Day 75 Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Parents!
I hope you all had a relaxing and joyful holiday spent with family and friends!
Wow I can't believe we are almost half way through the school year! This week we will be focussed on getting back into routines and reviewing what we left off learning in December. A reminder that all students should make sure they have their indoor shoes at school as I know many students took them home over the break.

SKI TRIP
The first of our 2 ski trips days is THIS THURSDAY.  Students went to a meeting today about expectations for the trip. Please talk to your child about what they were told.  Students that are not going on the trip will hbe doing some activities at school that day.  Next Thursday they will have the opportunity to snowshoe at the school.  Look for the permission form to come home this week.

MATH
Students have begun learning about 2d shapes.  We did a large sorting of various shapes before the break and learned some new words to describe shapes such as regular and irregular, concave and curved. We talked about  different kinds of triangles and the names we give them based on sides and on angles.  Ask your students to tell you what they have learned.  Students received their math test back in patterning today.  Some students will need to do a retest. The retest will happen next week.  Please sign the tests and have your child return them as soon as possible.

100 WORD CHALLENGE
Students have chosen their favourite 100 Word Challenge they have done so far.  They are adding another 100 words to it and doing a polished copy of it to be assessed.  Students have had practice writing their challenges all year.  We will continue with this but it will become part of our literacy centres which will start later this week.

LANGUAGE
We will be starting our literacy centers later this week and will focus on the author Chris Van Alsburg for a few week.s  He has written and illustrated many interesting picture books for students at a junior level. The books often have an element of mystery and thus appeals to both girls and boys.  Always a great choice if you're looking to buy an interesting picture book for an older student.  you will hear more about these books and this author in the upcoming weeks.

ILLNESS
We had and continue to have many students off each day due to illness.  I have reminded the students the importance of staying home when they are ill and getting better before returning to school if at all possible.  I also reminded them of the importance of handwashing etc.  We could really, really use some boxes of kleenex as we go through about a box a day at this point with all the illness.  If you have some you could send in that would be very helpful and appreciated.

**Please note that Jan 19 is a PD day for students.**
Thats all for now. Have a great first week and hope everyone settles into 2015 nicely!
Mrs Cooke :)