Friday, February 20th, 2026

Upcoming Dates

February 25                              Fun Lunch - Coco Brooks Pizza

February 26                              PINK Shirt Day

February 27                              Non-Instructional Day - NO SCHOOL

March 17                                  Wear Green for St. Patrick's Day

March 18                                  Fun Lunch - Subway

March 19 & 20                          Parent/Teacher Conferences

March 19                                  NO SCHOOL for Kindergarten

March 20                                  Parent/Teacher Conferences - NO SCHOOL

March 23-27                            Spring Break - NO SCHOOL 

Recommended areas to focus on at home to help your child:

**Highlighted areas are the ones we are either focusing on right now, or the ones that they need the most support with.

- Reading every night:

• focusing on fluency (can they read without stopping to sound out each word),  
• expression (changing their tone of voice to match the punctuation and dialogue of characters), and 
• comprehension (ask your child questions about the story while they read or after they finish). 

- Math

• addition and subtraction, both with and without regrouping (this could be practiced using worksheets or card games like addition or subtraction war)
• skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 25s (a great activity to practice this is by counting coins)
• Reading time on an analog clock. 
• Place Value: expanded form, written form, standard form, and block form 
• 3 digit Addition and Subtraction with regrouping 
• 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, 100 less: Write down a set of numbers and have your child calculate what the number would be if you were to have 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, or 100 less. 
• Skip counting by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s, and 25s
• Counting money (especially coins) is a great way to practice skip counting. 
• Adding and Subtracting decimals
• using money to pay for items, whether in a store or pretending at home is a great way for kids to practice adding and subtracting decimals in a hands on, practical way. 
• Multiplication and Division facts 

- Writing:

• spelling (you could also practice this skill playing games like 'Horse' using a basketball, net, and choosing different words to spell). 
• printing mechanics (are the letters legible, is their a clear size difference with capital and lowercase letters, are their spaces between the words)
• punctuation and capitalization 
• Using nouns, adjectives, and verbs within their writing
• Opinion writing: have your child tell you their opinions on things either in verbal or written form, but have them give at least 3 reasons why they have that opinion, and have them further explain each reason as well. 
• Persuasive writing: have your child write about something they want, and ask them to give at least three reasons why they should get it, and have them add lots of detail to their writing. 
• Writing letters, focusing on formatting and expanding ideas. 

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Literacy:

- Here is the link to the website where we have been listening to the podcast, incase your child has missed an episode and wants to catch up: https://gzmshows.com/shows/mars-patel/#listen 

- We continued listening to the story podcast, The Unexplainable disappearance of Mars Patel, and each day we have focused on a different comprehensive strategy. 

• Last week, we worked on retelling main events and writing predictions for who took the main character. We also worked on visualizing details of the story by drawing the main characters. 
• This week, we finished season 1 and began season 2. Which meant that we continued making predictions about the story, writing and drawing main ideas and important information from the episodes, and we did a sounds and visualization page to work on identifying details that enhance the story. 

- We talked about how we have good days and bad days in our life, and how on the bad days, we sometimes talk down to ourselves, which can make our bad days feel worse. We then talked about how positive words can make us feel confident in ourselves and our abilities, and wrote love letters to ourselves so that we can read these positives words to brighten up our hard days, or make our good days even better. These were sent home so that they can read them whenever they are having a hard day. 

- We practiced the oi and oy sounds in phonics, as well as the lion and seal rule that helps us identify where to separate the syllables in a word when we see a vowel team. 

- We talked about cause and effect, and identified the cause and effect of situations through a reading comprehension task. 

- We continued to practice our reading comprehension skills by working with a partner to read a passage about the Ancient Olympic games in Greece, and then answering questions about it on the back. 

Math:

- We continued our new unit on Multiplication and Division. We practiced multiplies of 5 by completing a colour by numbers Monster Math activity, where students had to complete the multiplication questions to determine the colour they needed for that part of their monster. When the monster was completed, they could cut it out and create a water bottle sleeve! 

- We practiced the various strategies for completing multiplication questions, practiced skip counting, and multiplication word problems in a booklet. We will continue working in this booklet on Monday. 

- We have been beginning every math lesson with our warm-up brochures, where students practice their multiplication facts for each grouping. So far, they have completed the warm-ups for multiples of 1, 2, most of them have finished for multiples of 3, and some have begun multiples of 4. 

Science/Social:

- For Social, we have been keeping up with current events by watching the Olympics, tracking our adopted countries in the races we watch, and looking at the medal count for Canada. We have also been completing an Olympic scavenger hunt, that uses facts about the host country, Italy, to solve a riddle. 

- For Science, we have continued to learn about forces and energy, the different types of contact forces (applied, friction, tension, and elastic/spring), we have also begun looking at simple machines. 

Art:

- Last week, we did a guided drawing of the Olympic mascots, Milo and Tina, and we made 3D heart sculptures. 

- On Monday, we read about the Lunar New Year, and did a guided drawing for a fire horse, since this is the year of the horse. 

Health:

- We have been talking about safety, and the different ways that we can stay safe in our world. 

• We looked at physical safety, and how we use safety equipment in various situations (i.e. a helmet on a bike, seatbelts in a car, goggles when working with tools). 
• We talked about personal hygiene and how we need to wash our hands and brush our teeth to stay healthy. 
• We spent some time talking about safety in public, and what to do if they are ever lost or in need of help when they are outside/at home/ in public when they are not with their parents. 
• We made a list of people who would be safe to talk to when they need help, and went through "what would you do situations" so that they would know what to do if they got lost on their way home, if they couldn't find their parents in a public space, or if they were home with their siblings and something went wrong. 
• We talked about the importance of knowing their parents phone numbers and addresses, and tried to fill out a safety page with this information, but many of them did not know this information. Everyone took this booklet home to talk to their parents to fill out their safety information page. 
• We talked about digital safety, and how its important to treat the internet like real life in terms of not talking to strangers, treating others with kindness and respect, and not sharing personal information with people you don't know. 
• We talked about personal safety, and how we can advocate for ourselves when we feel uncomfortable or unsafe in a situation. We also talked about what to look for in other people if they are feeling uncomfortable or unsafe in a situation. We went through some more "what would you do" scenarios for advocating for themselves, helping others, and handling disagreements with peers.