Warm Colours

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Ms. Fischer

After our successful work with our cool colour cityscapes, we tried out warm colour snowmen!!

This time we used the directed drawing technique to draw a snowman in the middle of our square page.

We used warm coloured oil pastels for our backgrounds and our snowman’s details. We were also able to use black and white oil pastels as well. Our final step was to once again add snowflakes using white liquid tempra paint.

Check out our work below:

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Categories: Arts, Arts Integration | Leave a comment

Snowy Day Art

Posted on January 26, 2022 by Ms. Fischer

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats was the inspiration for our art project last week.

We began by reading the story together. We then used a directed drawing technique to draw our buildings using sharpies. We used vertical and diagonal lines as well as rectangles and squares.

After our city was complete, we then began to paint using water colour paint pucks. We are learning to choose our brush based on what we are painting–big brushes for the sky, little brushes for the windows.

We ONLY used cool colours to invoke a feeling of a cold winter day. The cool colours include: blues, greens, and purples.

After finishing the painting, we then dried our work with a hair dryer…yes a hair dryer! This allowed us to add the snow using white liquid tempra and Q-Tips without having to wait!!

Take a look at our finished pieces below…

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Categories: Arts, Arts Integration, Literacy, Reading | 2 Comments

Non Fiction Reading

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Ms. Fischer

Throughout the year we have been learning the difference between Fiction and Non-Fiction books. We have been developing our skills in finding clues to identify each.

Here are some of the clues we look for:

After reading, we use a variety of graphic organizers to show our learning.

When reading Fiction, we use listening center recording sheets. These organizers focus on the characters, setting and favourite part of the story. This week we read Grandpa Dan’s Toboggan Ride (here is a read aloud video of the story from Youtube.

We have started to focus more on Non-Fiction this term, and learning how to write a response (early note taking skills). We have been using the non fiction news to organize our information.

Last week, we read a book about Bears.

Next week our book is about Blizzards…let’s hope it doesn’t bring us one!!!

If you want to read some Non-Fiction together at home, you can check out BookFlix at the BPL.

Happy Reading.

Categories: Literacy, Reading, Writing | Leave a comment

Skip Counting

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Ms. Fischer

This week we have been working on skip counting with a focus on counting by 2’s.

We have been doing math activities around skip counting.

Our shared reading book is about skip counting as well.

During this process we are learning about the difference between even and odd numbers. We have learned how to use our number line and some counters to see the ‘patterns‘ in skip counting by 2’s.

Here is a link to a song we watched to help us practice counting by 2’s.

Here is another video (story) on Youtube about skip counting you can watch together.

Can you find some things at your home that you can group and then count by 2’s???

Categories: Math | Leave a comment

Comparing Shortest to Longest

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Ms. Fischer

This past week we explored some measurement in Math.

We read a story called “How Long? Wacky Ways to Measure Length”.

It is a great book about using unusual items to measure with–like sandwiches (960 equals a football field!), licorice sticks (7 stuck together equals a peacock tail!) and peanuts (42 equals an elephants trunk!).

We gathered sticks from the Quicksand (Upper Field) and then compared their length. We placed them in order from shortest to longest. Then we worked in groups to combine our sticks and once again order them. This is great practice for our communication skills!

What can you compare at home???

Categories: Core Competencies, Math, Nature School | Leave a comment

Story Workshop

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Ms. Fischer

We are story tellers!!

Each week we work on our story telling through story workshop. We gather materials, create a setting and characters, then create or ‘play’ a story. We share our stories with our classmates and listen to their stories in turn.

These are great opportunities for us to develop our creative thinking skills as well as our communication skills. Asking someone to listen to your story is a vulnerable place to be…and having to thank someone for their story, and think of a compliment to share as well!! WOW!

Categories: Core Competencies, Literacy, Nature School | Leave a comment

Math Games

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Ms. Fischer

We have been working hard on building our numeracy skills through the use of a variety of math games. (Some of these skills are for Kindergarten and Grade One students–some are just Grade One.)

That includes:

Subitizing: To subitize is to identify the number of things in a set simply by quickly looking at them—not by counting them one by one
One to One Correspondence: 1-to-1 correspondence is the ability to pair each object counted with a number word.
Counting on: starting with one number and counting on to find a sum (dice inside a dice)
Doubles: knowing on sight the double of numbers 1-6
One More & One Less: finding the sum of any number plus or minus 1
Making 10: rolling a number and being able to figure out how many more to make 10

Here are a few of the games we have been playing:

Double Trouble

first-to-20-winter

OneMoreOneLessGame-1

PenguinDoublesCoverUp-1

These games require very little preparation–just counters (any small blocks will do–marshmallows are fun too!) and a few dice.

Most of these games come from this website: Teachers Pay Teachers (Many free downloads…)

Have fun exploring number sense together!

Categories: Math, Nature School | Leave a comment

Bat Art

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Ms. Fischer

Bats Everywhere!

We continue to build our knowledge of bats–even though our research writing is complete. We have been watching videos–Did you know there is a bat with a wingspan of 2M?? It lives in Australia. Here is a video we watched about that bat.

As we continue to learn about bats, we’ve also been learning about reliable sources of information on the internet…National Geographic is a great source we have been using. Crazy, but you can’t trust everything you read or see!?!

In art we have been using Oil Pastels and this past week we made a full moon using a variety of colours. We then practiced our cutting skills and cut out some bat silhouettes to fly over our moons. We also used liquid glue for the first time in class…DOT< DOT<NOT A LOT!!

You can see our work below:

Categories: Arts, Arts Integration, Science, Technology | Leave a comment

Bats

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Ms. Fischer

We are learning about bats!

This week we have been working on some animal research. We are gathering information from different sources to compile a report…

First we learned how to draw a bat–using a directed drawing technique. We made that bat drawing into a diagram by adding labels.

Here are a few examples: appearance diagrams

Our next step was looking at the different habitats of bats. We used some non-fiction books about bats to find the answers.

Some of the places they like to live include:

inside buildings
caves
in old trees
in woodlands

Which idea will you choose? We had to draw a picture based on our choice. (It needed to include a bat as well.)

We also learned that bats have to drink water every day, so they always live close to a creek, stream, pond or lake–so you may notice a number of the pictures have water in them…