Week of June 8-12

Dear families,

This week we completed our inquiry on 2-and 3-D shapes, ending with a classroom "shape hunt" in which the children searched the classroom for 10 different 2-and 3D shapes and tallied how many they found. Not surprisingly, most of the objects in the class are rectangular prisms and cylinders, and we have very few triangular prisms. I've encouraged the children to keep looking for those shapes at home and in their environments so don't be surprised if them exclaim, "That house is a cube!" At the various centres, the children enjoyed making various shapes upon shapes with elastics and a peg board, learning that shapes are inside other shapes i.e. two traingles make a square or a diamond or a rectangle. We also practised our 3D Shapes poem, a copy of which is in your child's white bag. The children's homework for this week is to design their own shape by joining dots on a "peg board" like the one we used in class. Thank you to Chloe who brought in examples of 3-D objects from home!

Our butterfly pupas/chrysalis are now in the big tent awaiting the day they come out of their chrysalis and are butterflies! A plate of sugar water awaits them in case this happens over the weekend. This week the children completed Page 3 of their Science Journal, writing about and drawing a picture of the pupas. The details were terrific! Thank you to Cole for bringing in a caterpillar from his cottage! We're not sure what it will will metamorphose into but we gave it some extra food and have our fingers crossed!

We also did two more pages of our Very Hungry Caterpillar book, retelling Eric Carle's story and colouring in the pictures the same way he did. I'm impressed with the amount of details the children remember about the story. Terrific! We will finish the book when the butterflies emerge, which will probably be this week.

The children did a WONDERFUL job tracing and then colouring in a butterfly. They used which ever colours they wished, but the important thing was to make sure it was symetrical, i.e. each wing was the same. I was so impressed with the details and all the different colours the children used, as well as their excellent symetry. Next week they'll be writing, "If I were a butterfly, I would..." and I will post that and their butterflies on our classroom bulletin board.

We also watched a video clip about the life cycle of the silk worm, and I brought in a few examples of silk. The silken "thread" that one caterpillar spins is about 1000 metres long! What an amazing creature. When I explained that 1000 metres was about the distance from LKS to Central Arena/Memorial Pool, the kids eyes grew quite big!

Our new words on the Word Wall are UP, FROM and WITH. Please complete the mini work books that went home in your child's white bag to reinforce the spelling of these important sight words.

I also sent home the new June/July words for your child to practise at home (we read them each day at school as well).

Thank you so much to Theo's mom who was the Mystery Reader. Thank you as well to Parent Council for the delicious "comida mexicana" at the staff appreciation luncheon!

Next week we are going to talk about summer safety: around water, in the home, at the cottage, on the roads. We'll also write more in our Science Journals, and make a book for Father's Day. The Seniors will be making a special book about themselves in Kindergarten for graduation.

On Thursday we will start our "10 days left of school ice cream scoop countdown!" Wow, so hard to believe that the end of this year is so quickly approaching. It's been a terrific year!

I hope you are having a nice weekend.

Week of June 1-5

Dear families,

Almost June already!

This week we learned about the difference between butterflies and moths, metamorphosis, and we talked more about how plants make new plants, why they make so many seeds, and how those seeds get on the ground. We had a visit from mini Mystery Readers Anna and Dana from Mrs. Wilson's class, and we listened to author Helaine Becker talk about how she writes books. We sequenced The Very Hungry Caterpillar, wrote another entry in our Science Journals about how the caterpillar larvae have changed, highlighted all the popcorn words we could find on an information sheet about Metamorphosis, listened to Eric Carle read his book, reviewed beginning, middle, and ending sounds of one-syllable words, and finished our "In the Park" booklets. The children also made a Butterfly Life Cycle Wheel.

The last Snuggle books will be sent home on June 12. Please be sure to return the books you still have at home.

The very last Scholastic Order is due on Monday.

Thank you to Tessa's mom who was the Mystery Reader (thank you for bringing in a non-fiction book about insects!!), Claire and Megan's moms who helped with Pizza lunch, Christopher's mom and COle's dad who helped wit the Computer Lab, Theo who brought in a robin's egg shell, Claire who brought in a maple key (which led to a great discussion about how amazing nature is that it designed the seeds so well!), and Adam who brought in a book about butterflies.

The homework for this week is to complete the mini books BY and FROM, and to look for 3D objects at home. We'll start our unit on 3-D object this upcoming week.

Here is an excellent website for literacy that is terrific for early readers: www.uniteforliteracy.com

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend.