Sports Day!

What a wonderful sports day we enjoyed today! The sun made an appearance and the kids had a blast!

Here are some photos of everyone at their stations:

and photos from outdoor learning this week!

Creating art with found items from nature

Have a lovely weekend!

Hello everyone!

I will be away tomorrow so I am sending the weekly blog update today.

Sports Day – Friday June 10

By now, I believe that you have received an email from Ms. Aujla regarding Sports Day.

Your child is welcome to wear coloured clothing to represent their TEAM. See picture for your child’s colour. Please do not buy clothing, just borrow from friends or family.

-there will be early dismissal at 1:00/1:15 from our classroom

-lunches can be preordered online for Sports Day

-parents are welcome to watch the outdoor events behind the school but indoor events will not be open for parents

Outdoor Learning – Drilling holes for bees and potato printmaking

Bees have hatched!

We placed some of our bee cocoons outside.

Before…

After…

You will notice the holes where the bees emerged! So exciting!

Reminder – No School on Monday for Pro-D.

Rocks!

The focus of many of our lessons this week involved exploring rocks.

We read “Everybody Needs a Rock” at outdoor learning. Everyone found a special rock and observed their rock’s features closely. We then placed all the rocks in a pile and everyone was able to remember which rock belonged to them!

We then read the story “ishi” and turned our special rocks into “ishi” rocks.

Young actor’s Project

We finished up our Young Actor’s lessons today. The class really enjoyed these learning activities. Thank you Savannah!

Grade 1 “Making Words” homework

Beginning today, the Gr. 1s planner message gives them instructions to make as many words as possible out of a given word. This weekend the word is “triangle”. Please encourage your child to make new words out of these letters. For example, we can make “get”, “rat”, and “line” out of the letters in “triangle”. How many can you make?

Have a lovely weekend!

Hexagons and Young Actor’s Project

We have been very busy learning all about hexagons and other shapes that can create a hexagon. The students have been exploring and creating hexagons with “pattern blocks” all week.

Exploring with Hexagons

Pattern block creations

Check out our amazing hexagon cell structures just like bees make in their hive! We worked together just like bees to make these structures strong and tall.

Young Actors Project

Thank you to the PAC for funding the Young Actors Project in our classrooms!

Savannah visited us today (first of three visits) to guide us through so many fun and imaginative activities! We learned to communicate without using our voices, pretend to be different animals, and become people in different situations.  Looking forward to our upcoming visits with Savannah!

Filling our Buckets

Ask your child to explain what the term,” Filling your bucket” means!

A reminder that there is no school on Monday!!!

Have a lovely (and finally sunny) weekend!

Gardening, Bees and more

Fortunately, the weather cooperated for outdoor learning on Wednesday. We were able to get into our garden and plant our bean plants. We also had a chance to look closer at the daffodils and tulips that we planted in November.

Bees

We are continuing to learn about bees. Your child should be able to tell you many facts about bees.

Now we must wait patiently for the weather to improve so we can place the bee cocoons outside to hatch.

Wordle

One of my favourite things to do lately is play “Wordle” with my own children. I introduced the game to our class during snack time this week. Some of the kids definitely understand the concept. Unfortunately, the mystery word was SLUNG which was not the easiest word to figure out.

Reading

The Grade One students are improving their reading skills every week. Thank you so much for continuing the home reading program.

Now the Kindergarten students meet with me in small reading groups. They are so excited to be “reading” books too! I will be sending weekly books home for the K students to read to you. You can keep them at home to re-read.

…and, as always, lots of fun and teamwork through play this week!!

Sports Day

As we return to somewhat “normal” school activities, we will be having “Sports Day” on Friday June 10. There will be an early dismissal around 1pm. I will be sending home more information closer to the date but I just wanted to let you know because parents will be welcome to observe on the school grounds outside. Most events will be happening outside. Each child will be allocated to a team and will be encouraged to wear clothing of that colour. I’ll keep you posted!

Have a great weekend!

Bees, beebots and Student Led Conferences

We had the pleasure of a visit from Winston the Beekeeper this week! What a wonderful way to kick off learning all about bees. We are especially excited to watch our mason bee cocoons hatch as soon as the weather is warm enough.

Beebots

We had a lot of fun learning how to tell our beebots what to do (coding and sequencing). It was a great lesson in learning that robots will only do what we program them to do.

Student Led Conferences

Your child brought home their Learning Portfolio today. Please read the purple paper inside the folder. I suggest setting aside about 20 to 30 minutes this weekend to have your child show you all of their learning. As noted on the purple paper, please return their Poetry/Songbook, journal, and completed purple paper on Monday, May 2. You may keep the rest of the work at home.

Have a lovely weekend!

Earth Day!

We spent time today thinking of the ways we are grateful for the Earth.

Check out this beautiful story titled “Thank you Earth.”

Click on the hyperlink to watch the story.

We wrote promises to the Earth to describe ways we will take care of and protect Earth.

Our plants are growing 

Celery Experiment

We observed the way that coloured water travels through the celery stalk to reach the leaves.

Outdoor Learning

Being present in nature provided us with many ideas for our discussion about ways we can take care of the Earth. Thank you Anita for the photos!

Measurement in Math

A lesson about longer vs shorter turned into such an awesome collaborative project. Everyone worked together to try to make the longest cube train possible! This class really knows how to work so well together!

Have a lovely weekend!

Reminder that there is no school for students on Monday as it is a Pro-D Day.

Our Beanstalks are growing!

Outdoor Learning

We have been reading the story Rosie’s Walk. During outdoor learning we created a story map for Rosie’s Walk showing where the main character walked during the story.

Please send your child to school wearing boots during this transitional weather on Wednesdays for our outdoor learning . Only 3 kids had boots on Wednesday so we could not visit our usual park after Tuesday’s big rainstorm.

Easter activities

Today we completed our Easter Egg paintings and dyed hardboiled eggs to take home.

Dates to remember:

Friday April 15 – Good Friday – School Closed

Monday April 19 – Easter Monday – School Closed

Monday April 25 – Pro – D Day, No school for students

Happy Easter, Ramadan, Vaisakhi and Passover!

Planting, Outdoor Learning, and Jack and the Beanstalk

Planting Beans and other veggies for our garden

Everyone had a chance to plant a bean seed (like the magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk). We are looking forward to watching them grow so tall. We wonder if they will grow as high as the clouds.

Outdoor Learning

This week the students practiced being mindful of their surrounding by listening for 5 sounds at their “special spot.” Then they worked on an activity where they drew things that are “up in the garden and down in the dirt.”

Jack and the Beanstalk 

We read different versions of this classic story to compare similarities and differences. The Grade 1s performed a Reader’s Theatre of the story for their Kindergarten friends.

More classroom moments from this week:

Dates to remember:

Friday April 15 – Good friday – No school

Monday April 18 – Easter Monday – No school

Monday April 25 – Pro – D Day – School closed for students

Friday April 29 – Students will be taking home their “Student Led Portfolio” to show you some of their learning.

Weekly update: April 1

This week flew by so quickly that I forgot to take photos!

Lucky for us, Arjun’s mom took some photos while we were at the park for Outdoor Learning.

Outdoor Learning

We had a lot of fun exploring the park and learning about boundaries and safety while enjoying the sunshine.

We will continue visiting the park every Wednesday afternoon.

Learning about money/coins

We have been learning all about coins this week. Everyone has a good understanding of coin names and values. If you would like to practice at home, you can teach your child how to add the values of a few coins. For example, if you have 2 nikels and 1 dime, how much money do you have?

Tuesdays

I will continue to take one day each week to tend to family needs but it will now be on Tuesday.

Have a wonderful weekend!