“It’s safer outside! No, wait! It’s safer inside!” Our week started out in an interesting way with all of the smoke in the air. All of our best laid plans to be outside were put on pause. Thankfully by Wednesday the smoke had cleared enough and we were able to begin our outdoor learning! We have been spending lots of time outside doing games and activities that are meant to train us to listen and know the outdoor boundaries, as well as build a sense of camaraderie. We have explored a different area of the school grounds each day, including going just outside the fence to Spirit Square on one occasion. After our initial outdoor games, we begin outdoor Math. Nature is a perfect Math teacher because there are so many different shapes and things to count! We have been working on our French counting with a funny song about bicycles, chairs, and birthday parties that helps us to learn our numbers to 20. Then we hone in on one number per day, learning how to represent it with dice, tallies, pictures and on a ten-frame. Much of this is review for those of us in Grade 1, but it is setting us up to be able to use the same numeracy strategies with higher numbers which will in turn lead to addition and subtraction. We practice counting with jumping, clapping, stomping, and doing running races... always ending with some written work and number identification practice. We've also had lots of fun outside during free time and at recess, too! We even made some really neat discoveries - ladybugs and inch worms hanging from the trees! But the most exciting thing this week was that our Ks and 1s finally got to join together! We were thrilled to meet our little buddies/big buddies! The Grade 1s made special pictures for their Kindergarten friends to show them something that they love at school. They've also been great leaders, always willing to jump up and help walk their younger peers to the bathroom. In French, we have been practicing many of our most common French phrases through song. We are getting used to "silly Madame" breaking into song at all kinds of random moments. The songs are meant to get stuck in our heads so that the phrases also get embedded in our memories. We thought it was pretty funny when Madame almost fell on the floor in surprise after a couple of Kindergarten students spontaneously said, "Est-ce que tu peux m'aider, Madame?" (Can you help me, Madame?) We have also begun working on our letter sounds, starting with "S" and "A". We even learned to read our first French word!... "sa" means his or her. Every letter has a gesture to go with it to trigger our memories. In class, we colour a picture to represent each gesture that we learn. And for every day that we practice our letter sounds at home, we get to colour a little image on our "Home Reading" sheets. When all 30 little images are coloured (representing 30 days of reading), Madame says we can bring our sheets back to school to redeem them for a prize! She will then give us a new sheet and we can continue the routine. In the mornings when we arrive and then again in the afternoons, just before the Kindergarteners leave for the day, we've been playing with some toys in the classroom. The toys are divided into coloured sections so that each small table group plays with just one set of toys for the week. Then the following week the toys get rotated to the next group. Even after a week, we are still discovering some new things within our toy sections.
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