Sunday, March 5, 2017

Week of February 27 - March 3

Dear families,

This week we started our inquiry on THE OCEAN! We started small - by learning about our classroom fish, Bubbles the Betta fish :) We went went BIG by learning about the biggest creature on Earth, the Blue Whale! We watched a National Geographic video about the Ocean and about Blue Whales, and played in various classroom centres: tracing blue whales, making a 3-D Blue whale, doing a large ocean puzzle (thank you Ruby for sharing that with us!), writing Blue Whale facts and adjectives, reading ocean and whale books (thank you Alex for sharing books with us!), counting and sorting sea shells on ten-frames (thank you Ella and Alexandra for bringing in extras!), playing pirates and ocean animals in the dramatic centre, doing a blue whale crossword puzzle, labeling a blue whale, and putting together small ocean puzzles. The kids also made 3-letter words in a "There are words in my submarine" centre. During quiet time the children listened to real whale sounds. In Numeracy, the children counted goldfish in groups of 2, 5 and 10 and also added goldfish together. The they ate them :)

We also started our Ocean dioramas - thank you for bringing in shoe boxes for this project. If you have extras we would really appreciate them! The children painted the inside of their shoe boxes and we will be creating a 3-D diorama with each of the ocean animals we learn about. This ties in nicely to the Kindergarten Curriculum expectation of learning about 3-D shapes. We are learning a song called "In the Ocean" and will be learning several poems about ocean animals during this inquiry, copies of which will be sent home. With our Reading Buddies, we wrote what Blue Whales CAN (do), HAVE and EAT, and read a booklet called "In the Deep Blue Sea." In the Computer Lab, the children are learning more about oceans on "Pebble Go." ***This March Break at the ROM there is a special exhibition on WHALES*** - I'm sure the kids would LOVE to see it!!! www.rom.on.ca

The kids had a great time on Wednesday's Field Trip to see Musician Jack Grunsky. Thank you so much to Andrew's mom and Michai's dad for volunteering!! Thank you also to my former students Izzie and Nathalie for reading to the class, to the Grade 8 students who read with the kids each day during home room, and to Jackson's mom who was our Mystery Reader this week!

The children are also making super-cute Leprechaun masks for St. Patrick's Day. Thank you Miss. Santiago for assisting the kids with this!

Next week we will continue our inquiry into oceans, and will learn about Orcas and Sharks!

That's the news from Room 166 - I hope you are having a great Sunday.



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