Kindergarten and Grade 1 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
Students had a great week of badminton lessons last week. Coach Thomas taught them the correct way to hold the racket and how to hit the birdie. They also used balloons to learn how to be gentle with the rackets and to use a light touch to keep the balloons aloft.
Many students were able to keep the balloon in the air for a long time. Some counted over 100 hits before the balloon got away from them!!
Students made wishes for St. Patrick’s Day in hopes of a visit from some leprechauns!
Hi all,
Term two return cards are being sent home tomorrow, Monday, April 4th. If you have any questions, please make a note on your child’s report card envelope and return it to class.
Even if you have no questions, please sign the report card envelope and return it so we can use it to send home your child’s term three report card in June. The papers in the envelope are yours to keep for your files.
Tomorrow morning we will have an assembly put on by the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Our representative, Sandra Griffin, will be running the assembly. She will discuss the things that we should do to ensure a strong and healthy heart. She will also talk about the annual fundraising campaign.
At Rosser we have been very involved in this activity for many years. This is our 18th year of hosting a fundraising campaign and actively participating in a ‘JUMP’ event!!
Tomorrow afternoon students will be bringing home a letter explaining the programme. They will also have a fundraising envelope and a paper heart. Please help your child fill in the heart with the name of someone that they, or your family, knows who has been affected by heart or stroke concerns. This should be returned to school so I can ‘build’ our heart wall in the gym. If you can, or choose to, please consider making a donation to this worthy cause. There is information on how to participate on-line which makes it rather easy to do. Students may also win prizes based on their fundraising.
Last year 40 students participated in Rosser’s fundraising. If we have one more this year (so 41 students) then the school will be awarded a special set of gym equipment. Last year our little school raised $3101.81 for the Heart and Stroke Foundation!!!! That is a truly amazing number for such a small school. Income tax receipts are issued for deductions.
Our actual JUMP event will be on the afternoon of Friday, February 26th from 1:05 – 3:00. Students will be jumping with their buddy class. It is a lot of fun that the students really enjoy.
Today was the 100th day of school this year. Students were very excited when we added the 100th straw to our Place Value pocket, and changed our running ‘days in school’ total, during Calendar.
Students brought in collections of 100 items. They also brought in food items (100 each) to add to our 100’s Day Hash. We will be eating this hash tomorrow (101st Day) with a special movie that we will be watching with the Kindergarten class in the afternoon. They will tell you about it tomorrow after school.
Some of the activities that we did today were: making necklaces with 10 groups of 10 different coloured Fruit Loops; and making crowns with tally marks (20 groups of 5). These crowns were attached to head bands on which they put 20 stickers (hopefully in a pattern) and wrote the numbers 5 to 100, counting by 5’s. We also began to work in a booklet with ‘hundreds’ of math questions in it. We will continue working on these tomorrow.
It was a hectic day – one of many this month!! There is never a dull moment in grade 1 …
We had a nice, quiet celebration last Friday (February 12th) when the children delivered valentines to their friends. We decorated red foam hearts with beads, stickers, and other shapes.
We also created these ‘Valentine Puppies’ out of construction paper that we cut into heart shapes and then cut and arranged them to make the dogs. Spots were added on with red paint by using a finger as a paint brush.
These are on display on the bulletin board in the hallway between our classroom and the office. Check them out when you get a chance.
We had a great week of celebration and learning last week!
Aside from our dumpling making, the great assembly, and the wonderful potluck luncheon we enjoyed – thank you to all the parents who sent in the wonderful food!! – we learned that some of the math games we are used to playing have Chinese origins! Students spent the afternoon on Thursday playing: Tic Tac Toe; dominoes, and Chinese checkers.
We also heard the story “Grandfather Tang’s Story” and did some experimenting with tangrams – a square which is cut into seven different shapes.
Our lanterns looked great in the classroom, and when we moved them to the gym for the assembly.
Our Lunar New Year celebration will be held this Friday (February 5th) as the day of the actual holiday is on Monday, February 8th which is a statutory holiday (Family Day).
We will begin our day by each making some traditional Chinese dumplings with the wonderful mums of the PAC who come in to teach the students this technique. The dumplings are then cooked and brought to classrooms as part of the luncheon.
After Recess we will be holding our assembly. Some classes will be presenting and there will also be our school’s version of the dragon dance performed by divisions 3 and 1.
We will be back in our classes by 11:30 a.m. to enjoy our annual potluck luncheon. Thank you, in advance, for the wonderful food that you will send in. It would be great if a few parents could stay and help with setting up and cleaning up the food.
In our classroom this week we have been doing activities about the traditions of Lunar New Year. Students wrote poems about dragons. These are on display on the bulletin board by the office.
Today our Directed Drawing lesson was on a Chinese dragon. These are on display on the bulletin board at the back of our classroom. Unfortunately the photos of most of the pencil drawings are too light to show up. I have a few included below. It would be great if you could see them in the classroom. The students are showing strong improvement in their drawings from September!! These dragons are quite impressive!
Tomorrow morning the whole school will be in the gym enjoying a traditional Chinese musical group called Golden Pearl. Tomorrow afternoon our class will continue with our theme-based activities.
Happy Year of the Monkey!
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 …
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 …
