Week of June 6-10

Dear families,

I hope you enjoyed the gorgeous weather this week! Our Sight Words were FUN and FRIEND, two things that go together! Next week the sight words will be ZOO and ZEBRA.

This week we continued our learning about farms! The children learned a lot more about cows thanks to a video by a friend of Miss. Nisker's who is a dairy farmer. The children also posed several more questions about horses, which will be answered next week! The kids completed 2 farm word searches with their Reading Buddies, and read fiction and non-fiction books about farms. We did a comparison chart about pigs and sheep, and did guided reading on the Smartboard with the booklet "What Do You Do?" The children also watched some non-fiction videos about Foggy Farmer, and watched a real farmer work with different farm machinery. www.farmerfoggy.com The children also learned where the word "horsepower" comes from! The kids made booklets called "Who is in the Barn?" The JKs read and coloured it, the SKs read and drew the appropriate pictures to demonstrate understanding. The children also made the cover page for their Farm Folders, and completed an "itsy bitsy" farm booklet. They are still working on a farm vocabulary sheet as well as a longer booklet called "I am Going to a Farm." Thank you Dylan for sharing your story about baling hay at a farm! Thank you as well to Dylan's mom who helped in the computer lab, and to Martel's mom who also helped out in the lab.

The kids had a lot of fun of Thursday in 11 farm-themed centres. There were 8 math centres with simple and more complex math problems to solve as a group, for example: "Farmer Joe has two cows and 3 calves. How many are there altogether?" and "There are 3 hens. Each hen lays 2 eggs. How many eggs all together?' The children had farm animal manipulatives to help them. They also did a "Spin a Farm Animal" centre, in which they had to spin farm animals and graph their results. Another centre was the "Bossy r, ar and or centre, which reinforced pronunciation rules for the children. The last centre was called "Animal Round Up" in which the children rolled dice and counted what they rolled, with farm animal pictures to help. All of these centres helped the children with numeracy skills.

Also tied to numeracy skills is the Cow Glyph that the children are making. Each child is making personalised cow art that tells a story. JK cows have white ears and a white tail; SK cows have black ears and a black tail. Girls' cows have udders; boys' cows have horns. If a child is 4, s/he draws 4 spots on the cow glyph. If a child is 5, s/he draws 5, if a child is 6, s/he draws 6. Finally, the glyphs show what kind of milk the child likes depending on the colour of their cow glyph's bell. Blue means they like chocolate milk; orange means they like white milk; green means they like strawberry milk. When the cow glyph is done, the children write their "moo"velous data, for example: "I am 5. I am a girl. I am a JK. I like chocolate milk." We'll finish the glyphs next week!

Thank you to Theo who shared some special animals with the class. Thank you as well to Claire who shared a wonderful non-fiction story about farm life. Thank you as well to Iris' family who donated some phonics sets and flashcards to our literacy centres!

This week was extra special because we welcomed Artist Janine to our classroom! The children learned all about Emily Carr and, after doing a practise page, completed beautiful pastel and water colour artwork. Psst! It will be for Father's Day! The children also made a beautiful card!

In today's mailbags I sent home the new June calendar (how can it be June already?!) as well as June homework bingo. I also sent home a list of all the inquiries your wonderful children did this year! Well done!!

Chloe celebrated her (July) birthday on Friday. We will celebrate all the summer birthdays in June! Next week we celebrate 4 birthdays (Andrew, Camilla, Stella and Samantha), which means lots of cookies and cupcakes! Healthy veggie and fruit snacks would be a good idea next week! :)

We planted our bean plant in the Kindergarten garden and the children made a little sign. It already has some flowers so hopefully with some care and some luck we'll see some beans!

That's the news from Room 166! Next week we will continue our inquiry and learning about farm life. I hope you have a terrific weekend!