What do our communities look like now?As our field trip to Heritage Park fast approaches we have been working on building our understanding of community. Who are community helpers? What do our communities need? We have been lucky to have some different community helpers come in and talk to us. We've had a paramedic come in - he taught us that ambulances are so important. Paramedics jobs are to help us as quickly, and as safely as possible. We learned about different tools they use, like stethoscopes, bone drills, and giant bandaids. We also learned that paramedics work alongside police officers, and firefighters to keep us and our communities safe. We also had a nurse come in a talk to us. She taught us about different places that nurses can work, like the hospital, the doctors office, and even in schools. She also gave us some good tips to help keep ourselves healthy: 1. Eat fruits and vegeatbles 2. Drink lots of water and milk 3. Get lots of sleep every night 4. Exercise 5. Wash your hands!! Ask me what other things I have learned about different community helpers. We have also been designing community maps. We made a list of all the important things a community needs - a hospital, a fire station, a police station, a school, houses, a grocery store and roads. We also talked about fun things communities can have, like parks, swimming pools, zoos, libraries and a Chuck E. Cheese. Our criteria was to include all of the important buildings first, then we could add the fun things too. We also thought it was important to include trees for fresh air, sidewalks to walk safely, and traffic lights so cars don't get into accidents. Our plants are continuing to grow!! We have been able to try our sprouts, lettuce, and parsley. We can't wait until our other plants, like tomatoes, carrots and potatoes get bigger so we can try them too. Our beans have really grown too! We are even starting to get flower buds on some of them. In Math we continue to work on subtraction strategies. But we have also been working on counting by 2's, and understanding word problems. More on this to come!
Please continue to read Raz kids - all students have had their levels adjusted to suit their reading needs. Don't forget that on Tuesdays we have the "Planting Seeds, Growing Readers" Program from 230-330, and memberships for the public library are free! This week we had an amazing presentation from Kananaskis in the Classroom. As Grade One's we were lucky because, not only did we get to see the whole school presentation about Buck the Beaver, but we also got individual class sessions with Brandon. He taught us all kinds of things about beavers, like: They eat trees, they can see underwater, and they can hold their breath for 15 minutes!! We got to play a game about how humans impact animal homes and resources, such as food and water supply. We also got to touch a real (dead) beaver!! We did a draw along of a beaver to help us look at the specific details, like their tails. We continue to grow as writers. We are working on checking our own writing for capital letters, finger spaces and end marks (.!?). We have also been doing some feedback for our peers about their writing.
Please continue to read Razkids at home, or take out books from your local library. Library Cards are free! And it is so important that we keep reading books and learning new words. Please submit all Scholastic book orders by tomorrow, Thursday March 1st.
Look at how our beans have grown!! We are still taking close observations and documenting our plants as they continue to change. We like looking at all the different parts of the plants, like the buds and the veins in the leaves. We like using magnifying glasses so we can look at all the details up close. The rest of our plants have grown and changed a lot too. There's always so much to see. We have worked a lot on spelling small words by ourselves. Now we have moved on to spelling big words; if you can spell a small word, you can spell a big word!! We are breaking up words into syllables, this means how many sounds they have. We are becoming experts at sounding out words with two syllables, like "rabbit" and "muffin". We have even tried spelling some words with 3 syllables, like "library". This week we did some Toucan inspired art!! Most of us didn't know what a toucan was, be we really like their bright colours. There were a lot of steps involved: 1. We did a draw along to get their shape right. 2. A step by step painting where we learned about blending colours and improved our watercolour skills. 3. The background - we used bright purple and blue because we really like the contrast. Here we learned about complimentary colours, red & green, yellow & purpler, orange & blue. Complimentary means they make the other colour pop! We put salt on top of the watercolour to add texture and detail. 4. And finally, we outlined and enhanced our art using sharpies. We really are becoming AMAZING artists. We have been so busy being gardeners and Scientists in our classroom. We have planted all kinds of different plants - lettuce, marigolds, nasturtium, tomatoes, parsley, sprouts and beans. It's amazing how much they have grown! We love observing how they change everyday. We replanted most of our plants as they are starting to outgrow their homes. We did some technical drawings of plants to show how what they have. We learned that leaves help plants make food and clean air for us to breath. We also learned that the roots keep plants stable and help the plants drink water. We did a Science experiment to learn about how plants move the water from their roots all the way to their leaves. We took both celery and white carnations and put them in coloured water. They drank the water up and the colours of the water slowly started to show. The longer they sat in the water, the more their colours changed. We tried cutting one piece of celery in half at the bottom. We put one side in the red water and one side in the blue water - we thought the celery would turn purple, instead half was blue and half was red! We have been working on becoming authors. We have been writing our very own stories about things that we know. Some of us wrote about animals, some of us wrote about plants, some of us even wrote about how to be in love. We are building our confidence as writers, and really love sharing our stories with others. Here are a few: In Math we are working on Subtraction. This means taking a small number away from a big number. We really like using jellybeans as our example, because we can talk about how many jellybeans we have, and how many jellybeans we have eaten. We have learned strategies like -0, and taking away the same number (5-5=0). We are still working on this and practice using our fingers, drawing tallies, or counting chips for support. We've also learned a fun way to practice with a deck of cards. Ask me to show you! We have had two different art projects that we are working on. One is for our school family, The Mighty Mammoths. We've all made our own mini mammoth to be part of a display that is coming soon. We've been talking about important characteristics that make us good people. We know its important to show kindness and help others out, but we also know all about showing respect and making good choice that impact us and the people around us. We also did some abstract art with watercolours and sharpies. We worked on letting the water move the paint around, then finished by being line detectives and outlining the different shapes we saw. They turned out AMAZING. This Wednesday is Valentine's Day. Please note if you are sending cards with your child we ask that there is one for every student in the class. We have a total of 18 kids. We also ask that no treats are sent because of food restrictions and allergies.
Reminder: Wednesday, February 14th is a half day for students. Happy February All!!
Just a reminder that our Assembly is tomorrow, Friday, February 2nd at 9:30 am in the school Gym. We hope to see you there!! Also, a reminder that, should you wish to order a book, all Scholastic Book Order forms are due tomorrow! We continue to build our "Must know words" for reading and writing. This week we have added "was", "for" and "said" to our classroom list. We get our words from the Dolch Sight Word Lists. We are working our way through Pre Primer words at this time. Parents, please be advised that students should be able to recognize all words on the the Pre Primer and Primer list. If you are able to make flashcards and practice at home it is so beneficial for them. However, 5 minutes a night is plenty, and focus on no more than 5 words at a time! We have been busy becoming Scientists and Horticulturalists (someone who studies and grows plants). We made a list of all the things we think we know about plants - what they have, what they need, what they give us and what they do. We know a lot of things! Through this inquiry we will improve our knowledge of plants and why they are so important to us. We learned that people could not live without plants! We started by looking at the different parts of plants. We talked about both flowering plants and trees. Then we got to do some detective work. We were given 5 different seeds to look at. We looked at them with magnifying glasses and tried to decide what we thought they would grow into. We documented our observations and our predictions. Later we learned that some of our predictions were close, while some were way off! 1. Nasturtium (a flower) 2. Marigold (a flower) 3. Alfalfa Sprouts 4. Lettuce 5. Tomato We got to try our hand at planting a few different things. First we each planted a bean in a plastic bag. This way we get to watch them as they grow! Second we planted together as a whole group. Some of us planted tomato seeds, some planted lettuce, some planted nasturtium and others planted parsley. Everything that we are planting in our class is edible. Mmm, we sure hope we get to try them! Finally, we hope to see you at our assembly on Friday, February 2nd at 9:30 am. Today in class we made our very own Moody Cow Mind Jar. We read the story Moody Cow Meditates and followed the instructions at the end of the book. This is a great tool to help settle our minds when we are feeling upset, or need a break from everyday commotion.
Welcome back!! We had a busy week visiting with our friends and getting back into classroom routines. It was so nice to see everyone after 3 weeks off!! We have been continuing to work on reading and writing words. We added some new words to our "Must Know" Word list this week: at, as and big. We also learned a couple of new sounds, "ing" and "er". We are working on recognizing those in our reading and representing them in our writing. This week we also started some Word Work Games. We've been learning how to play Sight Word Dominoes. We have to read simple sight words, and match them up with the same word. We are continuing to work on Rhyming words (word families). We've been working on the "at" family, the "an" family and the "ad" family. We are getting really good at sounding out some of these new words! In Math we worked on simple addition questions (numbers from 0-9). We continue to build our strategies such as "+0" and numbers that add together to equal 10.
Ask me to play "I see 10!" at home! All you need is a deck of cards. We ended our week by doing some Art. These birds were made by drawing simple shapes. We had to work on showing birds that get smaller and smaller. Then we painted them and outlined with Sharpie. Please be advised:
Our class will be presenting at the assembly on February 2nd. The assembly starts at 9:30 am. We will be presenting with Ms. Tarasoff's class and Mrs. Kwan's class. We would love if you could come and watch us! |
TeacherMiss Carey Raz-kidsTeacher Login: |