The balls are back! The bathtub in our classroom has traditionally been a ball pit, but when COVID hit Madame took out the balls out of an abundance of caution. However, since the balls are plastic and easily cleaned, she has been given the go-ahead to reintroduce them, provided that we stick to a minimal amount that can be sprayed daily with disinfectant, just like our other plastic toys. (Students must wash hands before entering, and can only go in with socks on their feet.) We have been very happy to embrace this "new" addition to our classroom! This week we experimented with taking our literacy centres outdoors. We all had a great attitude about it and enjoyed trying out some new things, like drawing out our letters and words with chalk, and playing games with an alphabet tarp. We've also continued to add some new game concepts to our indoor centres. A popular one this week was fishing. Students can change the words they're fishing for, depending on their reading level. They must be able to pronounce their word in order to keep the fish they've caught. Our ability to decode unfamiliar words is getting so much stronger! For our letter books, Grade 1s are required to read the words off the board and write them beneath the appropriate picture. At first, this caused some tears as we were convinced that we didn't know how to do it. But Madame helped us sound them out and promised us that we would soon be able to do it on our own. Sure enough, one of the Grade 1 girls said to Madame today, "You were right, Madame! This is getting so much easier!" Music to Madame's ears... In Math, we've been continuing our focus on recognising numbers to 20, as well as subitizing - the ability to instantly recognize "how many" in a small set. For example, when adults roll a dice, they are able to instantly recognize the number of dots that they roll without having to count them. This is an actual skill that needs to be developed. It helps students to gain a grasp of numbers and prepares them for more complex addition concepts. One of our favourite morning videos has become this song by Jack Hartmann. The song is in English, but the majority of the video just shows a variety of sets without words so we are able to practice calling out our numbers in French. We've also been directly working on addition concepts this week through games and activities. We enjoyed "making 10" in various ways with unifix cubes. Kindergarteners played with different patterns for making 10, while Grade 1s took it a step further and wrote out their equations on a whiteboard. Some of our Ks decided to try out the Grade 1 equations, too! And "la forêt", of course! We can't leave that out! We braved the rain and had another great afternoon on Thursday running wild and free!...with a slight detour to take advantage of a fun sign in Spirit Square! An "evil fish"... Also, a big "merci" to everyone who has been sending in pictures of their squirrels in nests at home! We've even had a squirrel added to the Christmas Nativity. I'm not familiar with the mention of squirrels in the traditional Biblical narrative, but you just can't argue with a giant squirrel paying its respects to Baby Jesus.
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