sending home a sheet where I have assigned your child a fruit and vegetable to bring into class for a certain day. They are only required to do this for their assigned day. Please be sure to send enough in for 14 students and have the fruit/veggies cut and ready to pass out. Students are required to try everything that is brought in to be 100% sure they do not like. After we sample the goodies the students will then write in a booklet whether they liked the fruit or vegetable. At the end of the month I will send the book home for you to look over. You might be surprised on what your child actually likes. I did this last year and it was a huge success. The parents were very surprised that their child actually like some of the fruit/veggies, they said it helped out with packing lunches. I hope that you will have this success as well!! Please let me know if your child has any sensitivity or allergies to certain fruits/veggies or if you are unable to participate.

I will also be having a guest speaker coming in from the Healthy Food Alliance to chat about healthy food choices and how they help you grow.

The students have won their 100 points!! We have decided to have a Halloween party on Monday, watch a Halloween movie and have some treats. If you are interested in sending in a treat with your child please feel free to do so. Just leave me a note in the agenda if you can or not.
Your child can wear their costume to school on Monday, however they must come with their make up already on as well as their costume. They can change out if it before going outside for recess. It is the schools policy to not permit any swords,guns, knives or anything that can be viewed as a weapon. Masks are also not allowed. We will be having Halloween centers in the afternoon with the whole school. The pumpkin patrol will be visiting the school on Friday afternoon to go over safety tips with your child.

I would like to thank Nicole Johnston (Laurens mom) and Brenda Meisner (Ashlyn's mom) for coming into class and doing a craft and showing the students how to make apple crisp!! Also thanks to you all who came out for our adventure to Arlington Farms, and to the rain that stayed away!

Have a great week everyone and if you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me!
Laurie Anne :)

Short week coming up.

I folks I hope that everyone is having a great week end. I just wanted to remind you all that this is a short week we only have school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The reason for this is because the annual teachers conference in Charlottetown.
We will be going to the apple orchard tomorrow. We are leaving the school at 11:30, please be sure to dress your child appropriately. If you are coming with us on this little adventure please meet us at the orchard for 11:50.
Seeing that it is a short week, we will not be having homework. You can still go over the alphabet, numbers 1-20 and your child's sight words as practice. It is very important that your child learn these sight words, please practice these at home.
I also sent home a Highlights form. I did not get around to writing you a note explaining it. Highlights offer subscriptions if you are interested in them. Do not feel obligated to order this magazine. I sent it home because even if you check no and sign the form Highlights will send our class something as a thank you.
I will be putting in our October book order on Monday. If you have not done so you can send them in tomorrow.
On Wednesday we have a parent coming in to do a fall craft with the students! Also Wednesday will be our PJ day that the students won a couple of weeks ago. Your child will be allowed to wear their PJ's to school.
Also if any of you are interested in meeting me to go over your child's progress so far before report cards please let me know and we can arrange a time to meet after school.
Have a great Sunday and chat soon
Laurie Anne :)

Color you food Campaign

Hi folks,
Well Im not off to the best of starts of keeping on the blog. Sorry about that!
This week is color your lunch, I signed the class up for this campaign through the healthy eating alliance. It allows our class to have a chance to learn about healthy snacks, goes great with our colors theme and allows us to win prizes as well. I hope that you all can participate. Each day we go over the color make a list of who has that color in their lunches and chat about what is it a fruit or a vegetable.
We have a points system in class, where the students get a chance to win points. They receive these points by answering questions, finding the weekly sight words in the morning message and so on. They also lose points if they are not listening, not on task.... Once the class gets to 50 they are rewarded with a little something. In class we brain stormed several ideas then had a vote on what we were going to use our first 50 points for. They have decided a PJ party, where they will wear their PJs to school. Iam happy to say that they got their first 50 points and we will be having a PJ party, date yet to be decided. Ill put it in the agenda.

We have finished patterns and now are working numbers 1-20. Students are learning the French words for each number written and spoken. We continue to count to 50 each day. I encourage you to practice at home. You can make flash cards and have them out of sequence. This is a challenge for them, but great practice.Later on in the week Ill be sending home numbers with words and the students must match them up. You can play memorie, but just start with numbers 1-10 and introduce more as you go.
I had a great idea from a parent that I would like to share with all of you. This parent makes flash cards with the weekly sight words. Once her child is able to recognize the word she rewards them with a sticker.On the flas card. Its great motivation and makes homework a little more interesting. Bravo!!

We did reschedule our field trip to the 17th of October. Hopefully the sun will be out then like it is today. If you still want to volunteer please let me know.I would also like to try and have a parent come in once a month to do a craft with the students. If you are interested in this please let me know. I will send home a sign up sheet later on. Do not worry if you are not crafty anything is better than nothing and they will love having you here.

I have started their reading bags in class this week. Students are given 3 books in their blue bag. When we have silent reading time they will practise these books over and over again. I chose books that have their sight words in them and at their level. We will see how it goes!

Thank you to all of you who participated in NORCARD!
Just a reminder that we have no school on Monday Oct 10th.
That's all for now!
Have a great week!

Picnic Tonight!!

HI everyone I can believe we are almost done of another week of school. Just a reminder that tonight is the home and school picnic. It starts at 4 and will run until 6:30. I will be there from 4:30 -5:00 at a games booth so please stop by and say hello. I hope that the sun stays out for it! Fingers crossed.

We are continuing to work on our alphabet and the names/sounds of each letter. We are writing in our journals and I must say that there printing has improved since the last time! Bravo mes amis.
We have also been talking about how to write a sentence (capital at the beginning, period at the end and lower case letters all in between)
In math we have finished patterns and will be starting numbers 1-20 today. Students will learn the names of the numbers, how to write them out and the amount of each number. I will be sending home dot cards with numbers 1-13 on them. Students are required to recognized these dots automatically and respond with the appropriate amount. Please be sure to practice these at home when they are sent out.
We have also been counting 1-50 and they are doing great!

I also wanted to let you know that the kids seem to be loving the Borrowed kitchen meals!

A reminder that scholastics are due on the 27th of September (next week)
Have a great day and hope to see you tonight!
Mme Laurie Anne

Cheers to a second week!

Well we had a great first week. This week we are continuing to work on our behavior and reviewing our class rules. The students have come up with some great rules ( respect each other and the classroom, clean up after yourself, keep the classroom clean, don't speak when others are speaking, respect everyone...)
We have started our math unit which is patterns. Students are learning about what/ how to make a pattern, repetition and how to have several different attributes to one pattern. We are also counting up to 10 and learning the written words for each number. We have started our number printing book as well. I encourage you to count with your child at home as high as they can count and practice writing the numbers out.

We are also going over the different sounds letters make in the alphabet as well as the name of those letters. Please keep in mind that ( i ) in french sounds like  E in English and the (e) in french is euh. I will send home a sheet in their homework duo tang with all this information along with frequent words, numbers 1-100, and some suggestions on what you can do at home with your child.  As we do each sound we do a printing sheet to practice our upper and lower case letters. If you have the chance to work on their printing skills at home they would greatly benefit from it. You can do the alphabet in upper and lower case letters.

I will be sending home scholastics order forms this week. If this is new to you it is a booklet that you can order books from. I send home all selections just in case you have a younger or older child at home that might want to order from it as well. There is both English and french selections. Please do not feel obligated to order from it. They do have monthly promotions that sometimes benefits our class. Last year we got 2 free books for each child and coupons to buy books for our class. I will send scholastics out at the beginning of every month and have them due back in by the middle. It would be great if you could send a check in rather than money ( I will except money though if you don't have cheques)

We are hoping to plan a fall field trip for October sometime. If you are interested in volunteering please let me know. Once I know more I will pass the information along. Iam also open to suggestions.

I think that's all for now. I hope to see you all next week at the open house. Until then have a great rest of the week and a fabulous week end.
Here's hoping for sunshine!!
:)
Laurie Anne

Back to school!!!

Well its hard to believe that summer has come and now we are back to school. I hope that everyone had a great summer. Our first day was good, all the students got along great. I sent home a couple of notes explaining the agendas as well as class rules. They can be found in the front pocket of the agenda. Please fill out the information sheets and send them back in.
I will be sending homework home next week with the students so be sure to look for that in their homework bags. Milk orders will be sent home sometime this week, which will start the following week. If you have not already done so please be sure to pay your $35.00 school supply fee at the office.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me at anytime. Have a great rest of the week!!
Laurie Anne

Grade 1

Grade 1
Here is a video that I put together from pictures that I have taken all year. I told the kids I would send them a copy in the mail. However I left all of your addresses at school soo maybe in september Ill send them home with a copy. Have a great summer and thanks for a great year!!!
Laurie Anne
Ps you have to click on Grade 1 and it will take you to the slideshow

A few house keeping items before the end of year.

If you have not already done soo could you please send in any library books, along with class books that you might have at home. I will be sending home on Friday all the childrens work, books and so on from the year. Report cards go home on Monday. Iam still awaiting Scholastic orders, as soon as they  come in I will send them home.

Our potluck is a go for Thrusday if you have offered to bring in any items please remember to do so. Please keep in mind that your child will still need a snack for the morning and maybe a sandwhich because there might be only finger foods. All parents are welcomed to come to the potluck and there is to be an old fashion carnival to follow outside with lots of exciting games to play with your child.

THank you to all of you who brave the cold day at shining waters! The kids enjoyed themselves. I will be collecting all my books from the students on wednesday so please be sure to look around the house just in case you have any as well library books are to be too. I just received an email about a summer reading program at Ecole sur Mer so Iam attaching it. It would be a great continuation of the library club that we have already started. Have a good rest of the week.
TD Summer Reading Club is an event which runs from July to late August in all 26 public libraries on Prince Edward Island.  This is a fun and free way to keep the level of reading among children at its peak. We offer reading groups, time to play, weekly activities, all of these on the theme of water. Splash! is this year's theme. In addition, children  who will visit one of the three French libraries have the opportunity to meet others with whom they can practice their language skills. By entering the group, all children will receive a poster, an activity book and stickers for each week they have read.

I invite you to contact me for any other questions.

Looking forward to read all Summer long.
Jean-François Savaria, jfsavaria@gov.pe.ca, 432-2667

Reminders for Shining Waters

Hi Folks,
We will be going to Shining Waters on Monday. We have some great parent volunteers coming along with us, a big Thank You to them. We will be dividing the class up 3 students to 1 volunteer. I will place all students in groups so you will not have to worry about that.
Somethings to remember before we go are the following.....
Please be sure to put sunscreen on your child before we leave for the parc and send along a bottle with your child so we can re-apply it through out the day.
It would be easiest for all of us if you send your child already dressed in their swimsuits, along with a plastic bag with their change of clothes in it. Do not forget to pack socks and underwear.
They are to pack a lunch and bring along a water bottle that they can fill up if needed. We will be coming back together as a group to eat our lunches.
Also students will not be able to head home with parent volunteers unless they have a written note saying soo.
I will be sending a note home tomorrow with all this information along with the names of volunteers and my cell number so that you will be able to contact me when at the park.
A couple of notes were sent home today one note is about our class picnic along with the idea of having a potluck. Please fill out the sheet and send it back in as soon as you can. We have invited the other grade one class to join us on our carnival day. The other note is a permission slip to walk up to the French School to have a library tour. My class is fairly familiar with the library but we will be joining the other class for this adventure, leaving right after lunch and being back for 2:30. At this time the librarian will discuss the summer reading program that is available there and she will also be doing a read a loud.
For those of you who have not passed in the permission slips for Shining Waters along with the $6.00 Please do so for tomorrow.
Have a great evening.
LA

Forgot to Add....

Fathers Days is coming up and we have a great little something planned. For this we need small glass jars. Could you please send one in with your child. It is important that it has a cover and the smaller the better. Thanks

The countdown is on....

Hi everyone,
Well the days are getting nicer and we are coming to an end. I can not believe how quickly it has come. Thank you to everyone who has volunteered for our trip to Shining Waters. If you still want to come along you are more than welcome. A sheet with more information will be sent home later next week. Also I wanted to thank you all for coming to our meet the author night. It was a great success.
We had a lock down practice the other day as most of you probably heard. They did great and were very quiet. Bravo!!

The students got a 100 points for their Respect chart, they all voted on going outside to play soccer baseball. We also had a picnic outside yesterday and played our instruments that we brought in for M (music).
We are continuing our alphabet countdown next week letters are K, J, I,H,G.
K- Kilometre and Kangaroo- Students will walk around the school and jump as kangaroos
J- Jus-Students will be making juice
I- IWK- I ask that you make a voluntary donation to the IWK.I will send the donation on behalf of our class
H-Hockey- Students can wear their favorite hockey jersey and paint their faces the color of their favorite team
G- Gateau- Students will get to have a tasty treat. (If any of you would like to volunteer to make a cake Id be more than happy, the students would probably enjoy it more than mine haha)

I would like to have an old fashion carnival/picnic with students and parents before the end of the year. If you are interested in helping me plan this even please let me know, seeing that we do not have all the much time left to plan.It would be in the last week of June either the 22 or 23.

If you would like to meet with me before the end of the school year, feel free to so soo. Iam available most days from 3:00 to 4:00, just send me a note to let me know when you'd want to get together.

I hope that you all have a great weekend!!
Laurie Anne :)

Meet the author night

Hi Folks,
I have had a few questions about meet the author night. When you come please bring your child with you, you can also meet your child after school to it that is easier for you. There are some students staying after school to help set up, so if that is easier for you may do so, but please let me know ahead of time.
If you are sending in snacks you can send them in with your child or bring them with you. Once you arrive you may check out all the students work, they have small write about done about themselves that you can read. Also depending on when you arrive, that will be the time that your child will share their  book with everyone. So they will have a read aloud. Once they are finished they made sign their books and you can take it home. I would like to however keep the ones that are not laminated in class until the rest of the year.They have worked hard on their books and have done a fabulous job coming up with their own ideas. They look forward to writing their books every day and in most cases if they finish their work early they are right back to working on their books. I hope that you enjoy this time with us in class and thank you for coming and celebrating your child's accomplishments. It means a lot to them and me as well. If you have any questions feel free to call me or email me anytime.
 Until tomorrow
LA

Hello sunshine....its about time!!

Its nice to finally see the sunshine, lets hope that it stays the rest of the week. June is a couple of days away and the school year will be over before we know it.
We will continue with our environment theme into June. Junes theme is Lété,c'est pour jouer (summer is for playing) We have a lot of great things planned for the last couple of weeks. We have decided on our end of year field trip and we will be going to Shining waters. We will be going there Monday June 20th. I will be looking for volunteers, so please let me know if you would be interested. We are hoping to have at least 5 parent volunteers that way we can divide the class up evenly.
Our alphabet countdown continues this week with letters U,T,R,S,Q. A list has been sent home with more details.
Our meet the author night will be this thursday starting after school at 3:15 up until 5:00. I hope to see you all there. The students are very excited about showing off all their hard work.
This Friday is our end of school concert, all the information is listed on the school website. You can also o check out some of our students artwork on there as well.
That is all for this week I hope that you all have a great week! Get out and enjoy the sun.
Laurie Anne

Hello sunshine??

I hope that everyone had a great weekend.
On Friday we started our alphabet count down of school, hard to believe that we now only have 24 days left of school. The weeks letter will be Y,X,W and V. We have already done Y and Z. We ate yogurt and did some yoga, today we will play some music on an xylophone. Tomorrow is W for WOW show us your talents. Your child will be able to show the class their hidden talent or a magic trick. You may go online and find some neat and simple tricks. Friday will be V for Violet where your child can wear anything they have purple and also if you have any purple snacks feel free to send those in as well. I will post the following weeks list this coming week end.
 We have finished up our geometry unit and will be looking at numbers 0-100 as well as addition up to 20. Please keep counting with your child at home.We have also learned how to play Yahtzee in class, this could be played at home as well.
We are continuing to work on our books in class. We are now going over them and making sure that we have a capital at the beginning of a sentence, that there are no capitals in the middle of our sentence as well as the correct punctuation, whether it be a point or a question mark.  They are very excited to show off their hard work! They all have some really great stories.
I hope that you get out and enjoy the sunshine. Have a great rest of the week.

The countdown is on!!

I cant believe how fast this year has gone by. I guess when you are having fun that's what happens!

We will kick off our countdown to the last days of school tomorrow. We will be doing this by having a letter of the alphabet each day and working our way up to A. Each day will be a new letter on that day we will do an activity to go along with that letter. The students will also be filling in words that correspond with these letters in their own little dictionaries to build their vocabulary. Friday May 20 we will be starting with Z and students are asked to bring in a stuffed animal to add to our in class zoo. We have a bunch of great activities planned for some of the letters.

We will be ending our geometry unit this week and moving our focus on numbers up to 100 and addition/subtraction up to 20 for the remaining of the year. I encourage you to work on counting up to 100, backwards, by 2,5,10 and simple addition/subtraction at home.

The library club had a great start last Saturday. Thank you all for coming and showing your support. I look forward to see you all this coming Saturday at 9:15 Ecole Sur Mer. We will be doing a read aloud along with a small craft. I expect that most will be reading for their first little surprise!
Marie Pier and I have come up with some ideas for the final prize for your child which we will take care of but we were wondering if you would like to add a little something to it. We thought maybe a gift card to Coles or Indigo or even purchasing a magazine order for your child which will come monthly. We thought that this might be a great idea and give your child something to look forward to each month. Plus who doesn't love getting mail. We are going to look into getting a list of different French Magazine's, so if you are interested we will pass this information along to you.

Our meet the author night will be coming up in the next couple of weeks. I have chatted to the students and they are all excited about this evening. We were thinking of having it the week of May 31-June 4th. Please let me know if that week works for you and we can then decide on a date I was thinking either Tuesday or Thursday. Wednesdays I coach soccer after school so I am unable then.

Friday May 20 the students are allowed to come to school either in a costume or their PJ's. They have won this through a new reward system that we have started in class. It is call RESPECT we chatted in class about what respect is, what it looks like and we have been putting what we learned to work. Each day the students can learn up to 7 points ( a point for each letter of respect). If I see that someone is being disrespectful I take a letter away. So far we have been doing good. Once we get to 50 points students were allowed to pick a special activity that was rather small. Once we get to 100 we will do something bigger like have a movie in the afternoon with popcorn or go outside to play soccer baseball. This system has been really working feel free to talk with your child at home about respect outside of school as well.

That is all for this week, I hope to be more on the ball for next weeks blog than I have been. Till then enjoy the sunshine and keep smiling  :)
Mme Laurie Anne

I can not believe that we are nearly done of this school year, two months left and they are going to fly by. We are coming to an end of our farm theme this week and starting our new theme which will be Mon environment ,cest important (my environment is important) In this unit we will be discussing our environment, what we can do to protect it, such as litter less lunches, picking up garbage and putting it in the garbage, shutting the water off when we brush our teeth as well as to shutting the lights off when we leave a room. I would like to encourage you to take this months and promote the litter less lunches. I know that this will be difficult but instead of a granola bar with a wrapper you could send an apple or orange and so on.
Also this month we will be exploring how plantes grow,what they need to survive, insects and how they plan an important roll in our environment.

This is a busy month for use seeing that we have two outings in the same week. On May 11th we will be visiting the French school to watch a play that the students there will be putting on. Also on Friday May 13th is when we are visiting a local farm. We would appreciate some volunteers to come along for the tour so if you are interested please let me know and Ill pass you along all the details.

The students have started to write their own stories and have been presenting them to the class. They are very proud of their accomplishments and I would like to recognize them for all of their offers by having a meet the author night. I was thinking that we could do this after school one day where you could stop by the school with your child and view some of the books that they have wrote. The students could sign a copy of their book for you, we would also have some students share their books. If you would be interested in attending please let me know and I will start to plan our evening of appreciation.

I also sent home on Friday a note to see if some or all of you were interested in joining a reading club. The reasoning behind this club is to promote reading over the summer months and have the students explore the many wonders that a library can offer you. I feel that if we start this process now, the students will become comfortable with the library and hopefully will want to continue to go through out the summer. Are plan is to meet every Saturday or every other Saturday at the French schools library and help the students pick out books that they are able to read, as well as to have story time, the Liberian there also puts on puppet shows. If this also interests you please let me know and we can start right away.

Thank you all for sending in the egg cartons, please continue to do so because we are still missing a few for the activity that I have planned.
Thank you all as well for your continued support, I encourage you all to continue working with your child at home with the alphabet, sounds and math additions/subtrations.
Laurie Anne

French Week

This week at school is French week, all students in the school will be encouraged to speak french and partake in the activities. There will a lot of activities going on this week. Some activities include Bingo, jelly bean guess,mystery person, a maple syrup demonstration, and a chance to taste real French cuisine.

In class we will be continuing to learn about farm animals and the farm. We have confirmed that we will be visiting a farm in the next coming week, it looks like it will have to be in May. Once we have a confirmed date I will be sending home permission slips. If you are interested in coming along please let me know.
This week we will be doing a fun activity with modeling clay. Students will be read 2 books where the illustrations in the book are made from clay, they will be asked to make their own picture which will be framed in a CD case so you will be able to keep it for some time.
The students have started to write their own books. We write for 30 mins a day and they love doing this. Some of them will continue to work on them when they have free time. I'm really excited to see what they come up with. Once students complete a book, they will get another one to start working on. Once everyone has completed one book they will share them with the class.

We continue to get postcards from around the world. Some of the places we have gotten cards from are New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Italy, Holland, Japan, Fort Mcmurray, Florida and many more and counting.

The students have been working on how many weeks in a year, how many days in a year and how many months in a year. We have also been practising the names of the 12 months in order and the 4 seasons. You can work on this at home with your child if you want.

That's all for now, I hope that you all had a great week end and got to get out and enjoy the sunshine. Till next week Keep smiling :)
Laurie Anne

Here is a brief schedule for French week
Monday- Kick off to French week with french expressions, Oh Canada, Jelly bean guess, Mystery person (all week) Puppet show
Tuesday- French expression continued, Bingo
Wednesday- Cnt French expressions, French speaking visitor, maple syrup demo
Thursday- cnt French expressions, dress in acadian flag colors (red,blue,white, yellow) French cuisine
Friday - end of French expressions, winner of jelly bean/mystery person, Bingo

À la ferme

Happy Wednesday!!
I hope that you are all having a great week.
Thank you for sending in the egg cartons, please keep them coming. For those of you who ordered Scholastic for the month of March, it is on its way. Scholastic had some troubles on their end regarding my account and until that was fixed I was not able to order books. They are now on their way though and I expect them sometime next week.

Thank you again for helping your child build some great looking modes of transport!! I took their pictures today with their creations. I plan on placing their pictures on their write up. We will presenting their projects in the next couple of days. The projects brings the end of our theme En voyage, however we will still be receiving postcards and looking up the destinations on the map.

Our new theme is À la ferme ( on the farm) I'm excited about this months theme, seeing that when I was young my father had what we called a funny farm. It was actually a hobby farm and we had all kinds of animals (pigs,cows, ducks,goats,chickens,roosters and one horse. I even bought and raised my own pig. His name was Piggy ( I know not that creative) and well you can all probably figure out piggies outcome. But it was a great experience for sure. I'm excited to share my stories with the class. I'm looking into visiting an organic farm as a field trip and having some guest speakers come in and speak to the children about their lives as farmers.

We are still having fun in math learning lots about measurement. Today we learned about surfaces and what we would need to cover a surface, the students compared different surfaces and determined which were larger than others. Please continue to review addition and subtraction up to 20 with your child. If you need flash cards please let me know and I would be happy to send some home for you.

The month of April is fairly busy and will be over before we know it, I'm sure. This Friday we have an assembly to see how much our school raised for Juvenile arthritis. If we raised more than $1500.00 a teacher and a student will be dying their hair blue. We are encouraged to wear blue for this event in order to show our support. So please be sure that your child wears something blue. They are asking that you send in 25 cents for this. Next week we will be having a visit from the Easter Seals ambassador. Also there is talk about a talent show happening at the end of the month. Mrs. MG will be having auditions so if your child has a talent they would like to show off, feel free to encourage them to participate. We will also being going to a puppet show on April 11th. Please look for permission slips in the next couple of days.  I think that's all for now. If you have any questions feel free to let me know. I hope that you all with have a great rest of the week and a fabulous weekend.
Till next week....
Laurie Anne :)

Happy Return!!

Hi folks,
I hope that you all had a great March break and that everyone is well rested. I had a great trip but I am glad to be back. The students will get a chance to see some pictures from my travels and they will also be very excited to see that Dimoitou came along for the adventure.

We are continuing our travel and methods of travel theme this week. We are getting a lot of post cards from around the world. I hope to have more through out the remaining months so that we can keep the students learning going. They get very excited when we get a new postcard. We have been very lucky seeing that most of them have been in French. After I read the postcard we find its location on the map then chat about how we would get there, whether it is by train, plane or boat. They are starting to develop a sense that the world is very large and that it does take sometime to get to certain destinations.

We are having a great time in math learning about measurement and have a bunch of great activities planned for the next couple of weeks. I still encourage your child to work on their addition and subtraction, counting to 100, counting by 2,5, and 10, as well as counting backwards.Somethings that you can do at home is have them observe different household items and determine which are long(long),longer (plus long), short (court)shorter(plus court), about the same ( a peu pres aussi long), far (loin) further (plus loin), furthest ( le plus loin).

We have started a new reward system in class which is designed to encourage students to speak french in class. If a student is speaking french in class, whether it is to a friend or myself they are rewarded with a sticker on a piece of paper. At the end of the week a store will be open, where students will be able to purchasee items with their stickers. Every item will have a different value, larger items will be worth more.I have gone to the Dollar store and picked up a bunch of items. If you are interested in helping out you can also pick up a few items from the dollar store and send them and I will add these items to the store. Our first store opening will be this Friday!
In the next little while we  will be doing some crafts that will require egg cartons, if you could, could you please save them and send them in with your child. Also we have 2 boxes of Kleenex remaining in class, which will not so us till the end of the year. If you could send in a box with your child it would be greatly appreciated!

That is all for now, I hope that you have a great week !
Laurie Anne :)

I thought I would include a picture of Dimoitou enjoying a boat ride through Venice, Italy!

March break is around the corner!!

Hi everyone,
I hope that you are having a great start to the week. This will be a very short week for the students seeing that school was cancelled Monday,delayed today and no school Friday do to parent teacher interviews.
We have finished up our theme on home and will be starting En voyage. I have gotten some great responses from my friends around the world about sending our class some post cards. I expect a lot in the next couple of week. If any of you are going away for March Break feel free to drop a post card in the mail addressed to the school.I will list the address below.I would also ask you to take pictures of your vacation and ways that you are getting around while away. The students will then take these pictures in to share with the rest of the class. If you are not going away, you may still send some pictures in of the activities that you have over the break.

The students are absolutely loving the science unit. I try to have at least 3 students present a day. They are asking lots of questions (in french!!) and learning new vocabulary. Our first experiment will be on how we use our ears to locate sound.

We have changed literacy centers today. All the centers are focusing on the sounds such as on,ou,oi and so on. Some of the centers include go fish with sounds and punctuation, bingo, reading with a partner and an interactive computer game.
I will be changing the math centers this week as well, which will be focusing on additions and subtractions. We have been practicing number recognition with our dot plates. (A plate that has a number of dots on it, lined up in rows of 5.) Students should be able to recognize within 3 seconds the number on the plates. So far we are mastering numbers 1-15. I encourage you to keep counting with your child at numbers 1-100 and have them count backwards as well.

I will be adding some great fun french websites that your child can go on at home. Some of them even allow the students to be read to in french! Have fun!

That's all for now. I look forward to meeting with you all at the parent teacher interviews. Till then have a great rest of the week. Keep Smiling :)

En voyage

Well February has come and gone. Iam looking forward to March. Hopefully it will be easier on us and have very little snow!!

A new month means a new theme!  This months theme is called En Voyage, which is very fitting because March break will be here before we know it.We will however continue to work on last months theme(home), seeing that we miss a lot of days. Students will be exploring the different methods of travel (bus,car,plane,boat,train) as well as the different places they can travel to. I have made a request to some of my friends from around the world to send our class post cards. This way students can be exposed to different places around the world and we can have small discussions on how one might get to that destination.(method of transportation) If you have any family or friends around the world, feel free to have them write the class. They may send their postcard addressed to me at the school. Also, seeing that our theme is travel, we will do a little project about our March breaks. I will give you more details later on. So keep your eyes open for that.


I have sent home the notes about our science project. The students are very excited about this. I will be having some small experiments in class through out this month to further their understanding of the 5 senses. The students have also asked to have science centers. This is something that I will look into and if possible will have once a sequel.

We are just about done of our math unit on addition and subtraction up to 12. I encourage you to make flash cards at home and work on these problems with your child. Once we wrap this unit up, we will moving onto measurements. I know that the students will enjoy this unit, seeing that there are a lot of hands on activities. We have also added math centers to our daily schedule. The students are really enjoying this and it is also a great way to reinforce what they have already learned.

As a class they have come along way in reading. I'm so very proud of each and everyone of them.We are starting to predict what might happen in our books before reading them. Also we are paying more attention to punctuation and reading with expression. We will continue to work on reading strategies. Keep up the fabulous work guys!!

Parent teacher interviews are coming up. I will be sending home times sometime this week. Please let me know what works and what does not so I can make arrangements if need be. I look forward to seeing you all next week, until then I hope you all have a great week.
Keep smiling

Laurie Anne

Sorry for a the delay!

First and foremost I would like to apologize for this overdue post. I could not remember my log in and password, so I had to create a new blog. SO lets get to it...

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and that Valentine's day treated you all well. The new year is off to a great start and the students are coming along very well. They are all starting to speak in full sentences and are asking how to translate words  from English to French. I have now limited my English in class and speak it only when needed, which is rarely. Come March I will no longer speak English, unless necessary.I am very proud of all their progress and your support at home shows. So thank you for that!

There are a couple of topics that we are going to cover in this months theme. We are going to look at all the different rooms in our homes and what we can find in those rooms. Also we will be covering sicknesses and the different seasons though out the year. The students will be placed in groups and assigned a room that is found in the home. The students will then be responsible to paint their room and all the items that might be found in that room. We have been reviewing out sounds that we have covered in previous months and will be moving onto some new sounds in the coming month.

In math we are covering additions and subtractions up to 12.We have also covered doubles and will be going over doubles plus one. We continue to count to 100 and have been counting by 2,5, and 10 with great success.We have also gone over story problems, how to solve them and answer them in a complete sentence.We will continue to work on this through out the school year.Feel free to practice addition/subtration at home with your child. If you would like me to send home some flash cards please let me know and I can make arrangements.

We will be starting our science unit this coming month, which will be covering our 5 senses. I will be sending a note home with more details about a project we will be doing in class. We have talked briedly about the different provinces in Canada as well.It was great to see them make connections to the other provinces.

We also have a new addition to our class, which will make us 16. I would like to welcome Aidan to our class. We are excited to have you become a member of our team! Bienvenue Aidan!!

Just a few reminders
Scholastic orders are due Feb 18th (I will be placing my order on Feb 22, if you still want to send them in)
No school on Feb 21-Islander day
Pink shirt day is Feb 23- This is to bring awareness of anti-bullying.

Enjoy the rest of your week!
Laurie Anne