Update on our learning...

December was quite a busy month for us here in grade 1. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Here is some updates of what we did in December and so far in January this year. 

In art we created reindeer with our grade 3 buddies before the Christmas break. We also created a hand painted picture of the 3 wise men following the star to baby Jesus with Mrs. Brochu's class. We hung up our art pieces in the gym for our liturgy. We did a step by step snowman drawing and are now currently working on another art piece! We love to paint!

We were lucky this week to get a chance to go in the Star Lab that is set up in our learning commons! It looks like a giant dome and when we crawled inside we could see different stars. We loved learning about constellations. 

In gym class we did drum fit in December and are now starting floor hockey. We will have to take a break from floor hockey next week as we have Sound Kreations coming in to teach us dance!

In science we have been learning all about our 5 senses! We talked about what we love to touch, see, hear, taste, and smell at Christmas time. 

In math we have been working on the different ways we can represent a number. We know we can use the number, number word, tally marks, dice, dominoes, pictures, a ten frame, and with fingers. We have also been working on learning our double addition facts (ex. 2 + 2= 4, 3+3=6, ect.). We have begun adding single digit numbers up to 9. Ask me about our addition dancing dice game we play!

In LA we have been working on a few writing skills. Our writing rules to check for are:

1)  Period at the end of a sentence.

2) Uppercase at the beginning of a sentence.

3) Names are uppercase. ex. John.

4) When I is alone it must be an uppercase. 

Some of us are also still working on putting a finger space between words, making sure our printing is neatly in between the lines and the appropriate size. 

We are starting to spell our own words phonetically. That means, we spell the word the way it sounds. We try to sound it out and put down the appropriate letter. For example some of us might spell love as luv because it is phonetically correct. That is great! We are trying to encourage each other to write and sound out our own words. 

We have been working on sequence writing as well. We wrote 3 steps for how we build a snowman. It is important for our steps to be clear and for the picture to match. 

We do our daily 5 every day. Students practice reading independently, with a partner, listening to reading on Epic, writing and doing word work (based on our word wall words). For our writing station, students should be drawing a picture and writing at least 3 words to label it or a full sentence. Here was our list of Christmas/winter words we have been using. 

In social we have been reviewing how we identify different groups and communities. Here are 5 ways we talked about:

In religion we have been learning about the story of Jesus' birthday. We have also talked about the Epiphany this week.

In health class, we talked about germs and how they are spread. We learned that we should always wash our hands before we eat, after we use the bathroom, after we blow our noses and if we cough or sneeze. 

Update on our learning...

A reminder to parents to please send a water bottle to school everyday. Your child gets thirsty! Please review students' agendas every night and try to do home reading daily. Please send their agenda and home reading back to school each day. Thank you for all of your help and support! 😊


In Science this week we did some fun colour stations! We did an experiment called "Magic Milk." We poured milk and 2 primary coloured drops of food colouring into our milk. We then dipped a q-tip into dish soap and watched as the milk/colours reacted! We mixed it together to make our secondary colours. We also mixed red plasticine with white plasticine to make different shades of red. We coloured a picture using only the 3 primary colours and we played eye spy in partners.

The Grade 4 students came in to show us how to make a rainbow out of a flashlight, prism and paper. We drew what happened in our visual journals.

In Gym class we are working on throwing and catching. We have a Tchoukball set that we are practicing on. The Grade 6 gym experts came in to show us how it works!




In art class we made poppies for Remembrance Day. We used a sponge and acrylic paint to add texture.




In Math we learned how to play the game war. The game helps us recognize which number is more and which number is less.





In LA we are working on the letters w, h, r, l and e. We encourage you to work on the practices that were sent home on Wednesday. We have started doing LA stations which are called "Daily 5." Students work on independent reading, reading with a partner, listening to stories on the i-pads (using epic), and working on their word booklets. Next week we will introduce the 5th station of daily 5 which is writing.







  


In Social Studies we finished our Remembrance Day booklets and sent them home. Please look in your child's backpack to see their amazing work!

In Religion we are working on praying for others and saying the Our Father. We have been reading bible stories and discussing their meaning. Ask me what my favorite one is so far!

Update on our learning...

In science we went outside and picked a class tree. Our class tree's name is Sparkle. We will follow Sparkle through the different seasons and see if we can notice the changes. Right now we can tell that Sparkle is losing her leaves as they are turning brown, yellow and orange. They are shriveling up  and the wind has brushed them off her branches. We drew what Sparkle looks like in Fall and we will go outside to draw her again in Winter.

We are revisiting our colours unit in science. We mixed yellow and red together to make orange. We painted our pumpkins that we drew and added details with crayon after it dried. We also learned that if we add white to a colour it makes it lighter. If we add black to a colour it makes it darker. We tested it out using the colour red. Look at our great colour variations!

In math we have moved on from our patterns unit to learning about representing numbers 1-20. We have a number of the day that we write the number, the word, fill in our ten frame, and draw a picture of. (See the #5 that we did below). We have talked about how there are many different ways to show numbers such as tally marks or in a ten frame. We have started new math stations in class. We do puzzles, matching games, and find the goldfish.









In LA we have been working on the letters p, t, d, b and a. We had Mrs. Richards come in to teach us a story about each one and show us how there are picture cues in each letter that can remind us of the letter sound. We are now using the lively letters program with her. We have had lots of practice  this week and we encourage you to practice this weekend with the materials we sent home on Wednesday.






In social we are making little books about what groups we belong in. Our first page was about our family. We drew 3 pictures of our family for our little books. Ask me what other groups I belong to.







In art we made torn paper pumpkins! We got to design our own face. Some went with scary and others happy!

Pictures from building the escape room..

Thank you everyone for coming to see our amazing "Weather of Oz" escape room that we made! Our students worked so hard. I was very impressed how everyone worked as a team and did their part. Awesome job!! Here are some pictures from the process.