Cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders, rectangular prisms and pyramids...can your child identify 3-D shapes around the house? We have discussed edges, faces and vertices as well as length, height and width. Send your child on a 3-D scavenger hunt and see what they can collect.
Tomorrow is Winter Walk Day...be sure to send students with mittens, boots and snowpants!
Our class enjoyed the book "You Can't Taste a Pickle with your Ear" by Harriet Ziefert today. We used all five senses to explore the classroom and talk about our sensory experiences. We focused on taste today, completing a group activity to classify sweet, sour, bitter and salty foods. Ask your child if they remember what the class favourite was (I bet you can guess)!
Winter Walk Day happens at Woodlands School on Wednesday February 1st. We will mark this day by spending the last part of our afternoon outside enjoying the fresh air and observing our animals and trees as they make it through the last part of winter. Please be sure that your child is dressed for the weather!
We experimented with drawing mandalas today to practice for an art project next week. Mandalas are perfectly symmetrical, and are drawn in circular patterns. It is very calming to draw mandalas! it was a lot of trial and error today but we are excited to hone our skills and produce something beautiful for our hallway bulletin board.
Bundle up and enjoy the winter wonderland this weekend!
Students are loving our gymnastics unit in gym this week. We have a range of activities that allow the children to balance, roll, climb, and jump while navigating trestles, beams, ladders and mats safely.
Thank you for continuing to read at night with your child to help them succeed in their home reading program!
Ms. Madsen was our guest teacher today, allowing me time to do one-to-one assessments of numeracy and literacy skills with the class. One thing really stood out for me today as something we could all use a little more practice in: writing numbers accurately, both in their formation and with correct place value. This is something that each student could benefit from by practicing at home. Kids love using dry erase boards and markers, smelly markers, making shapes from playdough and drawing on sand trays (sugar works too). Setting out a number line for your child to copy with lots of fun materials will help them grow in number-writing accuracy!
Ask your child if they can show you how to make a symmetry tree...we had some lovely examples today.
We learned about lines of symmetry today. Exploring symmetry is a ton of fun! Ask your child if they can tell you about the centres we did today...
Our weaving project went home today and we were all so pleased with the result! Every child felt successful and that they had produced something beautiful.
We learned how to weave with yarn and paper cups today. After some struggles to coordinate fingers with string and the pattern of the weave, we got into a groove and made a lot of progress! It was a very calm and soothing way to end the day.
We investigated our sense of sound today, with a fun game that tested our ability to differentiate between different sounds without seeing the source of the sound. It was fun to guess and see how close we got to the right answer. It's hard to tell the difference between a motorcycle and a tractor, apparently! Ask your child to tell you the difference between volume and pitch...
Thank you for helping your child succeed with the RED folder home reading program! The students are very excited to fill out the reading logs and exchange books every day.
Your child will be bringing home a home reading folder today. Look for the R.E.D folder (Read Every Day) in their backpack!
This home reading program will give your student an extra boost in their early reading skills, and ideally will be done at a convenient time with an adult or older sibling assisting. It is definitely not meant to add any pressure to busy family life, so if there are days when it just isn't going to happen, that is completely fine. The students will read one or two books aloud, record the titles and then bring the books back to school the following morning to swap out for new ones. There is a pink notice inside the folder that explains the program in more detail.
Thank you for continuing to support your child in their exciting Grade One year!
Today's math activity centred around estimation, data collection and odd/even numbers. Students used loose parts to grab by the handful, estimate the quantity, count and then determine whether the amount was an odd or even number. They then used tally marks to record the number of odd numbers and even numbers counted. We were all interested to see how our estimation skills improved as we progressed through the activity. We were surprised by the results, too...we counted way more odd number amounts than even! Ask your child to demonstrate to you how we prove that a collection of objects is an odd amount or an even...
There are a number of fun lunch/popcorn dates approaching, so be sure to check the healthy hunger information on the website to place your child's order, if you're interested.
We explored objects in our classroom to spark a discussion on texture today. After poking, prodding, stroking and squishing many things, we came up with a big list of words to describe the way things feel. Ask your child if they can list the objects we explored and what kinds of words we used to talk about them!
We are back in the swing of things in Room 4 after a great winter break.
Our new science unit is about the 5 senses. We have already learned some incredible things about how our brain processes information from through touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. Ask your child if they can tell you which is the biggest organ in our body and what sense it processes...
Thank you to Lukas's mom Mathilde for continuing to come in every Tuesday morning to read with our students! If you are interested in coming in to volunteer, and have your current police clearance, please email me at adnicholas@cbe.ab.ca
180 'school days' ago, we started our journey in Grade One together...and now it all wraps up tomorrow with our last day of school! ...
