We all have stories to tell. There is probably a birthday you remember, an accident you had, or a special trip you took. This content makes for great storytelling with your little ones. When you share a story from your personal timeline, you are not only spreading that history to your child, but you are helping to build vocabulary, enhancing language skills, and modeling story structure. Share a few stories from your past or your child’s past this week.
Don’t forget the Scholastic Book Fair is running this week! I can’t wait to see all the excited students! In addition to their shopping time with their class, students may come back again on Friday at first or second recess if they need to purchase some more things. The fair will also be open from 5:00-8:00 during Student-Led Conference evening on Thursday.
Tuesday April 2 is World Autism Awareness and Acceptance day. Check out these books to help understand this topic more! At HHCS we are observing the day and encouraging our students to be accepting of all kinds of people with all kinds of differences.
The total eclipse is coming up soon- April 8! Here are some books to help explain and celebrate this historical day.
Get ready for the Scholastic Book Fair, HHCS! It will be held the week of April 2-5, including availability during Student-Led Conferences. Please let me know if you might be able to volunteer! Email Mrs. Baillargeon at L.Baillargeon@hh-cs.org.
GROWING READERS TIP:
Yes, we can build reading skills when we are shuttling kids between school and home or sports practice and the grocery store. Try one or more of these ideas this week while driving around town with your child.
Listen to an audiobook or podcast.
Brainstorm together about how many words begin with a certain sound.
Look for letters on billboards, signs, and buildings.
Play a category game. Name a category such as ‘fruit’ and then brainstorm words that fit in that category.
TAKE AWAY: Play a reading game or listen to an audiobook in the car this week.
Grades 3-6 had a fantastic Zoom visit with the hilarious author Chris Grabenstein! It was especially exciting to hear that the last installment of his Lemoncello book series comes out this fall! Many of his books are available at our HHCS library.
Kindergarten – Grade 3’s author visit was with Forest of Reading award nominee Lindsay Zier-Vogel! We loved having her read her book, Dear Street, to us and hearing about her love lettering project. Grade 1-2 adapted her project to write letters of appreciation to different areas of our school! I already found one in the library and am looking forward to seeing more around the school!
GROWING READERS TIP:
There is a lot of wait time during sports practices, music lessons, and club meetings. Carry along a book or two for these opportunities. Your child can look at books on their own or with siblings and friends.
Did you know that we have a school subscription to Britannica School? It is an amazing resource! Check it out here at https://school.eb.com/levels. The username and password are both hhcs.
Britannica School can be an amazing homework helper! It has different reading levels available for each article, so that you can tier the information to the level that your student is at. It has a read-aloud feature and can translate to other languages as well! You can use Britannica ImageQuest to find rights-cleared images that can be used for reports. Britannica is a safe way for our kids to search the internet for what they need and is fun to use! It has at-a-glance collections of information on various topics, a Canada At a Glance section, early elementary fundamentals for grades K-2, news stories of the day, an online atlas, and a compare countries tool. Check out this article here for a guided tour for parents. britannicaeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Britannica-School-Guided-Tour-For-Parents.pdf
GROWING READERS TIP: (From GrowingBookbyBook.com)
Helping your child feel like reading is one of their special super powers early on is important. Noticing aloud when your child does things such as selects a book, talks about a story, enjoys a read-aloud, notices things in a book, talks about a story, enjoys a read-aloud, notices things in a book, or perhaps even reads, helps your child feel like he/she is living a readerly life.
Try these prompts this week as you notice your child living a readerly life.
“You have a real superpower for ____________.”
“You did ___________________, which is something that strong readers do.”
TAKE AWAY: I can help my child discover their inner reading superpower.
We are excited to present the HHCS Usborne Read-a-Thon for the second year! Your child received a package on Friday for this amazing opportunity. Blast into reading and support the HHCS library while building your child’s personal home library as well! Usborne has an amazing selection of fiction and non-fiction as well as activity books and puzzles.
Just before the Christmas break we had a wonderful and cozy day to celebrate Jolabokaflod- the Icelandic tradition of the ‘Christmas book flood’. We enjoyed lots of reading and yummy hot chocolate. Thank you to all the guest readers who volunteered as well as those who helped to serve the drinks!
The new issue of the student-run newspaper, The Moose News, is here! Take a look, you can read it here online. There are lots of fun and informative articles for you to read!
Thank you to all who brought in a book-related Christmas ornament that they made for the library! It was so fun to look at these every day!
The new Storywalk is up! Come and check it out the next time you are at school- go for a walk through our wetlands!
Wishing you all a blessed Christmas with lots of cozy reading time!
I am looking for volunteers! Do you like to read? Do you like Christmas? Do you like kids? We are looking for parent volunteers to guest read to classes on Thursday, Dec. 21 for a special celebration of JOLABOKAFLOD- the Icelandic tradition of ‘flooding’ with books on Christmas Eve! We will be reading in different ways and enjoying hot chocolate and pajamas. Please email Mrs. B. if you can help out- L.Baillargeon@hh-cs.org. Check out this article to learn more about Jolabokaflod!
Just a reminder to everyone that the Accelerated Reader deadline is coming up on Thursday November 16! At that point students should be done their reading for the term and are just finishing up the AR tests. Accelerated Reader not only gets our students to read more, but our program also promotes goal-setting and time management. Keep reading, HHCS!
The Book Character Potato contest in the library was back this year, after having it two years ago. I was even MORE impressed with the students’ creativity and hard work this time around! How amazing to see all the adorable book characters keeping our library cheery and cozy! We had entries such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Charlotte’s Web, Aslan, The Cat in the Cat, a Minion, Harry Potter, The Couch Potato, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Pigeon, The Hockey Sweater, Pinocchio, Sherlock Holmes, Monsters Inc, The Little Prince, Elephant and Piggie, Wordy Birdy, The Good Egg, and more. Have a look!
