Hello Parents! We hope you and your children are settling in at home with a regular routine. By now your children should be able to wake up at an appropriate time, have a healthy breakfast, and be ready to start their learning from home with you. We trust that the weekly email communication and blog activities are adequate in supporting you and your child’s learning needs. We continue to look forward to receiving all the creative and interesting learning experiences you are sharing with your child at home. We have listed many fun and different learning activities for this week, including videos of our salmon release and our school garden so, enjoy!

  • Create a story using Story Stones. Find some stones. Paint different characters or objects on the stones, or use stickers of characters or objects to put onto the stones (see pictures below). Whatever stickers you have at home will do. We used princess, Dora, Minions, Holiday characters, Paw Patrol, Sponge Bob, and forest/ocean/zoo/farm animals. You can also use small plastic figures or dolls if you don’t have materials to make the story stones.

Create a setting using blocks or other objects you have at home. Now make up a story. Remember to include all the story elements (e.g. characters (forest animals), setting (where it takes place-in forest), problem (character sees a polluted lake), solution (ask animal friends to find out who made the mess and to help clean it up).

Take a video of your child telling their story and send it to your teacher. It doesn’t need to be long. We have done a sample story video for you to watch.

After watching the video, retell the story in your own words to your family. The boy and dragon have a special friendship. Why is the dragon sad? What happens at the end of the story that makes him happy again? Who do you see in the last page of the book, peeking around the corner? Who is the little girl? Draw a picture of Puff. Continue the story. What happens to Puff? What other adventures does he go on?

  • Writing Tips for Your Child – Children learn to show their ideas on paper gradually. They begin with pictures, eventually experimenting with strings of letters or “pretend writing,” and eventually work their way towards what we can identify as words and sentences. This does not happen overnight, and each stage of writing development is valuable and worthwhile! Help your child develop confidence as a writer at home. Click here to read some valuable tips on writing.
  • Measure the volume of containers. Volume is how much a container holds. Find several containers such as plastic jars, cups, and measuring spoons and cups of different sizes and shapes. Put them in a box or bin. Fill the bin with anything you have on hand such as rice, beans, pasta, or water. Allow your child to fill the containers with these items and explore how much each container holds. They might discover that a short and wide container may hold more than a narrow and tall container. Perhaps it takes 4 small cupfuls to fill one large container? How many spoonfuls will it take to fill each container? Your child will be learning about Estimation in this activity as well.

You can also extend the learning into Science and explore prediction and measurement. Have your child draw the containers and record their predictions in a chart. In one column draw the container. The next column write their prediction (how many scoops will the container hold?). In the last column write the actual number of scoops used to fill the container.

 

Here is an additional activity that explores volume and water that you can do with your child as an option.

  • Play the card game WAR! All you need is a deck of cards and 2 players. Take out the face cards    (Jacks, Queens, and Kings). Your child will learn the following math concepts: greater than/less than, number value, winning and losing, and rule following. Here is how you play.

 

 

 

  • How are you feeling today? Have a daily discussion with your child about how they are feeling. There might be some anxiety or feelings of confusion during this uncertain time. Your child has had many changes happen in the last few months: learning from home, social distancing (less contact with friends and family), distractions at home, more sibling/parent conflicts, less outdoor playtime, etc. It is important that you encourage your child to talk about how they are feeling, and if they are feeling sad or upset, that they should let you know. Use the playdough you made (or go to Recipes on our blog for the playdough recipe) and have your child choose an emotion face card (happy, sad, silly, scared, etc.) to create on their face mats using playdough.

Click on this link to read about how to do this activity.

Click on this link to download the emotions face cards and playdough face mats.

  • Fruit Salad! One way to stay healthy is to eat healthy! Have your child choose a few fruits that they like. Wash the fruits. Give your child a plastic knife. Teach them how to safely cut the fruit into small pieces. You will need to cut the hard fruits for them. Mix the different fruits together. Now your family can enjoy some fruit salad!

  • Spring Crafts- Celebrate Spring with these easy crafts. You only need a few supplies to create them.

Tie-dye flowers

Watercolour flowers

Cardboard spinners

  • Do Cosmic Yoga every day! Here are a few favourites to get you started:

Star Wars

Frozen

 

  • SALMON!! In January our school received salmon eyed eggs. Our students had the opportunity to learn about the salmon life cycle and watch them grow from eyed eggs to fry. Now the fry are strong enough to be released into a local creek. Mme. Dare and Ms. Rawnsley were at Eagle Creek last week and recorded a video of the salmon fry being released. Make sure to tell your parents what you learned about salmon after watching the video. We wish the salmon fry good luck and safe travels. Goodbye salmon fry!

 

 

 

  • Check out the video of our school garden with Mme. Dare! Look at all the plants that are growing!

 

 

 

Have a wonderful week that is filled with quality family time, active outdoor play, exploration, creativity, and imagination!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Lee, Ms. Maratovic, and Ms. Nero