See Pizza Order Info Under Important Class Announcements

See Pizza Order Info Under Important Class Announcements

Welcome back!

We hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing March Break! The students were excited to see all their friends and share stories with us about their time off.

Eric Carle is the Author/Illustrator inspiration for our art activity this week. Students have been experimenting with different materials to make textured looking paintings. They use bubble wrap, q-tips, sponges and toothpicks to make different designs.

   

At the building centre J.M, M.C and R.T worked together to create a structure. They  drew their plans so they would know how to build it. They got the idea from "three different books'.

 When they were finished, they pretended to share their blueprints and asked each other questions about how it was built. We've been practicing using question words so it was great to see them asking each other thoughtful questions!

Many students are still interested in building spinners out of the unifix cubes. They love playing "beyblades"!

The students took time today to write their March journal. They are working very hard to write a full sentence! It's wonderful to see the progress each student is making in their writing strategies.

Ms. Blakely put up numbers in the blue math organizer! M.C and G.F made a number game where they would alternate finding numbers and putting them back in order from one to twenty. Ms. Blakely has more fun things to add to this math organizer so stay tuned for more learning!

In our Aquarium, G.F spent time at the cash register and invited other students to play as sharks and scuba divers.

Our ECE student taught the children how to make a fruit salad! The kindergarteners LOVED it! It was great watching them peel oranges and cut bananas on their own. Fostering a great sense of independence while promoting healthy and delicious food choices!

Ms. Blakely gathered students ideas about what "boys can do" and "girls can do". You'll notice that our students for the most part agree that boys and girls are capable of doing a lot of the same things. For example, both boys and girls can...
"play with blocks"
"play with barbies/dolls"
"wear jeans"

 Mrs.David asked the students to help fill in a Venn diagram with spaces for "Girl toys", "Boy toys" and "both girl and boy toys". The students agree that boys and girls can play with any toy they like. We're excited to see how the students' thinking has changed.

After Mrs. David read a story about animals sinking a boat, G.F shared her boat creation with the class. She talked about how the paper she had originally used, didn't work well in water. The foam sheet she stapled to the bottom of her boat works much better! We'll be exploring buoyancy and objects that float/sink at our science table.

Our fish survived March Break and have grown quite a bit. They still spend a lot of time hiding. Today, Ms. Alannah found a fish hiding inside of a seashell. Here's a fish hiding under one of our big rocks!

Wednesday March 5 - Thursday March 6

Sorry for the delay in updating! We hope you're all having a fantastic March Break! :)

In music class, we had a special visitor.  Elsa from Frozen came to class while Mrs. Donovan played the story and songs from the movie. The children had a wonderful time singing along and recognizing different instruments in the songs.

You can also see music class' February students of the month:

During a class discussion in math, a student said that 3 + 3 makes 6, and then another student raised their hand and said no, 2 + 4 =6. It turns out, they're both right! Then we wanted to discover how many ways we could make 6:

We used coloured stickers to find out how many different ways we could make 6.  Ask your child if they can think of some different ways! :)

The class did some more experimenting with their spinners as well.  Each child has a picture of them with their spinner and made some predictions about it:

Once again, we hope you're enjoying your March Break! We'll see you on Monday for St. Patrick's Day!

A fun day of learning!

Today we read the story Fish is Fish over again and the students re-told the tale using puppets!
We put the puppets in our reading corner and during centre time A,J and M.A put on a show for the other students. They told the story we read and made up their own!

Spinners continue to be popular in the class and the Kindergarteners are experimenting with new designs.

This morning at the art table our ECE student gave the children foam letters so they could sound out different places in our community like school and the subway.

In our aquarium, M.C spent some time playing with the cash register.

 Students also worked together to build a large structure.

During math, students practiced using direction words to describe where they were placing shapes on their board. The students took turns leading the group and having them match their designs.

J.M and M.C took turns using the Geosafari camera this afternoon. Every child had a chance to test out the picture taking feature with a wonderful parent volunteer this morning. Students tried very hard to take pictures that weren't blurry.

M.C thought it was a good idea to take a video of the puppet show that other students performed.

This afternoon, the art table was full of creative sculptures as the children used clay, wooden dowels and other materials to make houses, creatures and structures.

This is our "Who is here today?" board. The students had no problem finding a picture of their own face and putting it in the squares on the board. We're hoping to use this as a visual attendance and to practice counting how many people are in our class (or are absent!).

G.F gave some leftover cucumber to the beetles today and they LOVED it! The beetles spent much of the afternoon crawling all over and eating the cucumber.

Mrs. David spent time with the students sorting pictures of toys into a Venn diagram. We wanted to see what toys the children classified as "girl toys" and "boy toys" or both.
When asked which side of the store they might go to, a side with a pink sign or a side with a blue sign, the students had some interesting answers.

I.A said "The pink one. Because I like pink, thats why I would want to go to that side"

M.C said " I would go to the blue side. I want to get a toy for my brother, he doesn't like the things on the pink side of the toy store. There isn't any pink on that side."
G.F added onto M.C's idea by saying "Just because there isn’t pink doesn't mean there aren't dolls there. I think there are girl toys on both sides. At the store mastermind, they have toys for both. "

Mrs. David read the book "A Fire Engine for Ruthie" and the students had interesting ideas about what boys and girls look like.

A student thought a child in the picture was a boy because they had short hair.  A.J pointed out that her "grandma has short hair and she's a girl". 

There will be a lot more learning about how everyone has different likes and dislikes regardless of their gender!

Playing with Letters and Building Spinners

At the writing table we're continuing our "Alphabet soup". Students put magnetic letters together to make words and wrote them on sticky notes.

M.C found the word "reading" in our reading centre and copied the word using letters!

 We've filled another page with words and almost have a window full of words the students have made!

The Geosafari camera is a popular choice during centre time and we've heard students saying "That's good learning" and taking a photo of what their peers are doing.

We talked this afternoon about how to take good videos and pictures. Hopefully the students can become classroom reporters and take photos for our blog!

 Last week, we read the story "Fish is fish" by Leo Leonni. A student asked what it meant to illustrate books so we thought it would be fun to let our class practice being illustrators.

Here I.I and I.V are drawing pictures in the same style as Leo Leonni by using crayons. G.D thought it would be neat to put the pictures together in our own class book!

 There was a lot of experimenting with materials going on at the art table today! The students were excited by the addition of glitter glue!
A.K drew an underwater picture using pastels and told us how sharks camouflage to hide from their prey!

Speaking of camouflage...our fish were doing a good job of hiding today! A.I said the black fish was hiding on the rock.

J.M wrote that she thought "the fish were a little bit scared" because they were hiding in the castle.

Our students have been very interested in spinners and "beyblades". They've been building them out of cubes and testing out how they spin.

The students tested out the spinners on different surfaces that they chose and Mrs.David helped record their discoveries.

The spinners are all very different! The kindergarteners are very unique in their design and are discovering what helps them spin faster/ slower.