Here we are, nearing the end of October, and we are starting to catch on to a lot of the routines in our classroom. "Quiet time" after lunch has become impressively quiet, and we can now all join in (and in French!) while Mme Van Sickle goes through the schedule for the day and asks the "chouchou" our mystery show-and-tell questions. We have begun working towards Guided Reading this week, with a focus on teaching the students to be independent at various literacy centres, freeing up Mme to do some small group levelled reading. But it's not all work, work, work and no play!... We had our "pattern party" this week ("fête des régularités") and students made patterned masks, Froot Loop patterned necklaces, played with real leaves that had fallen off the trees to make colourful patterns, etc. Thanks to all who brought in the yummy patterned food for us to enjoy! We also got to go on a special walking trip to the park with our Big Buddies, enjoying one of the last beautiful sunny fall days. Our buddies acted like the "moms and dads" while they were with us and stuck right by our sides, letting us take the lead as to where we wanted to go. We all had a great time!
We went on our first nature walk this week with our big buddies (thanks for getting in all of those permission forms!) and it was completely open-ended. The kids enjoyed jumping off big stumps, climbing inside of them, making pretend campfires, collecting "treasures" in paper bags, and, in the picture above, banding together to build a shelter with large branches they found. It was fun to see their imaginations come to life. A log placed on top of a stump became a "bench", and little nooks in the trees became their "houses". Some learned about mushrooms growing on trees and how they are different from the mushrooms that we buy at the store - we don't eat them!
We are also talking a lot about patterns these days in our Math classes. One of our favourite places to find patterns is in music. We discovered a great A-B-A-B pattern in the song "We will rock you" (stomp-clap-stomp-clap), and with the help of the trumpet, we learned that we can also find some AA-BB patterns ("Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star") and A-B-C ("Hot Cross Buns"), etc. The students were very curious about the trumpet and loved touching the buttons and looking at their reflections in the bell. We were fortunate to have a big bucket of apples donated to us by one of our students' families so this week was all about those apples! We made hypotheses about which was heavier - a pumpkin or an apple? ...And then hypothesized about which of the two would roll faster down a hill. Our big buddies came with us to test our theories on the hill by Spirit Square. They helped us to record our results. We also did some apple art. We cut apples in half and noticed how if we cut them in one particular way, we got a star pattern from the seeds. Another fun realization was that there are just as many seeds inside the apple as there are petals on the flower that eventually becomes an apple. After cutting our apples in half, we used them to stamp fall colours onto paper. Finally today, with the help of some brave moms, we glued sticks and leaves onto our apple art to create fall trees. And the BEST part was making some very yummy apple sauce! It turned out SOOOO yummy! Everyone in the school was stopping by our classroom to smell the wonderful scent. Thanks again to our brave moms and to the family that donated the apples!
Ask me about: - patterns and Froot Loop necklaces - playing games at Spirit Square Today we took a mini break from reading French books and I read the students this book about manners: It's an excellent teaching tool for helping students to better understand how to treat people, how to say "please" and "thank you", how to include others... But it's also embedded with lots of great humour. I confess I may have laughed so hard I cried the first couple of times I read it to my own kids (which was reason enough for them to want me to read it to them every.single.night). If you want to pick up a copy of your own, I highly recommend it. You can grab one on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.ca/Do-Unto-Otters-About-Manners/dp/0312581408/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538624356&sr=8-1&keywords=do+unto+otters We've been talking every day in class about using our manners, including others, and being kind. But we've also been talking about what to do if somebody ISN'T including us or ISN'T kind. We are learning our school's strategy of using our WITS. Some things require us to immediately jump to the last step (Seek help): hitting, biting, or any kind of physical violence. Other things like name-calling, taking a toy from us, not sharing... can often be solved by simply Walking away, Ignoring, or Talking it out. PHONICSWe have now learned and practiced the following sounds: s, a, t, m, i. Please continue to reinforce these sounds at home, as you can. Your children should be able to identify the letters and do a gesture that goes with each sound. We have also talked about how 'a' and 'i' belong to a special, exclusive club called the "Vowels" ("Voyelles" in French). Your children should be coming home each night with the sound books pictured below, in which they have pasted the letters that we have worked on so far. We are not practicing the letter names so much yet as the sounds, themselves, so don't be shocked if your child can't name the letter but knows what sound it makes. ColoursWe have also been doing lots of work with colours lately. Our song for this week is all about the rainbow ("l'arc-en-ciel"). We are working on naming the colours and using them to create our own French version of Eric Carle's "Brown Bear" book.
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