February 20-24 02/20/2012
Thank-you for your lovely Valentine's cards and treats last week. I think the children all had a wonderful day of kindness and friendship in our class. Extra Clothes Needed: Students are coming in wet after lunch from the snow. They will often want to change into dry clothes and take off their wet socks. Please send dry clothes with your child so he/she can have something warm and dry to put on. I do feel sorry for them to be in bare feet because their sock feet are wet and yucky. This week in our class: We are getting ready for Read Around the Planet (Feb 28) next week. I have asked the children to bring a colourful winter scarf and a mittens for our piece. We will also present Kooky Kookaburra from our choir repertoire for this video conference. Wednesday: Our new student teachers will be coming to visit. After spring break we will be having 2 new student teachers come and spend two full weeks in our class. One candidate is a drama specialist!!!! They will be teaching a few science and math lessons. This week they will be coming just to meet our students and see what our class is like. Thursday: Is our gymnastics morning. Thank-you to our many drivers that have volunteered. We will be leaving @ 8:45 am. All students are required to have a booster seat for this field trip. I will not be allowing students to travel in anyone's vehicle without it. Please also ensure your child comes dressed in comfortable gym clothes. Blue jeans are not allowed. Thursday afternoon Ms. Boyer will be coming into our class to do a special First Nations project with our class on the Medicine Wheel. Friday: Remember Friday is our district wide Inservice Day. There will not be school for our students on this day. Vegetable Soup: Next Friday (Mar.2) I would like to have students make Vegetable soup in our class. This is a concluding activity to our "Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds" unit in HACE. Students will be asked to bring in a small contribution of vegetable that we can put into our soup. I am wondering if there might be a parent available for the morning to help with this activity. Students will be chopping their own vegetables. Please let me know if you'd like to come in and join us on this morning. Add Comment Valentine's Week- Feb13-17 02/12/2012
 Well, we are now officially halfway through February. It was wonderful to see the sunshine this weekend and it made me wonder if winter is already over? Where has the school year gone. Is spring already here? This week I will be sending home a little communication report with your child to let you know how he/she is progressing in class. A detailed letter/permission slip regarding High Country Music Festival (Mar.7) is coming home on Monday. The cost is covered however students will need to wear certain colours for this event. Thanks in advance for your help with this! Tuesday is Valentine's Day. Students are asked to wear red, pink or hearts on this special day. A class list was sent home during the first week of February. We do have 20 children in our class and I would ask if you are sending Valentine's Day cards, to please send one for each child. We will be having a special time during the afternoon to look at our cards and have a few treats. If you would like to send food on this day, I would ask that you keep in mind our student with a nut allergy as well the wheat allergy. Thanks so much! Thursday we will be going to Young People Concert in the morning. We will be seeing a group called "Goh Ballet." Due to this, our library day will be rescheduled to Friday this week. I am still waiting for a few more gymnastics permission slips to come in. It looks like we do now have enough drivers. Thank-you so much! I will send home a list of drivers as soon as it is finalized. Remember we will be going next week (Feb. 23 and Mar.8.) Students must have their booster seats to be able to go with a driver. This is each parent's responsibility, not the drivers. What's Up this Week? 02/05/2012
Thank-you for checking our blog! I hope you are finding this a useful tool to keep families informed :) This week we are continuing our studies as stated last week. In Math we have started subtraction with borrowing as part of our money unit (counting cents and making change). Some students are finding this difficult. Any extra practice you can do at home will be of great benefit to your child. It improves confidence at school when we work on it! Thanks in advance for this. This week, we will be making a little valentine's craft for our valentine's cards next week. I'm certain students will love this! I am continuing to collect permission slips for gymnastics and so far am needing more drivers for about 10 more students. I will post a list of drivers as soon as I have permission slips returned. If you are able to drive and did not check off the box on the permission slip, please let me know as soon as possible. I've posted the dates and times for our upcoming events below. Upcoming Dates: Feb. 16- YPC concert @Sagebrush- 10:30 am Feb. 23- Gymnastics w/ Ellingsen's class- 8:45-10:15 am Feb. 28- Read Around the Planet- Videoconferencing-11 am Mar. 1- Skating w/ Erichuk's class- 1-2:30 pm Mar. 7- High Country Music Festival- Primary Choir-9-12 pm Mar.8- Gymnastics- 8:45- 10:15 am Mar. 15- Skating-1:00-2:30 pm Jan. 30- Feb. 4 01/29/2012
 Artist of the Week: Pablo Picasso- Spanish Artist (1881-1973) It is February this week- can you believe it? It feels like spring is just around the corner. Thursday Feb.2 is officially Groundhog Day and we will then find out if winter will stay or go. Our grade twos will be doing a few groundhog type activities on Thursday as he is such a cute and cuddly little creature- who can possibly resist! Homework this Week is for Health and Career. Students have been learning about the food groups. They will be expected to draw with pencil, colour and label a dinner meal with the food and food group they have for supper this week. I will send this home on Monday and it is due back on Friday. Please insist your child takes pride and puts effort into this project. We will share these with our classmates on Friday. This week we will be starting our Fairy Tale unit in reading and students will be busy reading and acting out the classic tales. Students have been enjoying writing stories in their journals that we may even have time to begin writing our own tales. Students are currently writing 6-8 solid sentences in a 45 minutes writing block. By March, I will be expecting all students will be writing 8-10. I am currently very pleased with their gains. In math we will continue to learn about adding up money. This proves to be very challenging for our students. Our grade twos can all name each coin and tell its worth. We are now working on adding up money. I have been teaching them to count the same coins (ie. all the dimes) and write it down. Then at the end add it all together. This is a good strategy for our class as long as we remember our place value and carrying when adding up the coins. Please see your child's math quiz from last week for more ideas. Any extra support and practice you can provide at home is a great benefit to your child. Here's a fun website to practice with your child! http://www.mathsisfun.com/money/money-master.html Science is continuing to be about matter and Social Studies we have been learning to read and understand legends and keys on maps. Artist of the Week: Pablo Picasso is our artist of the week for the next little while. He is an interesting artist as his life was divided into different periods based on his emotions and life experiences. We will be learning about cubism and collamainly. Students will be drawing/designing themselves in this style. I am looking for large brown paper grocery bags for this project- if you have some to spare please let me know. Thanks! Student Teachers are coming to visit us on the afternoon of February 8th and we will have another student teacher joining us for 2 weeks in April. The children are looking forward to this. Weather Buddies 01/26/2012
Thursday Feb. 2 at 1:00- we will be video conferencing with our buddy class in El Paso Texas. This is a grade two class we are corresponding with to learn about the weather and climate. We are planning to share some pictures of our snow while they plan to share desert pictures! Quite a contrast in climates! Wednesday News 01/25/2012
Today I sent home a new permission slip regarding our gymnastics field trips coming up. This will be due back by Feb 10th. Please note we will be needing parent helpers to drive us for these dates. Booster seats are a necessity for our students to be able to go. Parent drivers will not have them for your child- each child must bring their own. I will post in your child's agenda who my parent drivers are once I know. I love working with your children!!! Today was so much fun to watch the children's excitement as they learn new things and got creative. Highlights of Wednesday:
Mrs.Latta's New Blog! 01/22/2012
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, or musical. Libretto (pl. libretti), from Italian, is the diminutive of the word "libro" (book). Welcome to our grade two classroom blog. I plan to update this at least twice a month to keep families informed. In addition to our regular classroom newsletters, you will find current information here relating to our classroom themes and learning. Enjoy! This week begins with a Chinese New Year celebration on Monday. We have been learning how to write our names in Chinese and we made beautiful art portraits of Chinese Cherry blossoms last week. Monday Jan 23rd begins with a day full of Chinese learning. We will be reading a Chinese legend in LA, completing addition with regrouping using Chinese characters and making Chinese dragons. In the afternoon, students will be reading and learning about Chinese New Year. They will each receive a bag of treasures to celebrate this exciting day. Tuesday through Friday we will be celebrating Literacy Week in our school. Don't forget Thursday we will be dressing as our favorite storybook character! | AuthorMy
background training lies in Music Education and Theatre. Each day I
enjoy sharing my
passion for the arts with students. Outside of school, I currently
conduct the Kamloops Thompson Children's Choir for students in SD73. Please feel free to contact me at the school 250-554-2368 
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