"My dog is nocturnal. He is always asleep in the day!"

Hi Parents,

This was a hard comment to rebuttal - I have two dogs of my own and they seem to always be sleeping! But, this week we will be talking about nocturnal animals and hopefully together (as a class) we will learn why a dog is not considered a nocturnal animal and a wolf is! Other animals that were brought up in today's discussion were: meercats, raccoons, owls, and koala bears. Later this week will will be making a chart and compare animals that are considered nocturnal and animals that are not.

Previous to the Easter break we were talking about tame animals and quite a few students were asking if they could bring their pets to the school to show the class. I told them today that, on a nice day, they can have their pet brought to school (but the pet must be left outside due to allergies)! This needs to be arranged with me a day before the visit so I can plan for it in our schedule :)

This week is bringing a new theme and also bringing a new subject! Since we have gone through the entire alphabet, we are going to start applying what we learned by writing in journals.  I really want to establish a safe environment were the kiddos can grow in confidence in their ability to write words/stories. I will not be correcting them much on what or how they write (especially at this point). When you see the work that gets brought home, it may be helpful to know my expectations for their writing: I am encouraging the kids to explore sounds and write the sounds that they hear in the words of their story. So, the students will be writing phonetically in their journals (for example, writing cat could be written k-a-t, or turtle could be written t-r-t-l) and this is totally correct! I am excited to start this journey with them :)

I hope that you had a great week off of school - I've heard a lot of exciting stories of things that happened over the break... now you have a week to recover!

-- Mrs. B