December 19 - 23

Kindness Week: We will do our Kindness Week activities this week. It will be a wonderful chance to do some nice things for a secret friend. Supplies for activities will be supplied and no one is expected to spend any money. It is about the spirit of kindness! On Thursday, everyone can reveal who their secret friend is!

4D Class Party - A notice will go home early this week with specific information.

Homework: Students will not have any formal homework over the holidays, but everyone is strongly encouraged to continue reading nightly.

Upcoming Events/Important Dates:

• Monday, Dec. 19 - Queen Charlotte Band performing at the school
• Tuesday, Dec. 20 - West Dance Dance club performing at the school
• Thursday, Dec. 23
• School wide Pajama Day
• 4D's class party. Students can bring in a pillow, blanket and stuffed animal. If anyone would like to send in a snack to share with the class, they are welcome to. Please remember to keep it peanut free. We will watch a movie and build forts!
• Last day of school before Christmas Break

• Wednesday, Jan. 4 - First day back 

I wish you all a wonderful and relaxing holiday filled with lots of love and laughter! See you in 2017!

December 12 - 16

The countdown to the holidays is on! There are only 9 school days left, but they will jam packed! Our big project for the next week and half is, of course, our winter/holiday stories. We will be going through the writing process this week in order to have our books completed and ready to share before the holidays!

We will be doing "Kindness Week" during the week of December 19-22. There will be an information sheet coming home with your child about this activity early this week.

We will also be having a class party on Thursday, December 22. It is a school wide spirit day, so students are encouraged to wear their pajamas to school. We have been reading the book "Holes" and will be finishing that up, so we will watch movie that day. Students can bring in a pillow and blanket and will make our classroom into a cozy movie theatre! If anyone would like to send in a snack to share with the class, they are welcome to. In the afternoon, Ms. Young is planning to transform our classroom into a Fort Fiesta! Stay tuned for the details! It should be a super fun day!

Important Dates:

• Wednesday, Dec. 14 - Robyn Hood performance at the Confederation Centre. If you haven't already done so, please ensure permission forms and $10 is sent in to the school as soon as possible.

Winter Stories for Book Buddies

Hi everyone,

I wanted to pass along this important information about a few things that are happening in our classroom.

Book for Book Buddies:

Your children have been working creatively and diligently this week on their stories for their Kindergarten book buddies. Because this is a project that has a “real” deadline, there may be times that your child will need to finish up parts of the project at home. It is important that if materials for the project go home, that they are returned the next day as we will be working on them every day next week. The goal is to share them with our book buddies during the last week of school.

Some students have also asked if they can look up pictures online, print them and colour them in order to use those as their illustrations. This is okay with me as long as the pictures are printed at home. Students can also draw their own pictures for their illustrations.

Thank you for your support for this project. I know all the children are really looking forward to sharing their published work with a real audience!

Word Study:

Due to the busy nature of the weeks ahead, I have decided to NOT send home new word study words until after the holidays. We will resume with our regular word study routine when we return in January.

Important Information!

Hi everyone,

It will be a busy time of year, and there will be many activities happening in the next couple of weeks. Please check in to the blog regularly to ensure you have all the necessary information.

1. Robyn Hood - This Tale's Even Fairlier - A notice and permission slip for this show went home on Thursday afternoon. All of West Royalty will be going to this holiday show! The cost is $10 and your child's permission form must be signed and returned to the school. We will be going on December 14th. Buses are leaving the school around 9:45 and will return by 1:00. Students will eat lunch when they return. Please get the money and permission forms back as soon as possible!

2. Dental Public Health -  Hygienists from the Dental Public Health Preventative Dental Program were at our school today. All students will be coming home with a yellow consent form. Please check whether or not you'd like to give consent for your child to receive dental care at the school. This form needs to be returned whether you provide consent or not. Please return it as soon as possible.

Thank you for your continued support!

Femke

December 5 - 9

Hi everyone,

I can't believe it is December! The next couple of weeks will be exciting and fun filled! I sent home a notice on Friday with some information about our upcoming writing project. I will post it below:

Writing

We will be starting an exciting and fun writing project next week. We will be creating our own holiday or winter books to share with our Kindergarten book buddies. It will be an excellent opportunity for the grade 4’s to use their creative writing skills to write a fictional narrative for a real audience, with a real purpose, and with a real deadline.

I will do several read alouds as models, and they will have a bin of stories they can use for buddy reading and independent reading which can serve as inspiration. Your children are already brimming with ideas for characters and their actual story.

I would encourage you to talk with your children about their ideas, and help them brainstorm their ideas with them. Talking about writing is a powerful way to get and develop ideas. Asking your child to tell you what their story might be about, and to encourage them to add extra details or to zero in on a specific idea will help them get their ideas out more clearly during Writers Workshop. We will do mini lessons on the parts of a narrative (characters, setting, problem, events, solution). They will use the writing process and will eventually publish their book complete with a title page and illustrations.

Word Study -  Due to the very short week this week, I’ve decided to keep the children’s word study words the same for next week. They can do the same activities at home next week and we will have our quiz next Friday instead.

We will continue working on making connections in our reading. In social studies, our focus is looking at and identifying regions. We will be looking at the regions of Canada.

Upcoming Dates/Events:

1. Robyn Hood performance at the Confederation Centre - December 14th - Students from grades 1-6 will be attending this much anticipated holiday performance!

The weather can be quite cold this time of year. Please ensure your child is bringing snow pants, winter coats, mittens/gloves, hats and proper boots for outdoor recess. An extra pair of mittens and socks that are kept in their backpacks would be helpful.

Have a wonderful week!