Happy New Year everyone! It's hard to believe we've only been back 5 days. It's been a long but good week back. :)

This week's focus words were: has, want, said, from, are. 

You may have noticed that your child came home on Monday with a list of these words in their backpack. Please watch for a list each Monday. You may wish to copy these words onto slips of paper to use as flashcards for practice and review throughout the week. Looking for these words in the Home Reading and library books your child brings home, practicing reading and spelling them, and having your child put them into sentences goes a long way in making these sight words readily identifiable. 

This week we worked on writing a variety of sentences - both telling sentences and questioning sentences. Our focus remains on ensuring the sentence begins with an uppercase letter, ends with a period, question mark or exclamation mark, and that spaces are left between words. As the students build their sight word vocabulary and their ability to identify letter blends such as; th, sh, and ch, their ability to express their ideas through writing increases.

In Science, we have been learning about matter. This week we learned how matter can be manipulated through stretching, tearing, cutting, breaking, and twisting. By using a ball of playdough, the children experimented with these different forms of manipulation. Using the playdough, a pipe cleaner, googly eyes, and popsicle sticks, they were challenged to create a creature. After they sketched their creation into their journals, they had to manipulate the materials to create a second creature. We learned that although the structure could be changed, the base materials remained the same.

We watched a story on Youtube called Squirrel's New Year's Resolutions. We discussed that a resolution often means making a promise to ourselves and/or setting a goal for ourselves. The students each wrote about one thing they'd like to get better at this year and one thing they would like to learn. You may wish to ask your child to share their goals with you.

We had less than half the class in attendance today. For those who were here, we enjoyed getting together with our Grade 4 buddies to make beautiful snowflakes out of Q-tips. We watched a short video that explained how snow crystals are formed and we looked at some snowflakes that had been magnified to observe their beautiful and unique structures.

Please return Home Reading books on Monday and library books on Tuesday.

Please remember that Monday is a Professional Development Day for teachers and there will be no school for students. See you on Tuesday!

Have a wonderful weekend and stay warm!