Countdown is on!

 Count down is on until Christmas Holidays! The last week of school is sure to be a fast one but full of fun and excitement as well. As mentioned before we love to dress up the last week of school and students are encouraged to participate. Here is the schedule for the week. This is optional, please participate if you wish.
Monday December 14- Christmas elves
Tuesday December 15- Christmas presents
Wednesday December 16- Santa, Mrs. Claus or a reindeer
Thursday December 17- Christmas trees or Angels
Friday December 18 - NO SCHOOL

Our liturgy is on Thursday Dec 17th,I believe at 9 am. A link will be sent out if you wish to join. 
I usually have parents come in the last week of school to read the kids their favorite Christmas story. This year we cannot do this but I was thinking that we could try to do this over zoom. Would any of you be interested in doing this? If so let me know and we can arrange a time that works for us all. 
We missed library last week so it we will exchange our books this week. If you haven't sent in the books please do so before Thursday. 

We will have our Christmas celebration on Thursday afternoon. Feel free to send in a individually packaged treat to share with the class. 

Christmas Holidays start December 18- Jan 4. The first week back we will be learning from home. I will send home everything they need on Thursday for the week of online learning. If your child will not be here on that day please let me know in advance so that I can send home what they need. Closer to Jan 4th I will email you the schedule for our zoom meets and anything else you may need to know. 
Please be sure to sign into google classroom, if you have yet to do so. Also you have access to Je lis, Lalilo as well at all times if you are looking for extra French during the break. 

Candy cane sales now available online. Each year since I started teaching, I have sold candy oh grams and collected spare change with my class to raise money for those less fortunate. When in PEI, our class donated their money to the CBC turkey drive which was through the salvation army. They even got to sing on the local radio station, which was always a big hit. Since coming to Calgary, my class has continued the tradition and donated turkeys to the Calgary food bank and for the last 4 years have donated hundreds of turkeys to the Calgary drop in center given over 1000 people a Christmas dinner. In the past with some of the funds we also put together stocking with toothbrushes, shaving cream, shampoo and so on for those in need. We have bought transit passes as well seeing that most homeless are jailed because of these infractions. This year due to covid we wont be able to do the traditional turkey drive. Students usually get to load the truck for the organization that we donate to with the turkeys we buy. That wont stop us though from collecting money and donating to an organization in need. This year the funds collected will be donated to The Mustard seed. Sales are open online and will be closed Monday to allow us time to fill orders. We thank you for all your support. 

In Social studies, we are finishing up the last bit of our community and will start our unit on rights and responsibilities. These concepts are often difficult for students to understand. The more conversation we have about them the better. We will continue this in January when we get back. 

Math, we have started addition and subtraction up to 12. Students have started to learn how to find all the number facts to a number. (6- 0+6, 1+5, 2+4,3+3, 4+2, 5+1, 6+0) They are also starting to recognize that 0+6 is the opposite of 6+0 but the sum is still the same. Over the break it would be great practice to print them off some work sheets with simple addition up to 12. It would benefit them also if the problems were set up both horizontally and vertically. ( 4+4=8  or 4 )
                                                                                                       + 4
                                                                                                          8

Here is a table you can practice at home. Below table there is a link to a math website you can look at. 

https://www.k5learning.com/free-math-worksheets/first-grade-1/addition

In English, we continue to work on recognizing long and short vowel sounds. In the new year we will start to learn about word families and blends. To help your child with reading comprehension start to ask them the 5w's after reading them a story. Who? What? When? Where? Why? and we add in how?
Review sight words and if possible start having them write simple sentences with them. I will send home their explode the code black duo-tang as well as phonic fun to work on over the break. Most students are almost finished explode the code and ideally should be near page  45  in Phonics fun. 

In French, we will finish our Christmas unit and students will be starting to learn about clothing and winter activities in French. In their package there will be activities to work on and new vocabulary to practice.

I think that is all i have until the new year. I wont see most of you so Merry Christmas to you all. My wish for you all this season is that your homes are filled with laughter, love and new memories. Be safe and take the time to recharge and be present. It will be different for us all! Sending you all happiness, positivity and love. 
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 2021 will bring new beginnings and many new adventures! 
Laurie- Anne :)

Hello December!

 Happy December! Looking forward to all the fun and excitement this month brings! In class, the students are learning French Christmas vocabulary. We have started writing our booklets on what you can find in Santa's sac and have been playing lots of games that build our French vocabulary. We are learning what makes a sentence and starting to pay closer attention to the words we hear in a sentence. Often, kids mistake words that have more than one syllable as being two words. You can play word games with your child at home to help them recognize parts of a sentence by saying a sentence, then repeat it by leaving off the last word. Have your child tell you the word that is missing, keep doing this until they have to repeat the whole sentence back to you. ( I like to eat chocolate, I like to eat, I like to, I like , I) If they are able to write out the sentence this is also good practice. When writing and reading sentences in class we have been focusing on upper case letters to start our sentences and finishing with a period. We have discussed that names and celebrations are also capitalized. We have also been playing with mixed up sentences and working together to put the words in the correct order. This is great practice for the kids, seeing that they are reading words over and over again aloud and starting to train their ears to the correct French sentence structures. This can be done at home with sentences from your child's books. Some students continue to need work on following a line of print, letter sizing and correct letter formation. I believe they simply need to slow down and review their work. 

We will be taking the next couple of weeks to finish up units and review what we have learned so far. I hope to start some reading evaluations before January so please continue to practice their sight words, colored reading lists. If you have lost the sheets you can find them on google classroom. 

In Math, I will start simple addition/subtraction up to 12. This unit will continue after Christmas. Students will start to count by 2, 5 and 10 in French. Students should be able to count by 2 up to 50, count by 5 up to 100 and to count by 10 up to 100 in French. It would be great practice if you could start this at home to give them a head start. We continue to work on using base 10 blocks to represent numbers and have made progress identifying which numbers are bigger, which number represents the tens place and ones place. 

Our science unit is coming to an end. In the next couple of weeks we will finish our sight section and explore optical illusions and learn about Helen Keller. 

In English, we have started our Christmas around the world unit. The students are having so much fun learning about Christmas traditions around the world. So far we have visited New York City, Mexico and today we went to France. We will visit Italy, Sweden, Germany, China, Canada, Australia and England. With each trip they learn about the traditions, special food or treats they get on Christmas as well as how to say Merry Christmas in the language spoken there. We will discuss the differences and similarities of our own holiday traditions. 

I was in the library one day looking for a book and came across a class set of knitting needles. I took them and walked back to class with the excellent idea of teaching our grade ones to knit a scarf. My plan was to knit one for someone in need. They have other ideas, but if we are good we will attempt to make 2! Could you please send in a ball of yarn, ideally light to medium weight size 4 or 5 will work the best. Wish me luck!

At our staff meeting they discussed online learning from Jan 4th- 8th. Please let me know if you may not have access to a device for that week or internet and we can make a plan for you and your child. All students are expected to attend and attendance will be taken. We will be having classes over zoom and smaller group sessions will take place. Once we learn more I will let you know. 

Please continue to practice our Christmas song when you can at home. We will be filming it soon to put together for the Christmas concert. The last week of school we usually dress up each day as something different. Not sure what order we will go in yet but I thought I would give you a heads up if your child wants to participate and you can prepare, Santa /Mrs. Claus or reindeer, Christmas trees, Christmas presents,  Christmas elves. We do not have school on Friday Dec 18. We will have our Christmas celebration on Thursday Dec 17. I will give more details closer to the date. 

That's all I can think of at the moment. I hope you are all well and healthy. Stay safe. Have a great week end!