March Newsletter

Here is a quick overview for the month of March:

Home Reading Program
We will be sending home information soon about our Home Reading Program. We will be sending home a permission note to be signed for students to take part and then those students will take home a new book to read at home with their families. Making time to read with your children on a daily basis will foster a love of reading in your child and help them develop the necessary skills for reading. The following are some skills you may want to work on with your child before, during and after reading.
· Before reading the book, have your child look at the cover and make a prediction about what they think will happen in the story.
· While reading, help your child make connections with the book and their own lives. For example, have you and the main character shared a similar experience? Does the main character remind you of anyone you know?
· After reading, see if their prediction was right. Talk about your child’s favourite part of the book.
· Ask questions about the story (such as who, what, where, why, how) to help your child better understand it, and to help develop story-retelling and sequencing skills.

Science
We have had a lot of fun experimenting with snow this season, and we sure have had a lot of snow to experiment with! With Spring approaching this month, we will continue to talk about Seasonal Changes and the way animals and humans adapt to these different weather changes.

Math
This month we will continue to focus on measurement, as well as number sense in math. To support your child’s understanding of number sense, engage them in everyday number games (e.g., can you find 4 forks, can you tell what number is bigger of the two, do you have more peas or carrots on your plate, etc).

Language
We will continue working on literacy concepts such as phonics, punctuation, print direction, word recognition and sentence structure. When your children draw pictures at home, you can support their writing development in many ways. One strategy is printing the sentence that describes their picture under that picture and then again on a strip of paper. You can then cut up the sentence strip into the individual words. Your child can then put the sentence back together by matching the cut-up words to the printed sentence. This activity will help your child with early reading. They will practice closely examining words, sounding out and leaving spaces between words. Praise your child for a job well done and have them show off these new skills to other family members! We continue to work on readily recognizing, reading and writing a few common sight words, such as – I, am, at, it, is, the, and, etc. You can keep practicing these at home as well! Maybe post them up around the house!

Fundraising
Thank you to everyone who sent in pennies for our Penny Drive! We have already counted $50 worth of pennies and still have a few more to go!

Clothing
As it is still cold outside, please continue to send your children to school dressed in all their winter gear. Please also remember to send proper indoor shoes to school that can also be used for running in the gym. Thanks!

As always, thank you for your on-going support!