Kindergarten and Grade 1 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
We did a directed drawing lesson on a bat in flight. The students then reproduced their bats onto their construction paper. We had a lesson on outlining, shading, and highlighting areas to show texture (the bat’s fur). Students completed their work with waxed crayons. They added in items that would be seen in the Autumn.
We have begun the school year by looking at our families and learning about the many varied types of families. We enjoyed “Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge” by Mem Fox. This is a lovely story about a very young boy whose family lives next to a senior’s home. Wilfrid Gordon knows all the people, and is friendly with them all, but his favourite is Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper because she has four names, too.
One day he hears his parents talking about how Miss Nancy has lost her memory. This sets him on a quest to learn about memories and to help Miss Nancy find hers.
After reading the book we discussed memories and what makes some of them more powerful than others. Here are their responses:
As a wrap up for our plant unit, we got into House groups and worked as a team to cut, sort, and glue pictures of plant based foods into the groups of the parts of the plant that they came from.
It was two chaotic afternoons, but these are the finished results.
This afternoon we did preparations on a lot of different experiments …
We did pairs of plants in pots which we will be treating differently …
One will get water, one will not …
One will get sunlight, one will not …
One has roots, one had its roots removed …
One has leaves, one had its leaves removed …
We ‘planted’ some avocado pits (seeds) …
We put seeds in three containers, one each with soil, sand, and clay … we will await the outcome. (picture to come)
These are the plants we used …
We are still awaiting our beans-in-bags to sprout. We are thinking it hasn’t been warm enough, or sunny enough, on our windows … we are still hopeful 🤞🏻🤞🏻
We have begun our exploration of all things plants. Students planted seeds into little pots – they had a choice of four different seed types: Cosmos, Forget-Me-Knots, Zinnias, and Asters.
We put soaked overnight Lima beans into Ziplock bags with paper towels and taped them to our classroom windows. We hope to see growth soon. A few are looking promising, as of this afternoon.
We did an experiment with white flowers and celery placed into jars of water. One was the ‘control’ – meaning that it was just in clear water. Two other jars had food colouring (one blue and one red) with celery and white flowers in them. Another set had one large bunch of flowers with one stalk that was divided into two jars, one with red and one with blue food colouring.
Students noticed that the food colouring had moved up the stems into the leaves and the flowers.
We also planted peas into a large pot. Most were planted on the right-hand side of the pot straight out of the package. On the left we soaked the peas overnight. Our objective is to see which side grows first / fastest.
We will be continuing with our explorations tomorrow … stay tuned …
As a wrap up for our penguin study we enjoyed the story, Cinderella Penguin by Janet Perlman. The students then made their own characters.
We made ’layered’ shamrocks with construction paper and oil pastels. They are gracing the hallway bulletin board with some leprechaun folk ☘️☘️
We have also been enjoying several Irish stories this week: Fin M’Coul, The Giant of Knockmany Hill; The Luckiest Leprechaun; and The Leprechaun’s Gold.
Erin go braugh ☘️
Today we had some fun with construction paper which we turned into penguins. Some of the penguins morphed into Rockhopper, Emperor, or Macaroni penguins … 👀 closely😊
These are on the bulletin board in our classroom, along with some penguin facts on penguins 🐧, or on ice houses.
For this biennial event, from the Burnaby Art Gallery, we started by reading a storybook called, “Dream You’ll Be”, by Joseph T. Garcia. We had a few discussions on things that we like and those that excite us – maybe exciting enough to pursue as a career.
Students then did a ‘draft’ drawing of their ‘exciting thing’ before making their ‘good’ copy. The grade two girls prepared the canvas (the required size by the BAG of 18”x24”) with paint. They were given black, blue, purple, and white. This was their result …
After all the students completed their final planet Saturns (what excites them), the grade two boys glued them onto the canvas.
Now it looks like this …
I will deliver it to the Burnaby Art Gallery next week. They prepare all the art pieces, from the classes at schools who choose to participate, for proper display. We will all be invited to the Grand Opening Night. I will let you know when it is. It is usually in April.
I will share the students’ “artist statements” via an email. They were very thoughtful in what they chose and how they said it.
We had a great 100’s Day. Mrs. Temple had a baggie of 100 M&M candies. This is how they balanced out. We all got to eat five of them 🤤
Then there were three jars of candies. We had to guess which one had the most. Most thought that Jar B had the most. We found out that that all three jars had the same number – 100 🤔
We had fun making Fruit Loop necklaces by doing ten groups of ten alternating colours.
We made twenty groups of five-set tally marks on our 100 Day crown headbands.
To see us all in our crowns / necklaces check out your parent email.
Here are our 100’s Day collections on the bulletin board in the hallway.
We are still working on our 100’s Day booklets. These should be done tomorrow.
