Joyeux Halloween!

Bonjour tout le monde! 

We had a great day today at school for Halloween and boy did it go fast!  The students were very busy with various activities including music, gym, a costume parade, some In Motion dancing in the gym and a few short books on DVD.  We also worked really hard on creating our very own monster today, using dice to determine how many body parts they would have.  The kids really enjoyed being creative in making their monster unique.  They even came up with a name in French using basic syllables (ie.  Ma + mo = Mamo). 

Here are some photos of their work on display in the hall, along with my example which was modeled for the class before they got started.  I have also included some information on all the things we were learning during this activity.

Parents, make sure to check your email for a few photos of the children dressed up in their costumes.  We have also completed our class book (finally!) and I will see if I can send it to you by email so that you can take a look at it whenever you like chez vous.  Oh, and we are also working on a book with our Cali-partenaires in Grade 4/5 so stay tuned for that as well!

I hope you all have a successful, happy, and safe Halloween!

Food for thought: Why learn French?

Merci pour...

The kids had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  In social studies we discussed the importance of being thankful for the things we have in our lives. Each student wrote about what they are thankful for. Please watch for your child's work to come home this week so he/she can share what they are thankful for.

FYI - proper pencil grip strategy

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

I just found this webpage with a strategy for teaching your child to hold a pencil properly.  In grade 1, we've already got that figured out for the most part.  BUT I thought I would share it with you in case you have little ones at home and would be interested in trying it.  This is a new strategy for me as well, so if you try it, let me know how it goes!  Click here to find out more. 

Les sciences naturelles

I teach the students Les Sciences Naturelles twice a week (usually on Wednesdays and Fridays).

For the last few weeks we have been looking at and talking about living and non-living things (les êtres vivants et non-vivants) and what all living things have in common (they move, they breathe, they reproduce, they grow and they need water and food to survive). We have formulated these traits into questions that we asked to determine: est-ce que c'est un être vivant? for various objects.  We also had some interesting conversations about some of the less obvious objects (ie. a picked apple, a seed, an egg).

Here is an example of some of the things we discussed last week.

Today the students chose something that could be found in the school yard, drew it and then answered the five questions to conclude whether it is a living thing or not.  Next class we will focus on what all living things need in order to survive.

MIMI word study words part 2

We sent home two new pages of word cards words today.  Here are the videos for those words:

We have been working really hard on all of these words! 

Here are some of the things we have noticed, while working on our words:

• some use the article un, some use the article une
• une fille and une affiche have double letters
• many words begin with the hard c 
• many words begin with the letter p
• some words end in er (to make the sound "ay")
• c and h together make a "sh" sound

Today we worked with our care partners in Grade 4/5 to read sort our words using an attribute (a common article, sound, letter, ending, etc).  This was our third time classifying our words and it went really well!  When reading these words at home, feel free to explore the words in the same way in order to help increase your child's understanding and self-confidence. 


We have also begun to talk about titles (what they are, and what they tell us) and we will be coming up with a title for our poster very soon.  The next step in the process will be to begin our sentence work.

Thanks very much for your support at home.  If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know.

French Alphabet Song

We found this French alphabet song we thought would be helpful for your child (and for parents as well) to help with learning the names of the alphabet letters in French. 

Terry Fox Fundraiser

We would like to say an ENORMOUS "THANK-YOU" to all those who participated in raising money for the Terry Fox Foundation.  Together, our class raised a grand total of $532.00!!!  That is just FANTASTIC!!  Way to go everyone : )