March 30, 2026

 

The last week of Lent is known as Holy Week. It is when we remember the last week of Jesus' life and is the most important time in our Liturgical year. Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week. We will learn about the journey Jesus made into Jerusalem on a donkey to celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover. The children are all very interested in listening to the bible. I am continuously encouraging the children to ask questions. We may not know the answers, but it creates more curiosity, engagement, learning and thinking. I will bring in some palms to class on Monday morning to show the children. I hope your child has enjoyed praying for his/her special friend during lent. We will let each other know who we were praying for after the Easter break.

Holy Week Prayer

Please, Lord, guide our minds with your truth. Strengthen our lives by the example

of Jesus. Help us to be with Jesus in this Holy Week as he demonstrates again his

total love for us. He died so that we would no longer be separated from You.

Help us to feel how close You are and to live this final week of Lent in Your love.

St. Cecilia

Pray for us. 

Language 

In Language, we continue to work on our WW’s each week. We continue

to learn different spelling rules to help us when writing. The children

are writing more in math. A few still need reminders to start with a

capital and end with a capital when writing sentences.

Math 

In math, we have been working on number doubles, number partners

to make 10 and adding and subtracting to 25. We have also started

to learn about fractions. 

Science

We continue to learn about Structures.

Religion

We continue to learn more about Holy Week. 

Scientists in Schools/Field Trip

As a grade one team, we are planning some special events for the

children. Our student fees are helping to pay for these events. If

you have not had a chance to pay yet, please do so when you can,

if you can.  Next month, we will be having a Scientists in Schools

Workshop for the children. We are so lucky that our School

Council is paying for the fees for that. We are also planning a

field trip to Baxter Conservation on May 7, 2026. We will need

some parent volunteers to help supervise. I will send out the

permission slips in the coming weeks. 

Applications and Websites

I have introduced a few applications and websites to the

children so far this year: Starfall, Kodable, Numbots,

Google Music play and Saami. Some of these are accessible through

the student portal. The others are saved in the children’s Bookmark

Bar when they log on to their google account. Kodable is only available

for free from 7am -4pm. Sorry for the confusion. As I mentioned

before, the login/passwords are located in the first 2 pages of your

child's agenda.

Family Life Note

This week, I will be sending home a formal note from the board

to let you know we will be starting Unit 4 of Family Life.

As I explained at the Meet the Teacher night, every year unit 4

of the Blessed & Beloved program will share more information about

human development each year. Please write me a note if you have

questions after reading the note. 

Thanks again for your continuous support. I appreciate all that

you do with your child. I look forward to another week of fun and

learning with the children. As always, write me a note in your child’s

agenda if you have any questions.

Take care,

Giovanna Smith

March 23, 2026

Hope you all had a great March Break with extra time to spend with family

and friends. It is crazy that we still have snow on the ground at this time of the

year. Hopefully things will dry up quickly.

Language

We will continue to write in our journals on a weekly basis. I encourage

the children to use the following linking words.

     Opening sentence 

First,

Then,

Next,

Last / Finally,

Closing sentence

 I noticed before the break, many children are trying their best to use

the criteria that we have studied. Others are rushing their work to get

it done even when they can produce work with more care and with

quality. We had a chat about doing our best even though it may mean

the job may take longer. It may be worth a chat about the importance

of trying his/her best with a consistent effort with your little one

at home as well. I included some samples of some of the children’s

writing for you to see at the bottom of this post.

Digital Flyleaf Books for home

I hope you are continuing to make reading practice a priority at home. It is

imperative for all grade one students. I have noticed a wonderful

improvement as a class. Each child has made gains in his/her reading

skills. Here is the Flyleaf resource link as well. It gives you access to the

books we read as a class together. Go to community then e-library.

Once you scroll down you can see the books.

Flyleaf books https://flyleafpublishing.com/e-book-library

Math 

In math, we have been working on some word problems. They are learning to show

their thinking using pictures, numbers and words. I sent home your child’s work

home before the break. We will continue working on word problems this week.

Science

We continue to learn about Structures.

Religion

We continue to learn more about our Lenten journey. Thank you to all of you

who have made some donations towards our Lenten Project. 

I look forward to another great week of fun and learning. As always, please

write me a note or call me at the school if you have a question or concern.

Sincerely,

Giovanna Smith 😊

 

March 9, 2026

Winter is quickly coming to an end. When the temperature changes this drastically, things get super soggy in the school yard. If you have not done this already, please consider sending in dry socks and an extra set of mittens to school.  

We learned more about our St. Cecilia Lenten Project last week. It is called Paddington’s Amazing Water Race. We are raising money to help make safe clean water more accessible to different communities in several countries. Please send in a donation if you can. You can make a donation on SchoolCash Online.

We are continuing with our structure unit in Science. We will be building various structures. If you have any small boxes that you are recycling, please send them into the school, nothing too big please. For example, empty cracker boxes, empty kleenex, empty toothpaste boxes. Thanks for your support.

Thanks for helping your children return their books to exchange for new ones. Both the library books and the Home Reading books need to come back before they receive new books. 

We will be having our Winter Play day on Tuesday, weather permitting. If it goes ahead, please make sure your child is dressed for outdoor play. 

We will not have new Weekly words this week. We will review some of the sounds that we have been working on these last few weeks. We will continue with new ones after the March Break.  In Language, we continue to work on learning how to retell stories. In math, we continue to work on solving addition or subtraction problems. It is challenging for some of the children because they are still learning when to add and when to subtract.

As  always, please write me a note if you have any questions or concerns. I look forward to a great week of fun and learning! 

Hope you all have some extra family time with your little ones on the March Break. If you are travelling, safe travels. 

Sincerely, 

Mrs. Giovanna Smith

March 2, 2026

 

                                        

St. Cecilia Lenten Project

We will begin our St. Cecilia Lenten Project this week. The students will learn

more information from the Grade six team. Grade six students will be presenting

to our class this coming week. Stay Tuned! 

Spirit Week next week - March 9th - 13th

                                         

Kodable

We started a new coding game on Chromebooks. It requires a code to get into our

class account. I will have the children add it to the front page of their agendas

tomorrow in case you would like your child to try it at home. 

                                

Religion

We continue to listen to stories of Jesus. We are learning the importance of

thinking of others and spreading kindness during this Lenten season. We

are all working hard to prepare our hearts for Jesus. I hope you are helping

your child remember to pray for his/her special friend. 

Language

We continue to practice writing recounts in their journals. This is a skill

they continue to use as they progress through the grades. They are also

learning to retell stories that we are reading together as a class.

Home Reading Book Bags

Please continue to help your child remember to exchange his/her reading

books. These are the books that you can have your child practice his or

her reading from our classroom that I have chosen at his or her level to

improve his or her decoding, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary.

I can tell that you are practicing these books! I hear the improvements

when I listen to them read as well!

Science

We continue to learn about structures. We work on building some

structures together at school this week!

Math

Last week, we learned about Canadian Coins. They were practicing

their skip counting as we counted different money amounts. Try to

practice the name of the Canadian coins and their value at home. 

We will begin to work on word problems. It will be challenging for

the children because it will require them to read the question, figure

out what order of operation to try and show their answer with

pictures, numbers and words. We will also look closer at a calendar.

We work on it most days but we will dive deeper into March.

You can try this at home. Print off a blank calendar from the internet

and have your child fill in the days and count down the sleeps to a

fun family event! 

As always, please continue to write me a note if you have any questions

or concerns. I look forward to more fun and learning with the children. 

Have a great week! 

Sincerely,

Mrs. Giovanna Smith

February 23, 2026

 

Winter Olympics

We had fun on Friday watching the Olympics Games. We watched a few  minutes of the hockey game, some bobsledding and some speedskating. We also had some spreading kindness to finish off Kindness Week. The students made kind messages for different people that they love. It was super sweet ♥️ !

The children came home with a purple heart with a friend’s name from our class. We are praying for each other during the season of Lent. We will share who we are praying for when we get back from Easter Break. 

Language 

We continue to learn various phonemes. We have started to work on the long vowel sounds. We are learning the “Two vowels go walking and the first one does the talking” rule. Of course there are some exceptions to this rule. We learned a new one last week. We are learning about the /oi/ sound. 

We continue to build words with the sounds that we have learned this year. We worked on our How Many Words

Worksheet last week.

Math

The students have been working on a web-based math game on the Chromebooks called Numbots. It is a great game to help build early math skills, for example, adding one more, adding two more, subtracting one or subtracting two. If you are interested in trying it at home, you can google Numbots. You will need to find St. Cecilia then add your child’s user name and password. I will add them to their agendas this week. 

As always, please write a note in your child's agenda or call me at

the school if you have any questions or concerns. Looking forward

to another great week of fun and learning! 

Sincerely, 

Giovanna Smith 😊