Short week

Hi everyone,
We are in our last week of November! I can't believe December will be upon us in  a couple of days. It's my favorite time of year...I love everything about Christmas, the smells, the music, the colors, gathering with friends and everything in between.
This is a short week, this week seeing that we have parent teacher conference Thursday night and all day Friday, so no school Friday. I look forward to chatting with you. If you have any questions about the report card please bring it along with you to discuss.  Also if you have not yet sent back your child's report card envelop you can bring it with you to interviews. Please sign it. We use the same envelop for all reporting periods. If you have not signed up for parent teachers there is still space available, you can do so online. At the conference you are encouraged to stop by the annual book fair. This will be set up in the library. The students will be able to preview what the book fair has on Thursday. They usually write a wish list that they take home with them. There will also be a class wish list there for you to donate books to your child's classroom. Because of the book fair we do not have library this week. You can also go on the hunt for missing items that your child may have lost at school. This is usually set up in the hall. Keep your eyes open!
With a new month a new theme, students will be learning about vocabulary related to the Holiday season, Christmas traditions of those in their class and around the world. We will also learn to sing some Christmas favorites in French.  We will continue to work on writing a simple sentence with correct punctuation as well as putting letter sounds together to form simple words or nonsense words. You can work on this at home as well with magnetic letters if you have any. Its a great way to build decoding skills. We will also be starting our literacy centers. We have done a couple practice runs and I think they are ready.

Our class will be kicking off our annual Turkey drive this month, a little late than I normally start to be honest. Students will  be collecting spare change in the coming weeks and selling candy canes at our Christmas concert to raise money to purchase turkeys for those in need during this time of year. I will be looking for volunteers to help sell before and after the concert. If you are interested please let me know. Other than candy cane sales students from my class in the past have done choirs at home, collected bottles and brought in spare change. They are encouraged to this again this year. One boy a couple of years ago sold some of his old toys and donated the money to purchase turkeys. If you are wanting to participate with your child you may send in your spare change and start a choir list right away. The students love sharing how they collected the money they are donating and the act of giving becomes contagious! We will be collecting the money up until Dec 14, 2017. With the money collected from the candy cane sales and change collection we will purchase as many Turkeys as possible which will be donated to the Calgary Drop In Centre. This year I am hoping to share the turkey goodness with other organizations in our community not just the Drop In, seeing that we had so many last year. If you have any suggestions please let me know. I have a couple in mind already.  Why have we donated to the Drop in the last couple of years you may ask? I got the idea when our staff volunteered serving breakfast at the beginning of the school year. I had asked what the clients ate at Christmas, they told me that it depended on what was donated but usually it was never turkey seeing the cost of it. At that time the lady said that the last time was probably over 5 years ago, never since she had worked there. I knew I would be doing the Turkey drive seeing that I have done it every year since I began my teaching career. So I ran it by my class and told them about the clients at the drop in and how they have not had the opportunity to have a traditional Christmas meal. They were all over it and we have been providing  the clients a hot turkey meal since then. At Christmas the Drop In will see over a 1000 clients. Last years class purchased 171 turkeys, thanks to our awesome Holy Name community. This will the fourth time our class has done this Pay it forward project and provided the clients at the Drop In a traditional Christmas dinner. Our turkeys will be enjoyed on Christmas day and depending on how many we get probably a couple of more times. If you have any questions about the Turkey Drive feel free to drop me a line.

Scholastic book orders are due tomorrow. This will be the last order until January. I hope to place the order over the week end to make sure that they will arrive well before Christmas. If you are saving any of these for gifts just let me know with a note or by email. Once they arrive I will keep them for you.

Ginger bread forms are due Friday, however I heard through the grape vine that they have no room left. If you need any info on the you can contact Mme Marie- Christine.

We will have some volunteer opportunities coming up in the weeks to come. Our first one is a lot sooner than I thought...sorry for the short notice. Looking for 3 volunteers on Dec 7th morning starting at 8:45 until lunch time to join us at Story book theatre. The students are off to see Charlie Brown's Christmas. You will be getting an email from our parent rep about some other days as well. The last week of school you are invited to come in and read Christmas stories, do a craft, if you play an instrument come in and sing some songs. If you wish to do a craft, let me know if you need any items I can grab from the art room or pick up.

That's all for this week. Looking forward to chatting with you all tomorrow evening and Friday. Have a great rest of the week.
Laurie Anne

Reminder: Scholastic book orders due tomorrow...if you forget you can bring it Monday to your interview, No school Friday, Return reading packs Monday, Sandwich foundation Dec 5th.