Day: 18 January 2016

Snow Families

We spent the first two weeks’ Art periods working on our Snow Families.  We began by painting the blue ‘sky’ backgrounds onto watercolour paper.  We then cut or ripped up white tissue paper and glued it to the bottom portion of the paper, making the snow base.  This was then drizzled with liquid glue and sprinkled with white crystal glitter.

Students then added the snow bodies using white paint and different sized round sponges – making a snow-figure for each person in their ‘immediate’ family (mum, dad, brother, sister).

The next week, when these were all nicely dried, we added all the extra details.  I made a name banner for each family and the students decorated the snow people with hats, scarves, beads/sequins, etc.  They drew on faces and stick arms with Sharpies.

I think that they look quite amazing.  They are displayed on the bulletin board outside of our classroom.  Check them out, in person if you get a chance, or below …

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Happy New Year

I hope that you all had a great break.  We have had a busy first two weeks back.  It does seem to have taken the students a little bit to get back into the ‘swing of things’.  We have had a few ‘chats’ about expectations and following routine.

We will be finishing up our Fairy Tale unit in the next two weeks.  This week we are looking at Cinderella – the traditional story and a lot of the variations from different cultures around the world.  We will then be putting a lot of our fairy tale activities together in our own Jolly Postman booklets.   Our next Social Studies unit will be ‘Family’.

In Math this week we will be doing a mini-unit on fractions.  This has meshed in quite nicely with our performance of “I am a Pizza” for this Friday’s Celebration of Learning Assembly (COLA) – with Division 1 –  as we are using pizzas to learn ‘half’ and ‘quarter’.  Next week we will begin working on ‘measurement’ in Math.

If you get a chance to come to Rosser on this Friday morning (9:00 a.m.) our class will be performing the song we have been practising.  The students are looking forward to this.

Check the ‘Upcoming Events’ page to see what will be happening in the next month or so.

** Please ensure that your child has a pair of shoes that they can wear as ‘clean, indoor’ shoes – especially in this wet weather.  When students come in from the wet and muddy field their shoes need changing so that our carpet – which is sat upon – is not covered in all that wetness or mud.  Thank you for your support in this.

** A lot of students are reporting that they are not doing daily reading practise at home.  This is becoming evident in the groups that have pink and blue homework sheets sent home weekly.  Please take 10 minutes each night and go over those homework sheets with your child.  This is generally the only ‘homework’ given in grade one.  All words on these sheets should be read with proper phrasing and fluency.  There should no longer be too much hesitation or sounding out of the passages that they should now know.  One of the groups will be bringing home a yellow duotang with extra practise sheets in it this week.  Please work with your child on this each evening and return it when your child is reading all sheets competently (phrased and fluent).  Reading is a major focus of the grade one programme.  It impacts all other subject areas.

We are approaching the mid-point of Grade 1.  It is amazing to think how quickly this year is passing!!  We have many more areas of exciting things to learn and experience.  We will keep you updated as things progress.  Keep checking back …