December News 2015

Tree of Hope at LRH

Our class helped to decorate this beautiful tree of hope that is on display at the Lethbridge Regional Hospital in the main entrance. Each envelope contains a drawing that is part of a bigger class book that we created in our room modelled after a National Geographic book called A Little Peace. The kids did a beautiful job and I wish they could see the joy on the faces of the patients as they open each precious letter handmade by our little guys! I kept a black and white copy of the book in our room on the class book shelf if you ever want to take a look.

Christmas Concert
 December 10  2015  6 :30 pm. 

at

College Drive Community Church 

(children arrive at 6:05pm) 

Tickets will be coming home soon!

Dress rehearsal will be held the day of the concert in the gym at 12:30

Important Dates to Remember!

1         9:45 University of Lethbridge Theatre Presentation 

           Hot Lunch Day

8          12:30 Dress rehearsal/ Christmas Concert (grades 2, 4) 6:30pm          

2,9,16 Library Days

10        12:30 Dress rehearsal/Christmas Concert (grades 1, 2/3, 3, 5)6:30pm 

17        Grinch Day-dress up like the grinch and get ready for fun centers           

14-18    Christmas carols in the gym at 8:30am  MWF this week

            Christmas carols in the gym at 12:30 Tues/Thurs. this week

DEC 18 Last day of classes for 2015 & class party! Dismiss at 11:35

Jan.4 First day back!   

Please check the lost and found for any missing items before holidays!

Language arts

We have been learning about Bears, real bears and fictional bears for the last week or two and the kids have had fun researching bear facts and will soon be making clay bears and have just finished their 3D habitats! 

In celebration of December we will be having a fun Grinch Day on Dec. 17th where grade one students will rotate through all of the grade one teacher’s classrooms for a literacy or math activity that is related to the Grinch.  We encourage the kids to dress up on this day, wear green for sure, and maybe even try out some Cindy Loo-Who hair!

The children have been doing a wonderful job on their sight words and word families each week! Keep up the awesome home reading! This month we will be focusing on writing letters (to guess who?) and tracking down the adventures of our Elf on the Shelf!

Sight Words for December! 

Week One : four, get, good, have, he, L blends

Week Two: into, like, must, new, no, Digraph (sh)

Week Three: now, on, our, out, please, Digraph (th)               

                 

            

              

      Math

We have started learning to count by 5’s all the way to 100. A couple fun songs you can check out on you tube are Scratch Gardens TheCounting by 5’s song and Mr. R’s Count by 5’s song. We are just finishing up our numbers to 20 unit and will be moving into subtraction and our second mental math strategy counting back.  Similar to counting on, except that we are going down the number line in the opposite direction!  The key points for kids about this strategy are:

1.  I can use counting back when I subtract 1,2,3,4 from a larger number.  For example with the equation 8-3, the student begins with the “8” in their head and then counts back “7,6,5”

2.  I should only use counting back when I subtract 1,2,3,4 because any higher and I might get mixed up with my counting.

     Science

We are kicking off our Science unit about the 5 senses with a popcorn lesson, where we use all our senses to see, hear, smell, touch,  and yes! finally taste the salty, buttery popcorn! Yum! In this unit we learn that each of our senses provides information about particular aspects of our environment; and that, together, the senses enable us to know things and do things that we would not otherwise be able to do, or at least not as easily. We will also learn about the function of our senses, how they are cared for, how they could be damaged and how one’s own ability to sense things may differ from those of other people and other living things. Throughout the unit, we will have a chance to sharpen the use of our senses and discover “juicy” words to describe the information that our senses provide.

Social

In Social we are starting Looking At Our Community which includes distinguishing geographic features in our own community from other communities.  By the end of the unit the kids should be able to identify some familiar landmarks and places in our community, and know why these landmarks and places important to Lethbridge (ie. High level bridge, Old Man River, Nikka-Yuko Japanese Gardens, Nicholas Sheran Lake).  They also get to learn the differences between rural, urban, and suburban communities and will be able to find Lethbridge and Canada on a map! And if that were not enough, they also learn to use a simple map to locate specific areas within the school and community,  ask for directions, and understand that globes and maps are visual representations of the world! Very soon  we will be taking a peek at Google Earth and trying to find  Mike Mountain Horse from both a bird’s eye view and a street view. The kids usually get pretty excited and will likely be asking you to find their own address!  We also focus on creating  maps of familiar places and learning to show how a map legend works and to start thinking geographically.  This unit will most likely spill over into January as well.