Category: Theme Activities

The Last Week before the Break

The last week before the Christmas Break was a very busy one!!

We had a very lovely and sunny (but extremely cold!!!) day on Tuesday, December 13th at Burnaby’s Heritage Village Museum.  We enjoyed all the buildings and exhibits, along with a fun ride on the carousel.  Thank you to all the parents who helped us out by driving and supervising on this trip.

On Wednesday, December 14th we had our Christmas concert.  Students performed in two performances: one at 1:00 and the other at 6:30 p.m.  I hope you had a chance to come to one of the shows to see the students.

Thursday and Friday were also busy – please see the next two entries ….

Aboriginal Study Week – Salmon

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During the week of November 14th – 18th we had visits from Ms. Brandi Price, our Aboriginal resource teacher.  We spent three lessons that week learning about salmon, and its importance to the coastal First Nations peoples.  We heard three different stories: Simon and the Salmon; The Salmon Twins; and P’esk’a.  Students learned how to remember the five different types of salmon by doing a ‘hand’ activity.

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They also were introduced to some of the shapes that are used in Aboriginal art, and the traditional colours used. For the northern coastal bands are red, black, white, and sometimes a bit of yellow.  They used these colours to complete a salmon picture.

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We learned about a few ceremonies and performed a salmon dance in the classroom.  It was a fun week.  We look forward to our next visit with her in the New Year.

 

Fin’s Friends

This is a programme from the Vancouver Canucks organization which focusses on personality traits involved with social and emotional learning.  We will be doing several lessons over the course of the school year.  We began our lessons by discussion some personality traits such as: kindness; friendliness; and perseverance. We read a book called, “I Like Me”, which is about a chubby pig who likes herself for being just the way she is – whether she is on her own or with others.  Students then thought about things that they like about themselves – things they are good at doing, how they treat others, etc.

They then created wishing well art pieces with their written statement about themselves incorporated into the art.

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I look forward to many more lessons over the school year.

 

 

We Are Thankful For …

Last Friday we spent the day doing things all about being thankful.  We read about the history of Thanksgiving in Canada.  Students learned that the first Thanksgiving in North America was in Canada in 1578 (in Newfoundland) with Martin Frobisher and other immigrants from England.  They were celebrating being thankful for surviving the long journey and the bounty of foods grown in the ‘New World’.  After being celebrated on many different dates over the years, the Parliament of Canada declared (in 1957) that the second Monday of October would be the recognized day of thanks in Canada.

We discussed traditions and modern celebrations.  Students enjoyed a sample, or two, of pumpkin pie!

After a class brainstorming of things that we are thankful for, students were paired and set to work writing their own things to be thankful for.  These are posted on the bulletin board in the hallway.

These ‘thankful’ posters are intermingled with the tissue papered turkeys that the students worked on during Art on Friday afternoon.

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Horton Hears a Who

We will be wrapping up our Seuss unit this week as Reading Groups will begin next week.

Today we read Horton Hears a Who.  We discussed the main idea which is that everyone deserves to be happy and live a safe and happy life.  “A Person’s a Person, No Matter How Small”.  After we discussed the story students filled in cards answering specific questions about things they like or would like.

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Autumn Time

After a very sunny, and warm-ish September, we are definitely now into the Fall weather.  We have a few Autumn visitors, and decorations, in the classroom now.

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Please join me in reminding your children that jackets are a good idea for outdoor times at Recess and Lunchtime.

We will be doing activities to do with the changing season in our classroom, along with our look at Thanksgiving and our upcoming trip to the Pumpkin Patch (please see the notice that went home today).  We will also be enjoying the vibrant colours in the changing of the leaves and be discussing the harvest.

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All About Me

We have spent time this week looking at ourselves and sharing things with our classmates.  We did a booklet called, A Book About Me.  In here we wrote about our likes / dislikes, our families, things we have recently learned, and things we want to learn next.  We also did initial drawings of our faces.  These booklets are posted on the bulletin board at the back of our classroom.

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Welcome back!!!

It is so nice to have the class decided and to be getting on with our school year!!

I am looking forward to a great year.  Please check back to this blog as I regularly post information regarding our class activities and upcoming events for the school.

This first few days we have begun some of our regular routines, and also had a little bit of time to get to know each other through exploration of our Math tubs.

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Students also had a bit of time to explore some of the Centre activities we have in our classroom.

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While we are awaiting the start of our Reading groups, our class will be doing a unit study on the books of Dr. Seuss. We will be doing lots of fun activities around his books.  We are also going to be getting to know each other better via a few activities around the theme of “All About Me”.

Stay tuned …

 

C.A.R.E. Kit

We began our lessons from this kit last week.  You should have received an explanatory letter in your child’s planner.

These lessons are meant to open a dialogue with the children.  The goal is to inform children of their rights and responsibilities in taking care of their own bodies.  We have currently completed 5 of these 12 lessons.  In these lessons we talk about feelings and the differences/similarities between people.

Lesson 3 focussed on the correct scientific names for private body parts.  We approached this as a science lesson.  In spite of some embarrassed giggling, most students took this information in stride.

We will continue these lessons for another two weeks.  Each day that we have a lesson a half paper comes home which described that day’s lesson.  Please take time to discuss these lessons with your child.

Thank you for your continuing support!