October 21 - 25, 2024

Halloween is an abbreviation of "All Hallow's Eve", which is also known as "All Saints Eve". It is the day before an important day in the Catholic church, All Saints Day. The Catholic origins of Halloween date back to more than 1300 years ago during the vigil of the Feast of All Saints.The day of October 31st is a feast day dedicated to remembering loved ones who have died. Traditionally, families would lay out a feast for the spirits of loved ones who got to return home for this one evening. That helps explain why we give a treat to kids dressed up as ghosts. Here is more information about the Christian roots of Halloween festivities. 

At St. Gabriel, we are having a Halloween Spirit Week starting on Friday of this week until and including Halloween, which is next Thursday, October 31st. Each day, there will be special themes and activities. Here are a few:

Friday, Oct. 25 - Flashback Friday & St. Gabriel Family Halloween Dance

Monday, Oct. 28 - Mad Scientist Monday 

Tuesday, Oct. 29 - Twisted Twin Tuesday

Wednesday, Oct. 30 - Wacky Witch and Wizard Wednesday

Thursday, Oct. 31 - Halloween: Wear your costume or dress in orange, black, green, or purple colours

School Halloween Guidelines:

- Simple costumes, no accessories, no costume mask

- Culturally-sensitive costumes only

- No changing clothes at school

**Please do not send in Halloween treats or snacks to be shared at school.

Our Learning this Week

Language: 

In Writing, we continue to practise our recount writing skills. This week, we will review how to write a good opening sentence when writing a recount. At the end of next week in class, your child will be asked to use the criteria on our class anchor chart to write a recount about what he/she did on Halloween, or, if your child won't be celebrating Halloween, something he/she did during the week or on the weekend. 

In grammar and word work, we will review common nouns and proper nouns and begin our focus on adjectives. This week, we will finish our UFLI phonics lesson about the -ck sound. We will review that when we hear the /k/ sound at the end of a word after a short vowel, we spell it with a ck, like at the end of the words duck, rock, black, sick, quack, stick, clock.

Please have your child practise the heart words we have learned so far in class: the, I, a, said, to, do, of, see, he, be, me, from, you, what, have, look, book, are, was, your, want, go, no, so, *goes, *says.

**On Friday, we will have another "spelling check-in" so please help your child review how to spell the heart words learned so far. See the list above.

Math:

We will continue our unit about representing numbers in different ways and place value. 

Link to Grade 2 Parent Summary letter Representing Two-Digit Numbers here

Link to Grade 2 Parent Summary letter Composing and Decomposing Two-Digit Numbers here

Looking Ahead:

Tuesday, Oct. 22: Gr. 2/3 library books due & Pizza lunch

Friday, Oct. 25: School Halloween Dance (6-8pm) 

Thursday, Oct. 31: Halloween

Friday, Nov. 1: All Saints Day & Photo Retake Day

Sunday, Nov. 3: Daylight Savings Day - Turn back clocks