Back to school!

I hope that you all had a chance to get out over the week end and spend some time with your family! Mike and I headed to Victoria for the week end! It reminds me soo much of home and my skin and hair were soo happy to get that ocean air.

I am glad to be back and more so on a routine. As you will notice our sight words have not changed this week seeing that we did not get much of a chance to work with them last week. I have a push on to finish up our health unit which is feelings. We will also be finishing up our measurement unit in math this week. Students will have their final review in the next couple of days and the test will be Friday. once we are finished of the measurement unit we will be taking a closer look at adding and subtracting numbers up to 100. Feel free to get a head start and teach your child some strategies now.
In science we will be studying magnetism. We are really lucky to have Teacher's pet coming in on Friday to teach all about them and how they work. We will continue to work on this up until mid march.
I must admit I have been pretty slack with social studies these past couple of weeks with everything going on. We will get right back at it this week by continuing to learn about the three cultures and designing our own flag for our class.

Next months theme in french is Mes messages et le voyages. Our letters to our pen pals tie in nicely with this unit but I also wanted to tie it in with the social studies unit. I have already requested from all my friends around the world to send postcards to the class with a couple of details of that particular area they are sending it from. I am asking you all to do the same. If you have friends or family around the world ask them to send our class a postcard with the name of the place, the language they speak,the culture, the food they eat, art, music, a tradition, or a cool fact. I have also encouraged my friends to pass the message along to those they know. When we receive the postcards we will find it on the map, chat about the method of transportation that we might use to get there, the different languages spoken around the world and so on. So please start now the postcards may be sent to
Ecole Holy Name
La classe de Mme Laurie Anne
3011-35 St. SW
Calgary, Alberta
T3E 2Y7

In health we will be finishing up our feelings and moving onto nutrition and exercises. We all know that children can be picky eaters! They never want to try new fruits or vegetables. For the last two years I have done a special activity in class with my students that they loved and the parents loved too. In the past I have assigned a fruit and vegetable to each student for the month of march. Each day a new student brings in the items on their list enough for the number of students in the class. The rule is that the students must try everything thing brought in even if they "think" or "know " they do not like it. Once we have the treat we write in a book whether they liked it or not and why. (great practice on french sentence structures) Once we finish the month of tasting the different items the book is sent home for the parents to look at. Most of the parents I have had said that they were surprised at what their child liked and would never have thought of buying it for them to eat. We also keep a tally for the whole month who has healthy food choices in their lunch and if they had been active the night before.  I was wondering if you all would be on board to make it happen? You will get your calendar with the date and items already set out for you along with a reminder the night before in the agenda. If you do not wish to participate please let know. I also would need to know if your child has any allergies to certain fruits and vegetables before we start. I will send a sheet home to see if your interest is there in the next week.

Could you please send in the CD that goes with the reading program. I will send home the new ones once I have everyone's. how is reading coming along anyway at home? Do you see improvements? Are you reading with your child either in English or French? I am curious to hear your feed back so feel free to drop me a line. That's all for this week. Have a great one, keep smiling:)