Week of April 23

Special Helper Games

We have really enjoyed learning all the new games students have been bringing in on their Special Helper Day over the past few weeks. Thank you to everyone who has shared a game with the class so far, and we look forward to learning more games in the upcoming weeks!

Scientists in the School - Magnets

This week, Scientist Veronica visited our class to help us explore and learn about magnets. Students rotated between 5 different centres, run by our fabulous parent volunteers! Students were excited to see how certain magnets attracted and repelled from each other, how magnets still worked through different materials and even created their own paper fish. Thank you to the parents who were able to make this activity such a success!

No Ordinary Apple

This week, Cara came in to read the class a story called No Ordinary Apple: A Story About Eating Mindfully. Students learned how to slow down when trying new foods and to use their senses to discover special things about different foods. After listening to the story, the class practiced mindfully tasting a strawberry by using their senses to carefully notice it's qualities. 

Letter of the Week: Ww

To form both uppercase and lowercase Ww

- Start at the top

- Line slides down on a diagonal

- Line slides up on a diagonal

-Line slides down on a diagonal

-Line slides up on a diagonal

Jolly Phonics Song

I see the clouds moving /w/ /w/ /w/.

I see the kites flying /w/ /w/ /w/.

I see the trees bending /w/ /w/ /w/.

The wind is blowing strong.

Week of April 16th

Measurement Hunt

This week one of the math activities was a Measurement Hunt. Students first chose one object. Their next job was to find 5 objects that were longer and 5 objects that were shorter when compared to their original object. Students carefully compared objects by making sure they lined then up starting at the same point.

Creative Corner 

Students have been showing a lot of interest exploring with water colour paint recently. They enjoy using the technique of first drawing with pencil, then tracing with a sharpie marker and finally adding water colour paint. This week they observed the details in a spring plant with hyacinths, daffodils and pussy willows. 

Students also recently each created a "What spring means to me" painting. They are hanging in the classroom, please feel free to come take a look at them!

Word Sorts

Students were introduced to a new Literacy Centre. Students will be sorting words and pictures based on their similarities (i.e. beginning sounds, ending sounds, rhyming words). This week students sorted words in to 3 beginning sounds groups - Ss, Hh and the SH digraph.

Letter of the week - Vv

Forming uppercase and lowercase Vv

- Start at the top

- Slide down on a diagonal

Slide up on a diagonal

Jolly Phonics Song

Drive Vic's van round the village.

Drive Vic's van round the village.

Drive Vic's van round the village.

/v/ /v/ /v/ /v/ /v/.

Week of April 9th

Lego Maze STEM Challenge

Students were given Lego mats, different shapes and sizes of Lego pieces, straws and pompoms. They were challenged to create a maze using the Lego pieces and to have their friends complete it by using a straw to blow a pompom from start to finish. Students came up with some very tricky and creative mazes!

Literacy Centres

This week the focus of our Literacy Centres was practicing read and writing Sight Words. 

One of the activities was "Secret Sight Word Eggs". Students opened a total of ten eggs (one egg at a time!) to determine which sight word you could make using the letters inside. Many students used the word wall to figure out what the secret sight word might be. 

Another activity was "Read, Build, Write". Students chose a sight word card and read it to a friend, followed by "building" the word using letter tiles and finally, writing the word on their mat.

Letter of the week: Zz

We use the same prompts for forming both uppercase and lowercase Zz:

- Start at the top

- Little line across

- Big line slides down on a diagonal

- Little line across

Jolly Phonics Song

Did you ever hear a bee buzz,

a bee buzz,

a bee buzz?

Did you ever hear a bee buzz,

/zzzz/ like this?

Rainy Day Fun!

Before heading out on a rainy day community walk, we took a few silly face pictures to share with you!

Shake and Spill

This week the class was introduced to a new math game called "Shake and Spill". Each student had a small plastic cup with 10 red/yellow counters in. Each round they spilled the cup of counters and placed them in a line starting with the ones that landed on the red side first, followed by the counters that landed with the yellow side up. They recorded the different ways they could make 10 by colouring red and yellow circles and writing the number of each colour.