Holiday Cards

Some Christmas cards trickled in on Monday. It would be great if the kids could exchange their cards all at once on Thursday! If you haven't yet sent your child's card in please do so or, let me know how I might be able to help facilitate its completion so that no one is left out.

Yumm!

No need to send in an afternoon snack on Thursday because our class will be having a small holiday celebration with treats and goodies brought in by the following families:

Cookies: Tye's family

Cupcakes: Calyssa's family

Juice & Cups: Alex's family

Veggies & Dip: Paige's family

Cheese & Crackers: Sophia's family
Fruit: Jack & Morgan's family

Thanks to you all!

Don't Forget

Reindeer games are on Monday! Wear red and green to show your spirit!

Word Workers

Recently we finished a "mini-unit" on colours. Perhaps a few little songs/poems made it home to you! One of our poems was about red; in the first picture we not only had learned the poem, but we also started to look carefully at the words within the poem. The top picture is of us playing thinking games that encouraged us to take turns finding the word red, finding the smallest word(s), and finding words that had five letters. You'll notice little arrows too; that is where the children noticed the punctuation used in the poem. 

After brainstorming all things red we were able to share the marker and create our own Red poem that followed the same structure as above. You'll notice the student referring to our Red chart of ideas before making her selection and transferring it to our poem.

Whew...so much to do!

'Tis the season of busy....and thankfulness!

On top of everything else that is going on in your busy life, here are a few gentle reminders of some upcoming events:

• Our "Snowsuit Fund" fundraiser will end this Friday. 

•  Santa's Seconds is next week--December 11th! If you are interested in donating various items to the event we will happily take them off of your hands this Friday! Our shopping extravaganza will take place next week with help from some "big kids" to keep us on task and buying for others! Every item will be $1.00.

Let me know if we somehow didn't get the green information page to you that goes over some of the above.

• Our holiday cards are due on the 16th
• Our classroom Holiday Cheer is on December 18th at 2:15pm--the more the merrier!
• Our classroom party for the kids will be on December 19th in the afternoon information about snack provision will be posted shortly
• No School on the 20th!

We're Spreading Cheer!

Dear Family,
Please join us in Room 101 on WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 18th at 2:15 in the afternoon! Expect to be delighted and proud as we sing and spread our holiday cheer loud and clear! As it can be tricky to take time off of work, or the flexibility is just not there, please consider inviting a close family friend or relative to be an audience member in your place. If that is not an option...don't worry, but please do let us know in advance as we can come up with a back-up plan (i.e. reading buddy, Mr Johnston, etc.).

Let the countdown begin!

See you soon!

We look forward to seeing you!

Got Junk?

If your kids are like mine they are probably trying to talk you into decorating your house for the holidays this weekend! As you are going through your items can you please send in any of your "junk" or "well loved" pieces that you are no longer in need of. We are looking for strings of garland, old wrapping paper, ribbon/bows, half used rolls of tape, Christmas cards and tags, etc. for our classroom elf workshop! These little bits and pieces will go a long way to beautify the presents the kids wrap and the decorating of the room! Many, many thanks!

SAVE THE DATE!

As December sneaks up on us I thought I should let you know about our Holiday Cheer get-together. Please mark December 18th (p.m) on your calendar. Further details will follow shortly!

French Update

We are currently doing the French version of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See"

The repetitive structure of the book is great for learning the names of animals in French, and also for reviewing the colors. The format we've been following in class is pictured below.

 Brown bear, brown bear

tell me what you see?

I see a red bird
looking at me


The next line in the story is then

Red bird, red bird (Oiseau rouge, oiseau rouge)
tell me what do you see? (dis-mois ce que tu vois)
etc.

Here are all the animals and their colors from the French book:

And here are some pics of students working on our class book based on the story:

And here's a completely unrelated picture...

French and Math

Students are continuing to rotate through shape bins during math time, and have started a French shape/number book to help them retain the vocabulary. Below are some pictures of them in action:

In French, we have been rocking the alphabet hard. I'm wondering how well they do at home, without their "lead singer". Try breaking it into the format we used below.

 

 

Beautiful Little Pumpkins

Oops....Here's one that has been sitting waiting to be posted! This beautiful piece of art allowed the children to explore various mediums as we used pastels and watercolours to complete a drawing of a pumpkin at night.

Scholastic

Tomorrow is our due date...sorry for the quick turn over this month for the Scholastic book orders! 

AHHHHH-----CHOOOO!

As the season is sneaking up on us we would greatly appreciate any kleenex donations! We have many runny/stuffed noses, lots of sniffles, and we are down to our last two boxes (yikes!).

Thanks in advance! 

French and Math Update

In French, we read the story "Trois souris peintres". There is a version of it on youtubeat the following link:

http://youtu.be/N2I86iAE8YQ

Like the mice from the story, we experimented with the primary colors; rouge (red), bleu (blue), and jaune (yellow). We discovered that mixing the primary colors together produces secondary colors; vert (green), orange (orange), and violet (purple).

In Math, we are just finishing up our second and final set of patterning bins. We will now be moving on to sorting and classifying shapes. Our intro to this was a song about shapes and their sides sung to the tune of “Alice the Camel”.

 

Play-Doh Mishap

Thank you so very much for the playdough that you generously provide for our classroom use. Last month I  thanked some families but I forgot some others! Sorry!

Thank you soooo much for playdough this month also goes out to The Barton's, The Dyk's, and The Dark's! My apologies for missing you. :(

For the month of November The Baskin's, The Brownlee's, and The McCurdy's have offered to provide us with playdoh! Many thanks to you all!

Busy Bees

Wow...our days just fly by! Look at some of the Language work we have been exploring recently:

Creating letters using Geoboards and elastic bands

An awesome cooperative game of  I Have ___ Who Has___?
that is like an emergent reader but also reviews letter recall

Using a Venn Diagram to discover if letters are shared (or not) between two friends

Here's some of the vocabulary we've been working on leading up to Halloween:

la citrouille (pumpkin), la sorcière (witch), le bonbon (candy), le fantôme (ghost), la maison hantée (haunted house), la chauve-souris (bat), le chat noir (black cat), un hibou (owl), le squelette (skeleton), la lune (moon), le masque (mask), le chaudron (cauldron), le balai (broom), vole (fly) , le costume (costume), une araignée (spider), une toile d’araignée (spider web)

Many of the words were learned in our game of "Trouver le bonbon" (Find the candy) pictured below. Students take turns hiding the candy under the various Halloween pictures and the class asks "Est-ce que c'est en dessous..." (Is it under...?)

We've also added a few more actions to our repertoire:

 

Three Cheers for Pie!

Mmmm, Mmmmm, yummmm! 

Talk about starting the week off on a good note! We baked some pretty terrific mini pumpkin pies yesterday afternoon and WOW were they goooood! In fact, 26 kids liked them! I've attached the recipe in "The Extras" part of the blog so that you can go directly to the recipe (I didn't add ginger). This activity fit in perfectly for exploring the various ways in which a pumpkin can be used; first enjoy the playfulness and texture, then eat the seeds, next make some  pie, and finally carve a Jack-o-Lantern! Love it!

Exploring Pumpkins

I'm not too fond of the texture of pumpkin pulp, but it is one of those "must-do" moments that you have with your kids! Take a look at some of these cuties as they are cleaning out the inside of our pumpkins:

Now what do you do with all of that ick? Well you pick out the seeds and roast them of course! Talk about a really tasty snack!

Can you believe the results of this survey?

And if that doesn't convince you that we really enjoyed the taste test, maybe these words will:

"They're yummy!"

"They taste like popcorn!"

"They're tasty!"

"These are good!"

"I like them!"

"I'm going to ask my mom to make these!"

October 31st

On Thursday, October 31st  please feel free to send your wee one in dressed for Hallowe'en! If you do choose to send your son/daughter in costume it may be a good idea to provide an extra set of clothing to change into as our room can get somewhat warm and, as we know, those costumes can be hot and itchy! As a reminder it would be best to leave swords, masks, crowns, and other accessories at home for safety issues and also so that they don't get damaged or left behind for the big night! We will enjoy a small costume parade around parts of the school in the morning, and in the afternoon we will  enjoy some yummy snackage during second nutrition break (afternoon).

 Thank you ever so much to the following families for providing us (33) with our snack for the afternoon:

                Cheese and Crackers:: Jack B.
                Cookies:: Tyson
                Fruit Tray:: Brooklyne
                Veggies and Dip:: Kaylynn
                Drinks and Cups or Juice Boxes:: Vala
                Cupcakes:: Nolan

Play-Doh

The following families generously provided us with Play-Doh this month:

 

The Koktan's

The Thompson's

The Macdonald's



Thank you so very much!!!