Happy Sunshine

Hi everyone!
We had a great month learning about life on the farm. Students learned the names of most farm animals and their young. They learned where they lived and what types of food they ate. We are still planning on going to visit a farm, however it will have to be the 1st of June seeing that we missed the bus deadline. I will keep you posted on that.

This month your child will be learning about the environment,and the creatures that surround us. We will be discussing  what we can do to make a difference, what is needed to maintain a healthy environment and so on. Your child will also be learning about the life cycle of butterflies and frogs. I have been out hunting for eggs, but have had no luck so far. If any of you know of a good spot to go to get frog eggs let me know. They will also be learning about plants and flowers and have the chance to watch them grow in class.

I am sure most of you have heard about Barbara Reid these last few weeks. For those of you who are not familiar with her, she is a plasticine artist who does illustrations for children's book. The class had many questions on how she made her drawings for the books and were able to watch a video of her creating a picture for a book. They loved learning about all the different techniques that she uses to create her pictures and were excited to put what they learned into practise!.That's where the CD cases came into play. Your child created a picture in the CD case of what they liked to do in the spring. The case acts as a picture frame, so you will be able to keep it for some time. They are eager to create more Plasticine pictures! I would like to do one more with them, a self portrait of how they see themselves. I would like to put these pictures on a hard canvas. If you could send in $1.00 this will help me cover some of the cost to purchase the materials needed for this project. For those of you who might want to check out the video of Barbara Reid you can you tube it, there are others that your child might want to watch of her creating drawings!
We are learning all about measurement for the next couple of weeks and then will go right back into numbers 1-100, counting backwards, counting by 2,5,10 and addition and subtraction. If you want to continue to work on these at home please feel free to do so.

We will also be exploring our five senses in class and how they are continually working to help us everyday.

I realize that the weather is getting nicer outside and homework might be becoming a challenge. That being said I have decided to give you all a break! All that I ask of you is to read at least 10 mins a night, work on sight words, and continue to practise math facts, counting backwards, by 2,5, 10 and so on. I will have the students keep their pink song book in their sac blue to read from when they wish. If you wish to have the normal homework sent home please let me know and we can make arrangements. I will send also send home the read duo tang where you can fill in the title of the books that your child read and a place to write how they did. Feel free to let me know if they struggled with any words or note any of your concerns.

When reading with your child please ask them questions about their books, like who,what, when, where, how and why. Have them retell the story and make connections to their life.

We have also been working really hard on our own books in class. I cant wait to share them with you later on.
I think that's all for now, I hope all is well. I will leave you with something that I read awhile ago. I sometimes have to remind myself that a simple word of encouragement can make the world of difference!
"Encouragement is the best drug in the world, it somehow makes you stand taller and feel braver."
       Jann Arden