January and February

In the last few months we have done a tremendous amount of learning and growing! I can't believe that we're over half way through our grade two journey! 

In Language Arts 

In February we finished reviewing and learning all of our sound friends. We will continue to review and work with these sounds when it comes to decoding words for reading and writing. We have started to learn more about different kinds of writing and how we can become more effective writers.  Using Handwriting Without Tears we've really improved our printing, we have learned all our capital letters and we are half way through our lowercase letters. Specifically we're focusing on our printing S.O.S -spacing, on the line and size.We have been able to independently work on our various Daily 5 choices and have learned various comprehension strategies to grow our reading brains.  Continue to support your child with completing nightly reading (READO) and weekly word work sentences.

In Math 

We have worked really hard on growing our math brains. We are confident at showing numbers in different ways. We've completed our show what we know about increasing and repeating patterns and measurement. In December we began to practice our basic addition and subtraction facts to 9 with our banana split math, we've almost earned our banana split party! We have reviewed and practiced our basic facts to 9 and are learning new strategies to help us add double digit number to 100. So far we have learned using base 10 blocks, open number line and algorithm. On Monday's we have started to grow our money brain and work on money problems. In the coming months we will continue to grow our adding and subtracting brains by learning more strategies so we're able to confidently add and subtract to 100. It's important that you continue to practice adding and subtracting numbers to 10 with your child as it's the foundational skill required for double digit math.

In Science
We completed our boats and buoyancy unit before Christmas break. We had a T-Pet presentation and even made our own boats that we took home and shared with you. In January we started our magnet unit and learned about magnetic poles, magnetic devices and explored things that had magnetic force and not. We are starting our hot and cold unit and will learn more about temperatures, thermometers, hot and cold things and we'll try to invent something that can keep a cold item cold. We have one final unit after hot and cold and it's small, crawling and flying things.

In Social Studies
Thus far we have learned about our community- school, home, city, province and country. We discussed various mapping skills and landforms. In November we had a T-Pet presentation on Iqaluit and in January we had a presentation on Acadia. Since then we have been learning a lot about these two communities. We worked on research projects about Acadia and presented them to our classmates in February. This was a great way for us to show what we learned and a great experience to present our learning to our class. We will start to learn more about Saskatoon's community in the upcoming months.

In Religion
In December and January we reviewed the Christmas Story and Epiphany. Mr. Walker has come in and shared various Gospel stories with us. We have been working on our Kind Kid Challenge where we get tasks to do daily that help us to be the hands and Feet of Jesus. We learned about Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in February and even lead the Ash Wednesday assembly! We are well on our Lenten journey and continue to discuss the three important components daily; prayer, fasting, almsgiving. We will be learning about Lent through Resurrection eggs, ask your child about these. We have also buddied up with the  high school and a couple times each month high school students will be coming to read or do various tasks with us!

A few announcements 
-The upcoming months will be bringing lots of rain, slush and snow. We've discussed this as a class and students decided it might be best if they had an extra pair of clothes in their backpacks in case they do get wet from a puddle.
-Continue to check FreshGrade regularly for updates and to see what things your child is learning.
-We will be learning the Social Detective program as a class to accompany the Zones of Regulation program we're learning too!
-We have a March READO challenge, ask your child what this is!
-Let me know if there's any special events going on in your child's extra curricular life, I love to come out and cheer them on or see/celebrate their accomplishments outside of school!