Thank you!

Dear parents,

Thank you so very much for your thoughtful cards and generous gifts. It's too much!

We had a fun last day today, and each student received a little gift from me. It's a blank drawing book and new pack of crayons to use at school, and candy cane to bring home. We have a very artistic class and I'm often being asked for drawing paper at lunch, so now each student has their own cahier de dessin to keep in their desk for moments like these. They were excited to start using it right away! 

This morning we did our last kind gesture, which was to write some Christmas cards. We followed the letter template that we wrote together last week and glued our writing inside nice paper. Many cards have already been distributed to classmates, and some are coming home. This afternoon, we watched an amazing French movie, Ernest et Celestine. We often watch individual episodes at lunch, but the movie is just wonderful - such a sweet story of an unlikely friendship with beautiful animation. Please ask what your student thought of it!

I hurriedly prepared some "just in case" work packages and sent them home today. It's not the fun cut-and-paste, rich, collaborative, activity-based stuff that we would do at school, but having these worksheets printed and at home will make life enormously easier, should we have to do some remote learning in January. I've asked the kids to please keep these somewhere safe (best: leave in their backpack) and not work on it over the holidays. Should we be back on January 3rd, as planned, please bring it back to school so that we can use it here. We have also packed every item from our cubbies - except a couple unclaimed pairs of shoes (let me know if you are missing some).

Have a wonderful break and keep your fingers crossed for January 3rd!

Best wishes, Tamara

Happy Holidays!

Dear families,

Happy last week of school! I've had a busy week of packing and moving homes and I feel like I've gotten a bit behind with posting updates and words, so here we go.

As you know, each school day this month, we are drawing a card from our calendrier de gentillesse and reading what kind action we can focus on that day. We've done things like asking how we can help a teacher, writing to le Père Noël (our letters are in the mail!), making a little ornament with hidden chocolate for a neighbour, cleaning up our classroom and school yard and making treats for our families! I hope you enjoyed your Rice Krispie Squares last week!

We are building on our letter writing skills by learning to write a holiday card to a friend. We've done some group writing to learn the structure of a letter or card, and soon we will get to make our own to bring home and give someone.

This Friday is the last school day before the break. Our class is having pyjama day, so students are welcome to come to school in pyjamas and bring one stuffy if they wish. I plan to have a fun afternoon of either watching a movie or games and activities. I may offer small individual baggies of popcorn, so please let me know if your student should not have popcorn.

In language, we've also been focusing on connecting the vowel sounds we are learning to the consonant that comes directly before. So, after we circle 'ou' in the message, for example, we then practice reading it with the letter before, for example, "jou" in bonjour. For some students, this is review, but for many, it's a good next step in sounding out new words.

Here are the current and last sounds and words of the week:

E might win as the most complicated letter of the French alphabet. It can make so many different sounds depending on the accent or letters around it. In this case, when followed by ‘s’, it makes a more relaxed sound, as in “best”. Your student has probably already learned these words, but it might be a good time to go back to playing with moveable letters to play with different combinations. 

les, mes, tes, des, c’est

Bonus words: il est, ses

This is one of my personal favourites. I think ‘oi’ is a fun sound to say. In English, it sounds just like ‘wa’, as in “water”. At first, children sometimes use the letter a when trying to write this sound. That’s just fine, they are similar. From now on, we’ll help them listen a little closer and remind them that there’s an even better way to write that sound. Our sound poster in class has a picture of a bird and the word oiseau. If you’re doing rule posters at your house, looking at this one is an immediate reminder of what the sound looks like.

oiseau, froid, moi, toi, voiture

Bonus words: roi, loi

In math, we've been learning how to organize data into a graph. We began by graphing our birthdays by stacking individual squares over the correct months and were able to notice that the majority of our class was born in the spring. We've since done more class surveys to gather information (e.g., what is our favourite school subject?), filled in tables with the results, and learned to present it as a neat bar graph (diagramme a bandes), using a ruler and colours to make the graph neat and attractive. This week, we are inventing our own individual survey questions to ask our classmates, and graphing the data we collect.

In social studies, our culminating task for this unit on roles and responsibilities, was to think about what we want to be when we grow up and fill out a large project template. We first drew a detailed picture of ourselves at work, wearing what we might wear and performing a task. We then listed some of the responsibilities we would have in that role. Finally, we considered and wrote what would be fun about our job, and what would be hard. Students had a chance to present their projects to each other, and we also had fun playing a charades game where the roles to guess were all helpers in our community. Please ask your student what they said they want to be when they grow up! In January, we will take a break from social studies and get back to some science.

In art, I decided to try some Christmas hand-print art, inspired by what I tried to do last year with baby Wales, but he was just too wiggly (it turned into foot-print art)! Fortunately, many students had some experience with hand-print art, so they knew just what to do, and nobody was afraid to get their hands dirty! Our artists were able to try two out of my 4 ideas. They will look amazing in a frame!

Yesterday, you received a package of rapid covid tests. I assume you have received information from the office about this, or that there are instructions in the package. Please call the school if you are unsure of how to use these.

I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and relaxing holiday. 

Take good care, Tamara

(This is us playing "Quelle heure est-il Mr. le Loup?" during DPA!)

It's winter!

Dear parents,

Thanks for being prepared with all the snow gear - I certainly was caught off guard! We really enjoyed playing in the fresh snow and stayed nice and cozy in all our layers. The snowflakes last week were incredible - like a movie! 

We have talked in class about some new routines we have to get used to for the winter... here is some of what we are trying to remember:

- boots go on the trays under the heaters to try to keep the classroom floor dry

- indoor shoes must be worn (unfortunately, if we don't have indoor shoes, we need to keep our boots on, so I recommend leaving shoes at school now)

- if we take off hats or layers outside, pile them together with our bags to try to avoid misplacing items - please label everything!

- bring extras of socks and gloves, especially on gym days!

- building with snow is great, but no throwing snow during school time

We are working on being speedy with getting dressed and undressed - sometimes keeping our snowpants on when we are heading back out soon. Whatever tips you can teach your student to help them (we have some tricky zippers, stiff boots and clothes that need to be tucked just right) will be amazing. We are doing pretty well, but it's still a solid 15 minute procedure before and after each recess! 

Last week we did a goal setting activity. Each student wrote down one thing they are already doing well, and one thing they plan to work on. Many students suggested a next step from their report card, so thanks for discussing this with them. We had many more word books this week! Our goals are up on the wall and I will review them often to keep them top of mind. Please ask your student what goal they wrote down.

Last week, I also followed up on one skill that many students were expressing a strong desire to learn - telling time. While we all follow the plan of each day using our visual schedule, it doesn't communicate how long the parts of the day are. We got out the mini-clocks and practiced telling time to the hour. We caught on to this quickly. Then, we talked about the daily routines at school, like reading, recess, lunch, storytime and home and what times they happen at. Now, we have our classroom clock labeled with these events so that we can tell when we are getting close to the next part of our day. It seems to be helping - students are now telling me what time it almost is and what we should be doing!

Our new unit in math is data management. We are beginning with sorting, including learning to use a Venn diagram. In a Venn diagram, the tricky thing to remember is that there are only 2 sorting rules - not 3. For example, we can have red shapes in one circle, triangles in the other, and red triangles in the middle. We did some sorting centres with 6 different materials and we tried to sort them using Venn diagrams. We had lots of great ideas for sorting rules. Next time, we will try on our own.

In language, we are just finishing up a good copy of a poem we are sounding out on our own, and then we will take a break to learn how to write some holiday-themed letters and cards.

Speaking of the holidays, we celebrated the beginning of Hanukkah by making some beautiful "stained-glass" menorahs. You can see them in the windows of our classroom as you walk through the gate by the bleachers! We watched a video all about Hanukkah and learned why there are 8 candles (+1) on the menorah and how families celebrate Hanukkah. We also have our own version of an advent calendar starting now - it's our "calendrier de gentillesse" (kindness calendar). Each day, we will draw the card from behind the date and read what kind gesture we can perform that day. For December 1st, we focused on cheering someone up who looked sad or tired.

In social studies, we are talking all about jobs people have in the community, especially people we go to for help, such as police officers, doctors, plumbers and firefighters. In the next couple weeks we will be thinking about what we'd like to be when we grow up, and considering what our responsibilities would be in that job - what would be fun about it, and what would be challenging.

Mots de la Semaine

This week we are reviewing the sound, ‘é’. E-accent aigu is like an entirely separate, extra vowel in the French language. It is used all the time and there are several ways that the sound can be made. You can think of the sound ‘ay’ in English, as in “May”. We will look closely at other ways to make this sound later, but for now I would like everyone to memorize the words “j’ai” (= I have, or sometimes, I am) and “et” (= and) as well. They sound like é even though they don’t look like it, and we use these words all the time.

éléphant, bébé, école, *j’ai*, *et*

Bonus words: année, idée

See you outside! - Tamara