Dear families,
I hope you are enjoying this beautiful snowy weather! I'm sure the children are loving today's snow!
It was another busy week in our classroom. The Jolly Phonics letter sound of the week was Rr and the sight words of the week were PLAY and ON. We made several new words with our letter sounds SATIPNCKHR with magnetic letters. The children also wrote words with the beginning sound Rr on chart paper and enjoying pretending they were a puppy who was saying "RRRRR" to practice that letter sound. They also traced and wrote the letter Rr.
This week we learned about all the signs of Fall and why things change in the fall - birds flying south (why?), leaves lose their colour and fall, insects go underground, squirrels and other small animals like chipmunks collect and store nuts and seeds, it gets colder (why? where is the earth in relation to the sun? We looked at the globe and Casey's head was our sun :) ), and how humans adapt by wearing warmer clothes. Migration, hibernation, adaptation. We will learn more about his in the next week or so. The children made beautiful oil pastel/watercolour art called "Falling Leaves on a Sunny Day" and "Falling Leaves on a Rainy Day." They are on display on our classroom bulletin board. I did a little experiment with oil and water and watched how the oil rose to the top and wouldn't mix with the water, to explain why the watercolour wash the children painted over the oil pastel "leaves" didn't cover the leaf colour up. We pretended we were squirrels and chipmunks gathering nuts and seeds when we went on a walk in Lambton Kingsway Park, looking at the leaf colours, a squirrel's nest, and collecting different leaves and several pine cones. The children also read and coloured a booklet called "Fall is Here."
The children finished their booklet "A Poppy is to Remember" with their Reading Buddies. Their poppy art will go home next week.
On Wednesday it was the 50th day of school! The children are making tools to help them count by ones and tens to 50, using 5 pipe cleaners and 50 beads. Also good for their small motor skills to put the beads on the pipe cleaners. They will keep them in the classroom in their chair pockets and we'll make another one for the 100th day of school in February. The children also played at centres counting and sorting small items in groups of ten. I also played a game with them using paper plates that had dots on them, and the children had to count the dots as quickly as they could. Some were blue (for example 6 blue dots arranged like a dice), and others were blue and red (for example 4 blue dots and 2 red dots, equals 6).
During "Quiet Thinking Time" the children enjoyed Cosmic Kids Yoga and listening to relaxing music while Mrs. Mosun and I work one-on-one with them to develop their reading and writing skills.
In the computer lab the kids are doing Starfall.com, which is an excellent literacy program.
The next scholastic order is due on December 6th.
Next week we are going to start an Author Study of David Shannon's books and we will also start a really fun and engaging unit on Pirates. The kids expressed some interest in them a few weeks ago and I think all the kids will enjoy the literacy and numeracy activities with a fun pirate theme.
It was a pleasure to meet with you during the parent-teacher interviews this week. Thank you so much for coming!
I hope you have a lovely weekend! See you on Monday!
