Books We Read
Walter the Baker
Mister Seahorse
Does A Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too?
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Weekly Centres
April Portfolio
Portfolio time again! This month, we're trying to use 8 colours and to write as many words and letters as possible by ourselves, even if we're not quite sure how!
Mystery Rolls
With our mystery creature(s) coming to our class late this week, Mr. McCullough gave us a clue, telling us that the creatures would have a similar shape to toilet paper rolls. Our job was to paint the toilet paper rolls green, white and black, which might help us figure out what kind of living thing is coming.
My Flower
After picking a seed to plant, we tried to make a version of our plantable flower (either sweet peas, chrysanthemums, sunflowers or hollyhock) out of pipe cleaner, markers and tissue paper.
Seed Sort
We learned that all of our seeds look a little different, and we had to sort them back into their individual containers based on appearance.
Other Things We Did
Monday was our Snickerdoodle Taste-Test! We tried all four recipes, with some of them tasting really good, and others tasting a bit like "play-doh" (our words). In the end, we chose the tastiest recipe, number 4, and decided that it wasn't really a snickerdoodle cookie, but more of a snickerdoodle crumble. We also talked a bit about what ingredient we could add or take away to make our crumble more like a cookie.
Our Reading Buddies took us outside for the Jackman Community Clean-Up, which was postponed due to bad weather on Friday. We helped clean up different parts of the yard, wearing rubber gloves, with Mr. McCullough, Ms. Stillman and our Reading Buddies making sure we were only picking up "safe" garbage and avoiding things like glass.
We received daily clues about what our Mystery Creature might be. Our first clue was that it starts life as an egg. The second clue was that, as a baby, it crawls on more than two legs. Our third clue was that it sleeps for a long time before becoming an adult. We used these clues to make and change predictions and then, for Wednesday's Writer's Workshop, we drew pictures of the animal and wrote down our predictions. On Friday, we learned that we would be getting butterflies!
Everybody got to plant their own flower seed from the selection above, and some people brought in their own seed to be planted as well!
Tuesday 29 April 2014
Tuesday 22 April 2014
Week 31: Earth Week
Books We Read
The Lorax
Song of the Week
The 3D-D-D
You put your sphere in, you take your sphere out,
You put your sphere in and you shake it all about!
You do the 3D-D-D and you go and seek one out
And that's what it's all about
(sphere is then replaced by cube, rectangular prism, cylinder, pyramid)
Weekly Centres
Build-A-Snickerdoodle
With the help of a few different parent volunteers, we created our own recipes for the Jackman Cookbook! Mr. McCullough made sure we used ingredients that were as healthy as possible (brown sugar instead of white, whole wheat flour instead of white, and unsalted butter instead of salted) and we chose how much of each ingredient we were supposed to add to our mix! We'll be having a "Taste Test" next week and the favourite version of the recipe will make the cookbook!
Planet Earth
Using round coffee filters and blue-and-green food colouring, we created our own version of Earth!
3D Frames
Our box of 3D shapes served as models as we tried to make toothpick and plastecine frames of pyramids, cubes and rectangular prisms.
Spring Word Book
Using the words worm, bud, flower, robin, rain, and sun, we created some picture books about spring. We had the choice of using traceable letters to make the printing easier, or to use the word wall to spell the words on our paper freehand!
Other Things We Did
We talked about what "healthy eating" meant, and decided that it meant eating food that would help you grow strong, big, and not make you sick. We then talked about how eating too much of anything can make you sick, what the right amount of unhealthy food is, and healthy alternatives for snacks and recipes.
Our school had our Earth Day assembly on Tuesday, and we were treated to songs, movies, plays and other performances. We learned a lot about why taking care of the earth is important, and about some of the things we can do to help!
We asked if the worms and our new class flower could help each other, and we decided that they could because they could give the dirt some air for the plants and make the soil more healthy with compost. So, we added some worms to our flower to see what would happen!
We learned about plurals, which means more than one. You show something is a plural by adding an s to the end of it. Some of us tried that in our Spring Books, where we wanted to draw more than one flower, worm, or even more than one sun!
Friday was the day we used all our recyclable material to create whatever we wanted! There were a lot of boats, but also some a jewelry box, an alligator, the Easter bunny, and a hole that transformed into a cardboard box! Thanks to all the parent volunteers who came and helped us make our creations real!
The Lorax
Song of the Week
The 3D-D-D
You put your sphere in, you take your sphere out,
You put your sphere in and you shake it all about!
You do the 3D-D-D and you go and seek one out
And that's what it's all about
(sphere is then replaced by cube, rectangular prism, cylinder, pyramid)
Weekly Centres
Build-A-Snickerdoodle
With the help of a few different parent volunteers, we created our own recipes for the Jackman Cookbook! Mr. McCullough made sure we used ingredients that were as healthy as possible (brown sugar instead of white, whole wheat flour instead of white, and unsalted butter instead of salted) and we chose how much of each ingredient we were supposed to add to our mix! We'll be having a "Taste Test" next week and the favourite version of the recipe will make the cookbook!
Planet Earth
Using round coffee filters and blue-and-green food colouring, we created our own version of Earth!
3D Frames
Our box of 3D shapes served as models as we tried to make toothpick and plastecine frames of pyramids, cubes and rectangular prisms.
Spring Word Book
Using the words worm, bud, flower, robin, rain, and sun, we created some picture books about spring. We had the choice of using traceable letters to make the printing easier, or to use the word wall to spell the words on our paper freehand!
Other Things We Did
We talked about what "healthy eating" meant, and decided that it meant eating food that would help you grow strong, big, and not make you sick. We then talked about how eating too much of anything can make you sick, what the right amount of unhealthy food is, and healthy alternatives for snacks and recipes.
Our school had our Earth Day assembly on Tuesday, and we were treated to songs, movies, plays and other performances. We learned a lot about why taking care of the earth is important, and about some of the things we can do to help!
We asked if the worms and our new class flower could help each other, and we decided that they could because they could give the dirt some air for the plants and make the soil more healthy with compost. So, we added some worms to our flower to see what would happen!
We learned about plurals, which means more than one. You show something is a plural by adding an s to the end of it. Some of us tried that in our Spring Books, where we wanted to draw more than one flower, worm, or even more than one sun!
Friday was the day we used all our recyclable material to create whatever we wanted! There were a lot of boats, but also some a jewelry box, an alligator, the Easter bunny, and a hole that transformed into a cardboard box! Thanks to all the parent volunteers who came and helped us make our creations real!
Tuesday 15 April 2014
Week 30: We Won't Pass on Re-sort-clying
Books We Read
The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah
Bear Feels Sick
Have I Got A Book For You!
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?
Weekly Activities
Recycle Sort
After collecting recycling for a few weeks, it was time to do something with all of it!
First, we talked about what recycling is, why it's better to recycle something than to throw it in the ground. We let Mr. McCullough know that it can make things look dirty, pollute the ground and even kill the polar bears! He told us about recycling, and how machines can take a box apart and make a brand new box out of it, so we don't waste the paper in boxes.
After figuring out what things were made of, we sorted by four different rules - things made of carboard, metal, clear plastic and non-clear plastic. Big plastic bags were hung up and we managed to fill up a garbage bag with enough cardboard to make it bigger than anybody in the class! Even with all that cardboard, though, we were able to lift the bag.
Writing Workshop: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road
Mr. McCullough read us Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road, which was illustrated by some of our favourite artists! After listening to some of their reasons why the chicken crossed the road, we had to figure out why our chickens might have crossed the road. We tried something new called "Writer's Workshop", where we put at least fifteen minutes into our drawing and writing, putting down whatever letters we could with no help from Mr. McCullough (aside from the occasional sound out). It was hard work, but ended up being a lot of fun!
Easter Ovals and PassOvals
Our big craft this week involved working with an oval as a "base", and then adding to it with a variety of shapes, colours and textures with stickers, markers and paints. Everybody made one oval for the classroom and most people made an extra oval (or a shape of their choice) to take home!
Other Things We Did
Our "Number Dance Party" continued, as we started working on our simple seven and our figure eight!
On Tuesday, when we had that crazy snowy day, we talked about how this kind of thing happens in spring once or twice, how spring isn't cancelled, it's not winter again, and how it would be warm again soon enough. Then we all had a chance to draw what we thought the crazy weather looked like.
We checked in on our cele-trees, and some of them weren't doing too well! We though that some more clear water might fix the red and green trees. Unfortunately, it didn't, and we had to make a choice about whether we should feed the dead trees to the worms. After some discussion, we decided it would be a bad idea because "if the food colouring made those trees sick, maybe they'll make the worms sick, and then they'd die."
An "Egg Hunt" happened on Friday, but it was a bit different from egg hunts you may have tried in the past. Instead of searching for eggs that Mr. McCullough hid and keeping what we found, we hid eggs with our own names on them! Our friends then had to find our eggs and, when they found one, they had to give it back to the person whose name was on it. That person then had to hide the egg again, all while searching for other people's eggs. In the end, everybody got to keep their own egg, which was really easy to find, since we all hid ours in the first place!
The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah
Bear Feels Sick
Have I Got A Book For You!
Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?
Weekly Activities
Recycle Sort
After collecting recycling for a few weeks, it was time to do something with all of it!First, we talked about what recycling is, why it's better to recycle something than to throw it in the ground. We let Mr. McCullough know that it can make things look dirty, pollute the ground and even kill the polar bears! He told us about recycling, and how machines can take a box apart and make a brand new box out of it, so we don't waste the paper in boxes.
After figuring out what things were made of, we sorted by four different rules - things made of carboard, metal, clear plastic and non-clear plastic. Big plastic bags were hung up and we managed to fill up a garbage bag with enough cardboard to make it bigger than anybody in the class! Even with all that cardboard, though, we were able to lift the bag.
Writing Workshop: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road
Mr. McCullough read us Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road, which was illustrated by some of our favourite artists! After listening to some of their reasons why the chicken crossed the road, we had to figure out why our chickens might have crossed the road. We tried something new called "Writer's Workshop", where we put at least fifteen minutes into our drawing and writing, putting down whatever letters we could with no help from Mr. McCullough (aside from the occasional sound out). It was hard work, but ended up being a lot of fun!
Easter Ovals and PassOvalsOur big craft this week involved working with an oval as a "base", and then adding to it with a variety of shapes, colours and textures with stickers, markers and paints. Everybody made one oval for the classroom and most people made an extra oval (or a shape of their choice) to take home!
Other Things We Did
Our "Number Dance Party" continued, as we started working on our simple seven and our figure eight!
On Tuesday, when we had that crazy snowy day, we talked about how this kind of thing happens in spring once or twice, how spring isn't cancelled, it's not winter again, and how it would be warm again soon enough. Then we all had a chance to draw what we thought the crazy weather looked like.We checked in on our cele-trees, and some of them weren't doing too well! We though that some more clear water might fix the red and green trees. Unfortunately, it didn't, and we had to make a choice about whether we should feed the dead trees to the worms. After some discussion, we decided it would be a bad idea because "if the food colouring made those trees sick, maybe they'll make the worms sick, and then they'd die."An "Egg Hunt" happened on Friday, but it was a bit different from egg hunts you may have tried in the past. Instead of searching for eggs that Mr. McCullough hid and keeping what we found, we hid eggs with our own names on them! Our friends then had to find our eggs and, when they found one, they had to give it back to the person whose name was on it. That person then had to hide the egg again, all while searching for other people's eggs. In the end, everybody got to keep their own egg, which was really easy to find, since we all hid ours in the first place!Wednesday 9 April 2014
Week 29: Book Club, Bullying and Building
Books We Read
Pink
Oliver Button is a Sissy
My Princess Boy
And Tango Makes Three
Weekly Centres
Word Grid
Using our sight words as practice, we filled up a "word grid" with different words from our word wall. It was definitely good printing practice for us!
Book Club Pages
Everybody picked a page from their favourite Book Club book and did their best to copy the picture and the words. We then read the page to Mr. McCullough.
Magnificent Junkyard
Building on our Magnificent Tree creations from last week, we now started building 3D structures out of the recycled materials that have been brought into class.
Number Stories
Mr. McCullough introduced the idea of "Number Stories" on our message board, giving examples like "Four bees are flying to one flower" or "Three girls have long haircuts and two have short haircuts." He used simple dot stickers to make his story clear, and then added details to the dots to make them into more interesting pictures. We then tried this on our own at the math centre. People were picking cats at the pet store, princesses were sharing a flower, and robins were learning lessons in tolerance! Very interesting!
Other Things We Did
On Wednesday, we celebrated the International Day of Pink! All week, we were reading books and talking about how it's okay to be yourself, even if yourself is a little bit different from what people think you should be, and how there really isn't such a thing as "boy things" and "girl things". Almost everybody wore pink on Wednesday and those who didn't got to wear a Day of Pink sticker.
We found a lost ladybug in our stairway and decided we'd move it in to our worm home. So far, so good!
We kept playing "That's Not A Number", focusing on the number 4, which we learned we can make with an upper-case L and a simple 1. We also added number 6!
With Spring coming, Mr. McCullough planted some "trees" at the back of the class that looked a lot like celery. We talked about what could make these trees grow stronger. We decided water would help, but Mr. McCullough ran out of water and all we had left was red, blue and green food colouring! We tried watering out "trees" (which looked a bit like celery) with food colouring and, by the end of the day, they had started to change colours. By Friday, their leaves had completely changed!
We also planted some "trees" in our sandbox and water table, just to see which ones would grow or stay strong!
Pink
Oliver Button is a Sissy
My Princess Boy
And Tango Makes Three
Weekly Centres
Word Grid
Using our sight words as practice, we filled up a "word grid" with different words from our word wall. It was definitely good printing practice for us!
Book Club Pages
Everybody picked a page from their favourite Book Club book and did their best to copy the picture and the words. We then read the page to Mr. McCullough.Magnificent Junkyard
Building on our Magnificent Tree creations from last week, we now started building 3D structures out of the recycled materials that have been brought into class.
Number Stories
Mr. McCullough introduced the idea of "Number Stories" on our message board, giving examples like "Four bees are flying to one flower" or "Three girls have long haircuts and two have short haircuts." He used simple dot stickers to make his story clear, and then added details to the dots to make them into more interesting pictures. We then tried this on our own at the math centre. People were picking cats at the pet store, princesses were sharing a flower, and robins were learning lessons in tolerance! Very interesting!
Other Things We Did
On Wednesday, we celebrated the International Day of Pink! All week, we were reading books and talking about how it's okay to be yourself, even if yourself is a little bit different from what people think you should be, and how there really isn't such a thing as "boy things" and "girl things". Almost everybody wore pink on Wednesday and those who didn't got to wear a Day of Pink sticker.We found a lost ladybug in our stairway and decided we'd move it in to our worm home. So far, so good!
We kept playing "That's Not A Number", focusing on the number 4, which we learned we can make with an upper-case L and a simple 1. We also added number 6!
With Spring coming, Mr. McCullough planted some "trees" at the back of the class that looked a lot like celery. We talked about what could make these trees grow stronger. We decided water would help, but Mr. McCullough ran out of water and all we had left was red, blue and green food colouring! We tried watering out "trees" (which looked a bit like celery) with food colouring and, by the end of the day, they had started to change colours. By Friday, their leaves had completely changed!We also planted some "trees" in our sandbox and water table, just to see which ones would grow or stay strong!
Wednesday 2 April 2014
Week 28: Magnificent Spring
Books We Read
The Magnificent Tree
A Bird and his Worm
Diary of a Worm
Rainy Days with Bear
Rainy Days with Bear
Song of the Week - Robin in the Rain
Robin in the rain, such a saucy fellow.
Robin in the rain, mind your socks of yellow.
Running in the garden with your nimble feet.
Digging for your dinner with your long, strong beak.
Robin in the rain, you don't mind the weather.
Showers always make your day!
Bet the worms were wishing you would stay at home!
Robin on a rainy day!
We kept practicing our math language of "plus" and "equals" by snapping together snap cubes of different colours, then counting and adding them together to make five. We found out we could add 4 + 1, 3 + 2, and 5 + 0, and then reverse all of those numbers and get the same answer!
Writing To A Friend
Using Handwriting Without Tears style tracing sheets, we each took a paper with a classmate's name on it, wrote their name, and then drew a picture for them that we thought they'd like. We then gave them their name and the picture!
Robin in the rain, such a saucy fellow.Robin in the rain, mind your socks of yellow.
Running in the garden with your nimble feet.
Digging for your dinner with your long, strong beak.
Robin in the rain, you don't mind the weather.
Showers always make your day!
Bet the worms were wishing you would stay at home!
Robin on a rainy day!
Weekly Centres
Spring Trees
Keeping with our theme of a tree for each season, we painted our spring trees this week!
Magnificent Trees
Using the book "The Magnificent Tree" as a guide, we used 2D shapes to create our own "Magnificent Trees" on the carpet, and 2D magnet shapes to create them on our magnet board. We then told our friends what features the trees had!
Keeping with our theme of a tree for each season, we painted our spring trees this week!
Magnificent Trees
Using the book "The Magnificent Tree" as a guide, we used 2D shapes to create our own "Magnificent Trees" on the carpet, and 2D magnet shapes to create them on our magnet board. We then told our friends what features the trees had!
5 Blocks
We kept practicing our math language of "plus" and "equals" by snapping together snap cubes of different colours, then counting and adding them together to make five. We found out we could add 4 + 1, 3 + 2, and 5 + 0, and then reverse all of those numbers and get the same answer!Writing To A FriendUsing Handwriting Without Tears style tracing sheets, we each took a paper with a classmate's name on it, wrote their name, and then drew a picture for them that we thought they'd like. We then gave them their name and the picture!
Other Things We Did
After reading "The Magnificent Tree", we talked about why birds and animals would like natural trees over man-made structures, and why keeping things simple is sometimes the best.
We kept working with the number five, with our daily math question showing us how to properly use + and =.
We discovered "new life" in our worm house, as some kind of plant had started to grow. We're really excited to see what it might be!
For our spring trees, we made "mental pictures" in our head of what a spring tree might look like, then went outside to check that picture against real trees, and then came to a happy middle with our painted trees.
We kept playing "That's Not a Number", identifying the numbers 1, 2 and 3, figuring out which symbols were not numbers, and then practicing writing our numbers on our "Dance Tickets" so we could go to the class "Dance Party".
Our Friday Free Centre featured some extra painting, coloured chalk, iPads and a variety of building materials. It was amazing seeing some of the neat things people came up with!
We kept playing "That's Not a Number", identifying the numbers 1, 2 and 3, figuring out which symbols were not numbers, and then practicing writing our numbers on our "Dance Tickets" so we could go to the class "Dance Party".
Our Friday Free Centre featured some extra painting, coloured chalk, iPads and a variety of building materials. It was amazing seeing some of the neat things people came up with!
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