New Sharing Schedule

The new sharing schedule is now up. Please click on the "Sharing" tab near the top of the blog so you can make a note of your child's upcoming sharing dates.  Just click on each month's calendar to see the names more easily.  Thanks for keeping track of your dates :)

Wassailing

As part of our Winter Celebrations Around the World theme, the children "flew" to England to learn about English traditions. We discovered that the first Christmas cards were sent in England and the tradition of carolling (or wassailing) started in England as well. We made wassail today and drank it as we went from classroom to classroom, singing Christmas carols and spreading holiday cheer.

Needs and Wants

Our teacher candidate, Ms. Vaughn has been working with the students on the difference between needs and wants. We have talked about product packaging, commercials and how companies try to get us to buy their products. We are becoming smart shoppers!

The Integrated Arts

How exciting! Today Lynne Mulvihill, a ceramic artist, came to work with us. We learned about working with clay, firing clay and using glaze. We all rolled our clay, added texture and cut it out into interesting shapes. Lynne will fire it for us and be back again later this week.

Bison Box

Today we explored the buffalo box as part of our learning about the Seven Teachings. In November, we are focusing on the first teaching, which is Respect. The buffalo is the animal that represents respect as the First Nations people showed great respect for the buffalo by using every part of it and wasting nothing at all.

Here are some insights that the children shared while we were exploring the buffalo box.

Gabriel said: "The fur was soft."

Mathew said: "The tail was hard and fluffy." 

Drayson said, "The tail was used for swatting bugs and cleaning up."

Jayden said: "The horn is used for a cup."

Avery said: "You could blow in the horn."

Cameron said: "The hooves were used for drinking."

Rhianna said: "The fat was good for making into soap to wash hands."

Serenity said: "The hide was used to make for making drums and for the tipis."

Xander said: "They used the tooth for playing games."

What an exciting hands on experience!

We remember to be like the buffalo and show respect for ourselves, for others and for the Earth.

Giving Tree collection

Hi parents and guardians. It is getting chilly out and some people don't have enough money to buy neck warmers, mitts, hats and scarves. So please try to donate one or two things to help children. There will be big bins outside the office for you to put your donations in. Please donate by Nov. 24th.

From Izzy on behalf of the Giving Tree Club

Happy Halloween

We had a great day on Halloween. The morning was filled with Halloween math centres and the afternoon was our party. The entire school gathered in the gym to share costumes, listen to the choir, view a Halloween story read by the teachers and dance to the Monster Mash! Back in our room, we enjoyed some yummy snacks (thanks to the families who brought this time!) and played a few Halloween games. Hope you enjoy the pictures...

Reminder: Please send no more than 2 small treats to school and be certain to keep all treats with peanuts or peanut butter at home.  Thank you.

Materials Centers

We had theme Centers about different materials. At the Centers we do experiments, we write songs, we sort brushes for different jobs, we make poems and we are planing and making a candy holder. Gabriel says, " The Centers are fun!"  Cameron told us that the Centers make her happy. Drayson thinks the Centers are awesome! Brody likes sorting the brushes. Avery, John, Rhianna, Tristan, Serenity, Landen and Cara all liked doing the experiment! Mathew and Jayden like making the candy holder!

Daily 5 - Read to Someone

During our Daily 5 literacy routine, the children have mastered the first four literacy tasks: read to self, work on writing, listen to reading and word work.  This week we are learning how to read to someone. The boys and girls have enjoyed reading their stories to a classmates. Reading to someone is a great way to practice reading fluently and is fun!

Collages

We have been working on our Characteristics of Materials theme and learning what different objects are made of and why we use certain materials for objects. In art we made a materials collage. We had to use something that was bumpy, something made of wood, something shiny and something soft! The collages look fabulous!

Different Kinds of Smart

We have been learning about the "different kinds of smart" (Multiple Intelligences)!  Everyone has smooth roads (strengths) and bumpy roads (challenges).  Mrs. Turner is verbal-linguistic, which means she learns well by reading and writing.  Ms. Jensen in mathematical-logical - she is good with problems and numbers.  Some of our students felt they were bodily-kinesthetic like Mrs. Rogala our Phys. Ed teacher,  or visual- spatial like Ms. Dowd.  Ask your child what kind of smart they are!  What kind of smart are you?

Spelling Words

I will send home the weekly spelling words each Friday, but just in case you want to review or look ahead, click on this link:
Grade 1 Spelling Word List

Word work

Each week, we will focus on mastering 5 new words. The spelling words selected are the 100 most frequently used words in children's writing. Approximately 80% of the words that children use to write are comprised of these 100 words! 

On Monday and Tuesday, we practise writing these words using lowercase letters and ensuring they are just the right size. By mid-week, we are ready to practice our words in a hands-on manner - by making them with wiki-stix, by printing them on white boards or by playing Spider Race.

Fall Celebration

Today we celebrated the arrival of fall in Room 8. We read some stories, learned about the different types of leaves and made fall patterns. We rubbed leaves with crayons to see their veins and made beautiful art at the same time. In the afternoon, the children wrote simple fall poems, created lovely pastel and watercolour paintings and enjoyed a delicious apple taste test. Happy fall!

Daily 5

We have been practicing our Daily 5 routine each day in Grade 1. We are working on building our reading stamina (being strong at reading without stopping). We are now up to 10 minutes for read to self! Well done Grade1s!!

Dot Day!

Today we celebrated Dot Day which is a day created to celebrate the creative spirit based on the book "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds. After reading the book, we participated in several dot centres including making our names in dots, a dot hunt, making a page with dot stickers for our class book and painting a dot! It was very busy and very fun!

Home Practice

We have been reviewing the letter names and sounds this week. The students use the Letter Factory actions to help them recall the sound each letter makes. We have played alphabet bingo on the smartboard to practice.  Here is the link so you can play at home as well:  http://www.abcya.com/kindergarten_alphabet_bingo.htm

First Day

We enjoyed a wonderful day getting to know one another. We played some name games and worked on a friend detective. 

We also decided what we want our classroom to be like and created our "We Believe" poster. We decided that we will:

Be safe

Be kind

Do our best to learn.

Looking forward to a terrific year with your children!

Our Pet Show Performance

The Grade 1s put on a fantastic play which was enjoyed by the other students as well as parents and grandparents. They sung each song clearly with their beautiful voices and did all the actions too. The students with speaking lines amazed us with their confidence and delivery. A special thanks to Mrs. Wurch for providing our younger students with a chance to shine on stage

. Well done boys and girls!