Old Man Winter

What a wintery week!! We were missing LOTS of our classmates this past week, what with the deep freeze we had at the beginning of the week, and then with the snowstorm, followed by the freezing rain, we were really low in numbers all week. Those of us who did trudge in managed to have some fun and a wee bit of learning too.

The children enjoyed our attempts in collaborative building as a culminating project for our Science Unit on Materials, Objects, and Everyday Structures. Those that were away will get a chance to dig-in to our Winter building challenges too upon their return, no worries. We'll be jumping back into our Daily and Seasonal Changes Unit too in the next coming weeks. 

Speaking of science, the children were quite excited to see a couple of teeny tiny sprouts popping up in our grow tower. I wonder what the next week will bring? 

With lower numbers, it was a great opportunity to introduce our self-selected art materials area and the expectations involved in being about to select their own materials for explorations and creations. More to come in the coming weeks.

 Thursday had us welcoming the end of a short week (well, for the kiddies, that is) all snuggled in our pyjamas. We even had PJ twins in our class.

In an effort to tidy up some of our overflowing recyclables, the children were invited to use them in the creation of a structure for their stuffies. We had a couple of airplanes, a tent, and more. 

We ended the week with a visit from some fire fighters, who enjoyed reading us a story on Fire Safety to not only highlight Sunday January 27th's twentieth anniversary of Family Literacy Day, but to share some fire safety information with all the grade one students who managed to join us.

The children were so excited and asked many rich, thought provoking questions, such as:

• What do you do if there's a fire downstairs, but not upstairs?
• What if the door is hot to touch but you don't have any windows?
• What if you're sleeping when the alarm goes off?
• What happens if there is smoke on the stairs when you want to go down/up from basement?
• What if there's smoke coming through the cracks of your door?
• Where do you get the water from when you're driving your truck?
• What happens if your fire truck breaks down?
• Why do you wear a uniform?
• What's the yellow stuff on your uniform?

We even got to see the fire truck whiz past with lights and sirens blaring while leaving on their way back to the station. 

We learned several important safety rules but the most important one involves you, moms and dads...discuss where your safe meeting place is outside of the house with your children. If there is ever smoke or fire in your home, get low, get out, and meet at your safe meeting place.

Word Wall Words for next week:

because, children, school, friend, nice

Check out this list of ideas for games and activities to play with your child to help them learn their sight words.

Have a safe weekend everyone. Stay warm!

Mid January

It's hard to believe it's already past the middle of the month. Time flies when you're having fun!

The children are having a blast conducting surveys of one another and collecting & plotting data on a number of topics, so as a provocation, I set up this pictograph for Tuesday morning to surprise them with the news that not only we're we having visitors from Mme Leblanc's class coming to buddy up with us, but that we were finally able to utlize our Grow Tower (we'd been waiting for brand new-to code light-bulbs). The children voted on the plant they were most excited about growing, and we set off to work with our blossom buddies to plant our seeds and add nutrients to our grow pods and add them to the tower. The children were so excited, that several of them wanted their buddies to come back the following DAY to reap the benefits of our garden, forgetting that it will take just a wee bit more time before we can harvest.😀

 Thank you to Mrs. Hanna who hung out with me after school on Monday night assembling lights and readying the grow tower.

We continue to work on ball skills in the gym, but imagine my pride when I notice two classmates who are supposed to be playing 'hot potato catch' independently problem solving whose chosen ball to use first. I like how they're thinking!

We ended the week off with a review on warm and cool colours and a discussion on texture and paint technique and the children explored oil pastels and puffy paint.

FYI:

• Wednesday January 23 is Litterless Lunch. We are practicing having garbage free lunches (excluding compost) & tallying our class results. We're also transferring that data into tangible bar graphs using unifix cubes. The grade three children will be collecting data school-wide starting next month.
• Thursday January 24 will be Snuggle Up with a (Small) Stuffie & PJ Day
• Friday January 25 is a PD Day, so no school for your little ones.
• WWW for next week are: best, pretty, what, there, no, read.
• Assessment Folders will be coming home in the next week with some samples of the children's work/assessments. Please ensure that they are returned as soon as possible.
• We will be visiting the library this week. Please send in late library books. If you cannot find the missing book, please send a note and I will provide you the information from Miss Jenn, our librarian tech, on the cost to replace the book.

Thank you and have a great weekend!

Erin Riley

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!
I was happy to welcome the children back to school this past week and my heart was warmed with lots of happy greetings, big smiles, hugs, and, "I missed you!!"s.
We spent some time reestablishing connections with one another and setting goals for the New Year while slowly delving back into the curriculum.

 We have begun a new math unit...likely a favourite of the year. Young children LOVE posing questions and surveying one another. We've been making vertical and horizontal bar and pictographs and will be revisiting tallies as we continue to ANALYZE our collected data.

Our WWW's for this past week, as posted on our January homework calendar that was sent home were: their, when, make,will, eat. The children spent a lot of time this week exploring these words and many were still confused with the particular word 'their'. Please ensure that you are revisiting the WWW's on a consistent basis as our Word Wall is growing, the words are becoming more and more complex and these words generally are not words that can easily be decoded by sounding out each letter. Sight words are words that are commonly found in print and to aid your child in learning to read or improve in their reading, they need to know these words at a glance.
Our WWW's for the next coming week are:
this, all, very, to, where.

Looking ahead to the next month for the old school 3R's:
Reading:

• Blends and Digraphs (ie. ch, sh, th, wh, ph)
• Reading Strategy: 'Chunky Monkey'...the children look for chunks and small words within words that they already know to help them decode new words.
• Comprehension Strategies: continue with predictions, retelling, and making connections. We will begin to explore visualizing and asking questions.
• Spending more time reading 'just right' books at our own individual reading levels.

Writing:

• Continue to work on Super Sentences. The children should be writing 2-3 complete sentences minimally in their writing tasks by this point in the school year, using a combination of word wall words/known words and phonetic spelling of unknown words.
• Continue with our Recount Writing & Procedural Writing.

Math:

• Data Management-collecting, organizing, and analyzing data using concrete graphs, bar and pictographs and tally marks.
• Number Sense and Numeration-representing, comparing and ordering whole numbers to 50.

What can you do at home to help your learners?

Read with your child nightly. Read WWW's and books at their level. Discuss spacing between words and punctuation, letter sounds and hidden word chunks to help them decode tricky words and discuss what the books are about for comprehension. 

Play math games and board games such as Snakes and Ladders. Talk about the numbers and what comes before and after/bigger or smaller than; how many ten frames would you need to make that number; what are the digits in that number when it's written; how can you build that number using friendly numbers.

As always, I thank you for your support in your child's learning and I wish you a wonderful week. Stay warm!
Erin Riley