“Doubles Aren’t Trouble!”

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

Our current math unit is addition and subtraction to 12.  The grade ones have been learning a number of ‘mental math’ strategies to help solve math problems.

  • counting on (or up)
  • doubles
  • counting back

We have been using games to practice our strategies…

The Kindergarten students have been practicing making number sentences by playing the bean game, making number bracelets, and our new subtraction game-Frogs On A Log…

We have also done an art project to represent doubles equations to 12.

Check out some of our work below, and come see our bulletin board display in the hallway outside the dance room…

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i love math face

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Quilting

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

We have been working with our buddy class on our quilted wall hanging with our artist in residence this past month.  Our quilt’s theme is “Community”.

So far…

  • we made a drawing with a partner of something in our community
  • we transferred that drawing onto fabric
  • we coloured our drawing with fabric crayons
  • we painted our fabric with fabric paints

And now we have been working on adding embroidery and some quilting.  Check us out stitching!!!

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Thanks, once again to Mrs. Safarik’s class! ♥

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Picasso

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

We have traveled to a new country…we are now in Málaga, Spain–the birthplace of Pablo Picasso!

We have been studying his wonderful, varied works of art…and learning about his life.  His blue period, his rose period, and his invention of cubism.  He had an amazing life and lived to be 92 years old!

In art class we experimented with mixing primary colours to make secondary colours, and then adding white to make ‘tints’ and black to make ‘shades’.

We had an awesome time!!!  It got very messy (as you can see in the photos), but we are now PROS with a sponge–showing ownership by cleaning up after ourselves.  Thanks everyone for making sure you weren’t wearing your ‘best outfits”!

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In our next class, we used those sheets of coloured paper to build our own musicians.  We used our knowledge of Geometry to cut shapes and our musical knowledge to choose an instrument to add.  Can you tell what instruments we have chosen?

Here are some of our creations…come check them out this week during our 50th Year Celebration…they are hanging in the hallway outside our room!

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Watch for our next Picasso…

1937 Pablo Picasso (Spanish artist, 1881–1973) Portrait of Dora Maar. Oil on canvas. 1937.

 

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Tennis

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

We have been having a great time playing games and learning about tennis from Coach Dan in gym.  We have one more session, but here are some photos of us working on our skills…

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A big Thank You to the PAC for providing the funding for this special event!!

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Building A Boat

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

Our Assignment:

Build a boat that would float and hold as many blocks as possible without sinking…

  1. record your materials
  2. draw a diagram of your boat
  3. add blocks until your boat sinks…don’t forget to count!!!
  4. record how many blocks it held before it sank

Our Materials:

  • tinfoil
  • straws
  • popsicle sticks 
  • pipe cleaners
  • cardboard rectangles

Here’s what happened…

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i love math face

 

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Measuring Area, Capacity & Mass

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

Last week we learned about ‘area’ in math.

What is area?

  • The size of a surface.
  • The amount of space inside the boundary of a flat (2-dimensional) object such as a triangle or circle.

We compared the area of our chairs to the area of our desks using index cards…

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Working with a partner we also tried to ‘cover’ a rectangle with blocks with a dice game and unifix blocks…

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We have also done work on measuring ‘capacity’ (or volume) with water, ask us how we made predictions and then determined which container held more.

balance sclaeToday we began measuring ‘mass’ using a balance scale.

Ask us how we know which item is heavier…

 

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Fencing…

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

We had a great time learning about fencing in gym this past week.  We learned a lot about the basic moves and weapons of the sport.  We had the opportunity to try out different weapons, and wear the proper clothing used in fencing.  DSC02696

Advance–The ‘advance’ is the basic forward movement. The front foot moves first

Advance Lunge–An advance followed immediately by a lunge.

Retreat–The basic backwards movement.

Allez–French for “go”, command used to commence action in a match

Attack–The initial offensive action made by extending the sword arm and continuously threatening the valid target of the opponent.

Épéé–A fencing weapon with triangular cross-section blade and a large bell guard

Foil–A fencing weapon with rectangular cross-section blade and a small bell guard

Sabre–A fencing weapon with a flat blade and knuckle guard

Thanks to the PAC for funding this great opportunity!
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Dirt!

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

Today we explored the properties of dirt!  We each got a small sample of dirt from our school garden to examine.  We were trying to determine what was in dirt.

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We dumped our dirt onto a paper towel and began to sort through it with a popsicle stick–or our fingers!

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We observed lots of different materials in our dirt samples–we looked very carefully with magnifying glasses.

After sorting the dirt, we then had to list the items we found and provide illustrations–observe and record!

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What did we discover?

  • bugs
  • seeds
  • rocks
  • wood chips
  • leaves & grass
  • roots & plants
  • bark

Finally, we put all the dirt into a glass, added water and stirred.  Tomorrow we are going to look and see what happened with the dirt…

 

 

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Growing An Apple Blossom Amaryllis

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

This term in science we are growing an Amaryllis!  It is a very exciting plant to grow as the ‘seed’ (really a bulb) is HUGE, it grows quickly and very TALL (yes, there is a reason why we are learning about measurement in math!).

So far, we have:

 

I wonder

Things I wonder about the Amaryllis…

Brainstormed a list of questions that we “wonder” about the amaryllis:

  • What colour will it be?
  • What will it look like?
  • What will it feel like?
  • How tall will it be?
  • Will it be low, medium, or high?
  • How long will the flowers last?
  • How long until it blooms?
  • Will it be taller than last year’s?
  • How does it smell?
  • How many blooms will it have?
  • How long until it starts to grow? (it took 2 days!)
  • How does it grow?
  • Will it have leaves?

Made a number of entries in our logbook:

  • Table of Contents (this is non-fiction writing you know!)
  • What materials do we need to plant an amaryllis?  (pot, soil, water, bulb)
  • Day 3-How much has it grown? 15cm. (using a ruler to measure)
  • What does the Amaryllis need to grow? (sun, water, soil, air)
  • Day 10-How much has it grown?  22.5 cm.(figuring out how many cm. it has grown by comparing to our last measurement)

Still to come:

  • parts of a plant (experiments related to the job of each part of a plant)
  • more entries on how tall it is growing
  • scientists and artists–watch for work on the bulletin boards…

You can check out our Amaryllis Project from last year…to see how we work our way through the scientific process…stay tuned over the next 4-6 weeks for pictures as our Amaryllis begins to grow!

 

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Measurement In Math

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Ms. Fischer

We have started a new unit in math since coming back from the winter break–Measurement.

So far we have been working on comparing objects to determine:

  • longer
  • shorter
  • or about the same as

Our lessons include:

  • Wiggly Worms–we each created a worm, and then placed them in order from shortest to longest by comparing our worms with those made by our classmates

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  • How tall are you?–we worked together in groups of 10 to measure each other with string and then with partners to place our strings along a baseline to compare how tall we are with our classmates.

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  • Chain Challenge–each Kindergarten student was given one piece of construction paper and asked to construct the longest paper chain they could make…Congratulations to our winner!!!

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Hopefully you have seen some of the work we have done…we have constructed a bulletin board display in the hallway to showcase some of our work–feel free to come check it out!

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Coming up this week, we will use a variety of ‘objects’  (paper clips, popsicle sticks, straws, and unifix cubes) to measure items in our classroom and pencil boxes…watch for our measurement books!

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