Friday, February 27, 2026

Upcoming Dates

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). 
• Have them answer inferencing questions that make them think about how the character feels or how their actions impact others to help them expand their understanding. 

- 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. 

• We listened to the description of what the colony on Mars looked like a few times to help us with our comprehension and visualization. Then the class was asked to draw a detailed picture of the colony in their podcast journals. 
• We did a Pause and Predict page, where the class listened to the episode and wrote down main events or important moments, and then made a prediction for each of these moments. 
• We discussed text-to-self and text-to-world connections, and then made connections between what was happening in the episode and what we have seen in our individual lives or in the world around us. 

- We learned how to write cursive e in both lower and upper case. 

- We focused on the ou and ow sounds in phonics, and completed a number of activities, such as a word scramble, hangman, and spelling battleship. 

- We practiced our reading comprehension by reading a passage about the origins of Pink Shirt Day, and then answered some comprehension questions about the text. We did some questions that had the answers in the text, and tried to expand our thinking by answering questions about how the two boys actions impacted others, and summarizing the main events in their own words. These questions were very difficult for the class, and we will be practicing them more in the future. I recommend practicing similar questions at home, that focus on inferencing and sequencing, at home as well. 

Math:

- We continued our unit on Multiplication and Division and completed some worksheets for part of the week, and then had some fun playing Multiplication Bingo, where students had to solve the equation I drew from the box, and determine if they had the answer present on their board. 

- 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 Science, we have continued to learn about forces and energy, the different types of contact forces (applied, friction, tension, and elastic/spring). We completed some experiments that included applying different types of force to various objects (such as marshmellows, playdough, elastic bands, licorice, and sponges). We also made toilet paper roll canons and talked about how the tension of the balloon causes an equal and opposite reaction by slinging forward and pushing the pompom out of the tube. We also tried different 'canon balls' and discussed how the size, shape, and material used for the canon balls can impact the speed and distance they travel due to drag. 

Art:

- We made origami jumping frogs to demonstrate the elastic/spring force that causes objects to move. 

- We started a colour theory project using water colour paints. We started by drawing the outline of 3 hours and 3 hills, and then painted the entire page yellow. We then let the paint dry before adding the next layer of yellow, but we were careful not to paint the first house. Doing this allowed us to see how layering the colours made them darker. The next layer of paint was red, and we avoided the first house and first hill. We continued this pattern with a second layer of red, 2 layers of purple, and a layer of blue. In the end, we will end up with a multi coloured night scene, with each house and hill appearing as a different colour due to the layers of paint. We will finish this project next week.