December Events


What you can do at home:

To support you child at school, there are many things that you can do at home. One of the most important things that you and your child can do at home involves helping your child to become self-reliant and see themselves as capable people. 

When a child feels capable they are more willing to try new things at school even if they perceive the activities as difficult. 


Here are a few ideas for home to build self-reliance:

  • Have your child empty their own backpack and bring the lunch kit to the kitchen and give/ put the agenda where you can sign it
  • Have your child put the lunch kit and agenda in the backpack in the morning (Find a spot to put the lunch and agenda that you can see in the morning to help them remember the new job.)
  • Have your child bring dishes to the counter or load the dishwasher (if you are comfortable with them loading)
  • Let your child zip their own jacket and help only when the zipper is truly stuck.
  • Teach them to tie shoelaces
  • Have your child put their shoes and coat away 

Forest Wrap up

Animals in Winter

We also read several books about animals in winter. We read "Terrier à Louer" that is about a burrow and the animals that move in and out of the burrow during the various seasons. We talked about which animals hibernated and which didn't. We also read a book about evergreen trees in the Pacific Northwest and the animals that live in and around the trees. We finished the unit with the children drawing a tree and choosing at least 3 animals that we have talked about to draw in or around the tree. That drawing came home Friday. 

The Mitten- Jan Brett

We read the story the Mitten this week and acted it out several times. This story is a wonderful bridge between our unit on Trees and the Forest and our new unit on Winter. We have begun to talk about winter clothing. The students drew a picture of themselves with their winter clothes and wrote "Je porte..." I am wearing.

As next week is supposed to be very cold (for the island), please send hats and mitts in the backpacks. There were several children shivering and cold during our class time outside and at the 45 minute recess.

Math

We are spending time looking more closely at the numbers from 11-20. While the children can now count to 20 and can count out 20 objects, we are working on decomposing numbers into their parts (10's and 1's). 
On Friday they were asked "How can you represent a number between 11-19 as a group of 10 and ones?"  There are some pictures of this activity on Fresh grade.

Next week we are going to explore if we can find a pattern for the numbers between 11-20.

Celebrations this month

December 6th
  • Icing cookies in class after 12:30 (2 more Parent Volunteers needed. Please leave a comment below or email me)
December 8th
  • Please send a variety of candy for your child to use on their house
  • Making Gingerbread Houses in class with Shawnigan Lake gr. 9's 
December 8th
  • Filling the EDAS bags in the gym
December 9th 
  • Whole school assembly @ 1:30 to celebrate the hard work and love that went into the EDAS project
December 16h
  • Santa hat day



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