Week of January 23 - notices

Good afternoon everyone!

Here are some updates and reminders about our upcoming week - it is a busy one!

Restocking the Food Bank - Our school is once again involved in an effort to help the Kimberley Helping Hands Food Bank restock its shelves after an, unfortunately, busy Christmas season. As a class, we have started talking about the importance of the Food Bank and how it helps our community. Today, we had an assembly where a representative from the Food Bank came to kick off this important event. Each classroom will be collecting non-perishable food items, and our class is determined to bring in the most food in the school! We will be doing math activities involving graphing and measuring our contributions, and we will also be using this event to learn more about healthy eating and the food groups. We will be collecting food for the next 2 weeks, and will have a school-wide wrap up on Feb. 3rd where we can see which class has contributed the most food. Any support you can offer for this worthy cause is greatly appreciated.

Scholastic Book Fair - going on this week. If you would like your child to purchase a book they are able to do so during lunch recess and after school this week. The book fair will also be running during POPS night this Thursday at 6pm.

Skating - Thursday 1:00-2:00 @ Marysville Rink - The skating in our class has improved tremendously over the last weeks, if you are at all able to come see your child, please join us! If not, take your child skating on a weekend and try to keep up! It is really great to see :)

POPS night (Parents of Primary Students) - Thursday 6pm
This is a GREAT evening to come and learn with your child. POPS is designed to invite parents into our school communities and to give ideas on ways to support your child's learning and development. Each child will cycle through at least 3 different classrooms and will participate in different learning stations (many of them will have fun educational activities and resources to take home to use). Our focus this year is Math Literacy and Numeracy.  Mrs Pakenham and I will have a Grade 2 set-up in her class with lots of fun math games designed to help reinforce important skills and understandings to learn to play with your child, which you can then take home.

Friends of the Library has generously donated some additional math resources, which children who attend will be allowed to take home! The PAC has also donated a math-related book for every student in the school! We will use these books together as a classroom learning resource before I send them home with the kids to keep!

Recognition Assembly - Friday 11:00 - This is the "Grade 2 Recognition Assembly," meaning our students will be performing. We have started learning a book about seeds and trees and have practiced reading clearly and presenting to the audience. All Grade 2 families are invited to come watch! You can help your child prepare by making sure they can read and remember their line which is glued into to their planner (2 weeks ago).

Happy New Year!

Welcome back to a new year everyone!! I hope that the holiday was full of fun and relaxation for all of our families! We have had a busy week back to school and have jumped right back into the full swing of our learning routines and fun activities.

This week we were busy getting back into our routines and getting used to being back at school. We started our new Math unit on Place Value and students have really enjoyed building numbers using base ten blocks, drawing numbers as groups of tens and ones, and breaking down standard numbers into expanded form. (74=standard form, 70+4=expanded form). We have been practicing our guided reading, done post card writing about our holiday, and worked on Grade 2 No Excuse Words (I apologize but I did not get time to mark our spelling quizzes before the end of the day today so they will not be returned until next week). We have started a new unit in Social Studies about the UN's Declaration of Rights of the Child, and will be learning about Rights, Needs and Wants and the differences between these different ideas. In January in Gym we are doing a Gymnastics Unit and have had fun doing different circuits and playing fun games for strength and flexibility. We also made time to get outside, in spite of the COLD, and had fun practicing snow-shoeing in the deep powder and had a great time skating at the Marysville rink.


Please note that Ski Day forms were sent home today and are DUE JANUARY 13th at the very latest. Please read and complete these forms carefully as there are MANY places that you are required to sign and there have been some changes from previous years.

FYI This Sunday, January 8th is the FREE community ski day at the ski hill. There are free lift tickets available to anyone living in Kimberley. Proof of your local address is required, but this is a great opportunity to get your kids out skiing before our ski days in February, plus it is just a fun family activity!

Next week we will be carrying on with the lessons that we started this week and I am looking forward to continuing to reinforce our school routines and engage in plenty more deep learning!

Monday: new spelling words will be sent home
Tuesday: Trekking
Wednesday: Take Me Outside winter session at Camp Stone (MORNING)
Thursday: Skating 1:00-2:00 Marysville Rink
Friday: Spelling Quiz

Have a great weekend!