What a great Remembrance Day service today. If you were able to attend, I’m sure you would agree that the 1/2s did a great job putting on the assembly and ALL the kids sounded lovely. A special thank you to Ms V for always having the kids ready to perform. She truly has a gift 🙂

We talked a lot about Peace, Kindness, Poppies and Remembrance Day this week. It is so important to honour and respect those who gave their lives and have allowed us to live our lives freely. We want to spread the message of kindness and to give everyone a “piece of peace”.

*The Ask Me question this week says: “Ask me about Remembrance Day”. Write/draw about the conversations you had as a family 🙂

Let’s recap other parts of our week:

-Our plastic bag research/ideas for a positive change was a great activity. We had some fantastic discussions and possible solutions to the plastic bag problem. What really stuck out to the students was how many plastic bags are used each second around the world (160 000) and how many animals die each year from eating or being caught in the bags (1 million birds and 100 000 sea turtles and other animals). We talked about plastic bags being “evil”-but why were plastic bag invented? We learned that plastic bags were produced in 1977 as an effort to stop paper bags from being used. The number of trees being cut was becoming a problem. People then did not know that there was a big problem with their solution! Another thing to note is that the intent of plastic bags was for them to be multi-use, not single-use. We have some options! You use plastic bags? Ok…now reuse them! Use them for groceries on another day, to pick up dog waste, as a trash can liner, or donate them to a second hand store. If you can’t do any of those suggestions, recycle them at your grocery store (they cannot be recycled in your recycling bin at home). Don’t use plastic bags? Keep using your reusable cloth bags, bins or boxes…Keep practicing environmental stewardship!

We can link this to our 6Rs of Room 123! Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Respect, Repeat! Let’s make a positive change!

-Choose your own math time! We opened up some new math manipulatives and let me tell you…it sure was exciting! Most of the resources are magnets or dice and deal with place value, time and money. We also have some fraction magnets (for later on). The challenge is to create some sort of game or activity using the new resources that reflects a math skill we’ve been working on. This is something we will be doing regularly. It is a fun way to model and communicate our math thinking

-Frank Einstein: Well we are about 60 pages into our new book. This new series has definitely sparked an interest in some of our young readers! Frank Einstein is a scientist who has ‘invented’ robots who can actually think for themselves! There is a lot of scientific language, diagrams of inventions and characters with names resembling actual scientists! We left off with someone coming to the door of Frank’s lab…who will it be?!!?

-Happy Birthday Winnipeg! Many of us didn’t realize that it was Winnipeg’s birthday on November 8! Winnipeg became a city in 1873…making our great city 144 years old!

Looking forward!

-The book order should arrive early next week. The December order is due on December 1 to make sure we get them before the holidays!

-Turkey Toonie Tuesdays are back! Please send in a toonie if you can!

-See Saw: We are getting more familiar with See Saw and will be ready to invite parents when you come in for conferences next week. I think you are going to love this tool as much as the kids do! Thanks for your patience as we tackle learning something new together!

-Report cards go home on Monday! You will also receive your appointment time for your child’s conference. If the appointment time does not work, please call the office or come see me to make an alternate arrangement 🙂 *Reminder: There is no school on Friday

I look forward to seeing you all next week!

Until next time,

Danielle