April flurries bring may flowers?

Well I am not sure about you all but I am getting tired of this snow business! I hope the warm weather comes sometime soon.

This week we are looking at words with silent letters at the end, in french we call them les lettres  muettes or les lettres fantomes. I have noticed that some students tend to pronounce the lettres and then get confused with the meaning. For example we do not pronounce the "p" in trop. Most of our sight words this week all have les lettres muettes. In French we are also starting to look at comic books. This week we will compare and note all  the differences between comic books, fiction and non-fiction books. The student will have the chance to write their own comic books in the next couple of weeks. Earth is coming up so we will be brainstorming some ideas on how or what we can do to help our our environment.

In music the students were very excited to start to learn about "STOMP". We had a great introduction and they learned about vibration, amplification, frequency, and volume.

We are having some success in math as of today. I think I actually saw some light bulbs come on! Great moment! I encourage you to keep working with your child at home on this. Also if you are able to give them a good introduction to double digit subtraction at home it would be very beneficial for them when we will start to learn about it in the next coming week. I also wanted to ask you all if you could help your child with their double and double plus one math facts. I think that some do not have these master yet which is what can be holding them up.

We continue to work on adjectives in English and the students will start to learn about poetry, seeing that April is poetry month. This week we will look at the different styles of poetry and read a couple of poems by Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. The students will practice their rhyming skills and learn that not all poems have to rhyme.

In science we will be playing with thermometers and getting our hands wet for some of our experiments. This week students will learn the different parts of a thermometer and we will be putting them to the test in bowls of water. We will also be using our hands to measure temperature as well.

I am hoping to get to the art room sometime this week and work on a spring scene (If it ever comes). The students will be working with water color pencils, which can be super fun.

We keep getting post cards from around the world, a huge thank you for helping us out with this project. That is all for now. I hope things are going good at home, let me know if you need anything from me or just want some ideas on what you can do with your child at home. I am always happy to help you all out in anyway I can.
Chat soon
Laurie Anne

Happy mid month one and all!!

We are moving right along in grade two this month. The students seem to be really enjoying their time here!
This week we are going to be looking at the sound "eur" and "eu" sounds like "e" in french but is pronounced longer. Last week we wrote rhyming stories with the sound "oi". We finished them up today and the students had a chance to share them with the class. We will continue to do this with the sound "eu" for more practice on the concept of rhyming. We will continue to work on syllables this week and I will introduce the meaning of singulier et pluriel. We did talk about this a bit last week one thing that they need to remember is that when you see a word ending with "eau" or "ou" instead of adding an S to make it plural they must add an X. Example: un bateau- des bateaux or un hibou- des hiboux.

We are also going to be looking at all the different winter activities you can do inside and outside and doing an art project to go along with it. In health we have started a new unit which is on emotions. We will explore all the different emotions and discuss which are negative and positive. Each morning the students will come in and write how they are feeling next to their name, they may also feel free to change it after big recess if they feel any different.  That way we can discuss how a person can change the way they feel many times through out the day. In social studies we will be taking a closer look at the people of the three different communities. Last week we discussed what are museums, why do we have them and the different types that are out there. They really enjoyed taking a virtual tour of the Smithsonian museum of natural history. Feel free to continue exploring it seeing that we did not get a chance to see it all.
In math we continue to work on measurement and counting 1-100, by 2,5,10. We are also practising on number patterns and before and after of numbers.
Our sentence structures this week in French are: Je me sens .... I feel ....and De quoi as tu besoin? What do you need?

In English this week we are continuing to work on our tongue twisters with the blended sound "sl" Some of them are pretty funny. We will continue to work on the word family -ake, so feel free to brainstorm some words that end in that sound. Our sight words for English this week are-walk, think, learn, leave, study, live, read and write. You child may practice writing sentences with these words at home for practice.
We are also going to be exchanging our French reading books tomorrow. I will keep this the same date as when we exchange the reading program that Mme Victoria sent home.

I believe that's all for this week. I hope that the reading is going well at home let me know any time! Enjoy your week!
Mme Laurie Anne ;)