Dear families,
I hope you are enjoying the weekend!
This week we continued our book study of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" and the number ten. The children completed their text-to-self connections by writing "When I feel wild..." and drawing a picture. On the Smartboard, we wrote and talked about adjectives describing wild things and Max. The children made and decorated individual "wild things" and we wrote and talked about what our wild things can do, have, say, and are. Next week we'll practise sight words by "helping Max tame the words" by reading them and putting them in a basket. We'll also practise reading words that start with a W for wild and an M for Max. We will sequence the story, and talk about the characters, setting, and retell the story.
This story leads very nicely into a study of Folk and Fairy Tales. The first one we will do is The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We will compare different versions of the story, retell it, and act out the story with puppets we'll make. We will also learn a cute song called The Troll that retells the story. This week, the children will read this with their Reading Buddies in booklet form. We will also compare this book to other versions such as The Three Billy Goats Fluff, which is a story told from the point of view of the Troll :). Next week is also Bullying Awareness Week and talking about the Troll in The Three Billy Goats Gruff and in other fairy tales leads well into this discussion. We will also do role-playing to support this discussion.
In Numeracy, we talked a lot about the number 10. We played with various manipulatives such as Rekenrecks, beads, cubes, etc. to make combinations of numbers to arrive at the number 10. The Juniors are just learning about this, the Seniors are understanding or beginning to understand this well. The children finished making their Rekenreks and should play with them at home. Using paper plates with dots on them of various sums under ten, we talked and wrote about several ways to think of TEN; one plus nine, two plus eight, three plus seven, seven plus three, etc. We also reviewed tally marks, talked about how to make ten with a pattern of cubalinks, a base ten strip, dice, and how to spell TEN. The children also had fun lining up in front of their friends and moving from one group to another to make ten.
The homework for the JKs this weekend is to practise writing M for Max and W for Wild. The SKs should finish the sentences "My Wild Thing IS, CAN, HAS, SAYs" (we did this first on the Smartboard). The Juniors and Seniors should continue playing with their Rekenreks and showing you how they work.
With our Reading Buddies, we read and coloured a Remembrance Day booklet with the poem In Flanders Fields. Hannah, Tessa, Iris, Claire and Avery did a wonderful job in the Remembrance Day Assembly. Thank you. The children were so well behaved as always.
Thank you so much to Matthew's mom Trudie who was our Mystery Reader this week. Thank you to Stella's mom who helped out in the Computer Lab!
On November 20th it is "Moustache Day" to support "Movember".
The "popcorn" or sight words of the week are PLAY and ON.
Our Dramatic Centre is now a Fairy and Folktale Dress up centre! This week children will also learn all about bridges and castles which often feature in Folktales. They will build them with Lego, Treo, and blocks. They children will also help create a castle in dramatic centre by sponge painting stones and bricks. It's going to look amazing! We will continue this Folktale unit in the weeks leading up to the December Holidays, and will talk all about Santa and his Elves starting in mid-December when this unit is done.
During quiet time, we have been doing Yoga breathing exercises and we also watched a kids DVD about Yoga and enjoyed learning about poses that were named after animals. During quiet time this week and next, we will listen to a cd of Fairy Tales read wonderfully by actors in "Once Upon a Fairy Tale." I'm looking forward to all the wonderful things we can learn from this unit/inquiry!
In Science we are going to learn all about Weather. I've set up the Science Centre with a home made weather vane (I'll send instructions home) and rain gauge. We'll track the weather each day and talk about what weather is and how it changes. November is the perfect month for this since the weather is so varied!
For Art, if you have SMALL BABY FOOD JARDS with LIDS please send them in. I also need small IOGO yogurt containers. We will be making trolls and figures for our paper bag castles. Thank you!
I hope you have a terrific week!
