Week 29: Numbers Stories and Respect

Weekly Centres

Sight Word Writing

Using removable Sight Words from our Sight Word Wall, we've been practising writing some of these words on grids that Mr. McCullough made for us!

3D Shape Making

With toothpicks and plasticine, we've tried to recreate a variety of 3D shapes.

Magnificent Tree, Now in 3D!!!

To help show the difference between a 2D shape and a 3D shape, we used recycled materials like boxes, paper rolls and plastic containers and bottles to create free-standing versions of our Magnificent Trees!

Spring Flower Sketching

We've tried drawing some of the flowers in our class collection, trying to make them as realistic as possible.

Number Stories with Dots

Given no more than 5 dots, we created simple number stories, like 3 bees flying to 2 flowers to pollinate them.  Some of us were able to write parts of our story all by ourselves!

Books We Read

The Greedy Triangle

My Princess Boy

Oliver Button is a Sissy

Keep Climbing, Girls!

Song of the Week - The 3D Dee Dee

Sung to the tune of Hokey Pokey, with 3D shapes being substituted for body parts

You put your cube in,

You take your cube out.

You put your cube in,

And you shake it all about.

You do the 3D Dee Dee and you go and seek one out.

That's what it's all about!

Other Things We Did

On the International Day of Pink, we talked about bullying, how it's never okay to make fun of somebody for being different, and how there's pretty much no such thing as clothes or colours that are just "for boys" or "for girls". 

There was a surprise fire drills, which we all did very well at, even though it was cold outside!

With the 3D Dee Dee song in the background, we searched our room for objects that were, or were similar to, spheres, cubes, pyramids, cones and triangular and rectangular prisms.

We kept playing "That's Not a Number" and having our Number Dance Party while practising our number printing skills!

We talked about the difference between a regular story (These bees are flying to those flowers) and a number story (Three bees are flying to two flowers). 

We started leaving letters and words out of our Daily Message to see who could fill in the missing spaces.

Week 28: Magnificent Spring

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.  We then told our friends what features the trees had!

March Portfolio
We kept working on our drawing in our March Portfolio, but we also working some more on adding labels.  A few of us were even able to add some simple sentences!

Books We Read
The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse
The Magnificent Tree
Voices in the Park

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!

Other Things We Did
Janeen, a local artist, came in on Tuesday and helped us make Acrylic Hearts!  They'll be coming home at the end of next week!

We talked about how the different feelings can make us feel, and how changes in the seasons can make us feel a bit funny.

Our worms ate all the food that was left in their container and left behind castings!

We've mixed up our message a bit.  Now, we're saying it a little bit faster, but also saying it more often and in different groups (boys, girls, people wearing blue, people with short hair) to help increase our reading fluency.


We started using "Number Tickets", or sheets with different numbers on them, to practice our number printing.  If we finished it before the song playing was over, we got to participate in our number dance party!

We worked a bit on the difference between the "R" sound and the "W" sound.

Our new, favourite, in-class game show, "That's Not A Number!" took place!  We looked and numbers and letters that were similar (like 5, S & 2) and had to identify the number and, if it wasn't a number, say "That's Not A Number!"

April Calendar

Week 27: Adding Worms

Weekly Centres

Oval Art

After learning about ovals (and refreshing our memory of the other shapes), we created Oval Art using foam backgrounds and construction paper shapes.

___ +  ____ = 5

With the number 5 drawn in a circle, we drew pictures of items that added up to five.

Sight Word Tornado

Using a top and a simple graph, we worked on learning three new sight words - as, are and on.

Books We Read
Rosie's Passover Story
Diary of an Earthworm
Life of an Earthworm
 

Song of the Week

These Are The Shapes I Know (NOW WITH OVALS!)

These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Count the sides! Only one! It’s a circle, round and fun!
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Count the sides! Only three! A triangle, so pointy!
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Count the sides! Four the same! Square, square, that’s it’s name!
Count the sides! 2 short, two long! It’s a rectangle, let's move along!
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.
Take a circle!  Stretch it out!  OVAL!  OVAL! We all shout!
These are the shapes I know, I know.  These are the shapes I know.

Other Things We Did
We spent time working on our letter I and letter J.

We met our Red Wrigglers, the worms we're keeping in our class this week, and made predictions about what they would do to a box full of carrots, peppers and blueberries over the course of a week.

We started learning about the plus and equal signs and how to do some simple addition to five, using blocks, toys, and even ourselves!

We learned about what earthworms do in their life, learning terms like "burrow" and "castings". 

We figured out the difference between "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction", comparing a silly story based on worms (Diary of an Earthworm) against a fact-based book (Life of an Earthworm). 

We started doing our "Reading Club" station doing "Drop Everything And Read", where our colour groups would co-read a variety of levelled books.

Our Reading Buddies read us a book that they made, "A is for Reading Buddies", which they presented in their classroom on the third floor!  Based on "A is for Musk Ox", here are the slides they put together for our class!

We did an Egg Hunt & Hide on Friday!  Everybody had to search for eggs around the room, open them, and read the name inside, using first letters as clues to find their owner.  Once they figured out who they belonged to, they returned the egg to their owner, who then hid it again until somebody else found it and returned it! 

Week 26: Luck and Worms

Books We Read
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book?
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Scaredy Squirrel
Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend
Diary of a Worm

Song of the Week
To Find a Four Leaf Clover

To find a four leaf clover
Go looking in the yard
You look around all over
You need to look real hard

It doesn't cost a penny
It doesn't cost a buck
But when you finally find one
It's sure to bring you LUCK

oh, Little four leaf clover
It's sure to bring good luck
Little four leaf clover
It's sure to bring good luck

Weekly Centres
March Break Five
We're picking five things we did over March Break, big or small, and drawing pictures of those things inside our five squares.

Clover Sprouts

Using construction paper and popsicle sticks, we'll be adding green clovers to our window while talking about both St. Patrick's Day and spring!  Those who finished their clovers were also able to make flowers for our "window garden."

Predicting Dice

Can we predict what number we will roll the most when using dice?  We'll be trying this week as we roll dice, chart our results, and then compare them with the rest of the class to see if there is a most probable result.

Drama Centre

Our drama centre was completely redone over March Break, and there will be some small group play in the area so we can get more familiar with it.

Other Things We're Doing

We helped each other brainstorm our March Break 5 activity by talking about what we did over the break and learned that, even though we didn't do exactly the same thing, we all did a lot more than we thought we did!

We looked at a box of carrots and made predictions about what worms would do to the carrots in a week.  Almost everybody thought that we'd just be left with extra big worms in the box.

We're talking about the idea of "luck" and what it is and, using the adventures of Scaredy Squirrel, have begun talking about the idea of possible vs impossible.  We also talked about things that were likely to happen versus things that are unlikely to happen (a beaver is more likely to bite you in a tree because it eats trees, but a rabbit is unlikely to bite you in a tree because it can't climb and eats grass, not squirrels)

We also talked about the different between things that are impossible (like jumping higher than a helicopter) and things that are possible, but not allowed (like eating paper towel).

The letter S and the letter A will be the focus of our printing activities this week.

A theatre company came into the school and performed a play called "The Great Mountain".  The play talked about the environment and how we could help save it for the future.

For Earth Hour, we talked about all the different things we need electricity for.  We then went down the gym to see if we could have our gym class with no electricity.  We found out we couldn't, so we figured out that we could have gym in room 207 because we had windows.

We learned a game called "Clover, Over!", where we had to search the room for a four-leaf clover but, when we found it, we couldn't say "Found it!"  We had to say "clover over" and go back to the carpet, hoping our friends would use the clue of our voice to find it for themself!

Week 25: 5 Days Until Break

Books We Read
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Is That a Coconut?  Yuck!
Revenge of the Dinotrux.
Let's Play In The Forest While The Wolf Is Not Around

Weekly Centres
Printing
We worked on our letter Q (which we made by adding a line to an O) and the letter G (which we made by continuing our C and turning in)

Make 5
We covered the tables in our math and language centre with five strips, gave small five strips as well, and created fives by either colouring, adding small items like bears or blocks, or creating other things based on five in the centre.

Sandbox Sorting
In the sand centre, we searched for items in the sandbox and sorted them into groups of five, using whatever sorting rule we wanted.

Drinking Gourd Maps
Using pictures of hills, soldiers, dogs, safe houses, fields, lakes and rivers, we created maps that allowed people to "Follow the Drinking Gourd" to get to the freedom of Canada.  This will be important when we follow the drinking gourd on Friday!

Other Things We Did

Everybody was asked to "Make 5" any way they wanted at the start of the week.  We had people using fingers, crayons, bears, blocks, letters and, in some cases, combining items into groups of five.

We searched for five in our daily message.  Some people found the word, some people found words with five letters in them, some people found five sight words and one person noticed that the S and the 5 look almost the same!

We looked back at Follow the Drinking Gourd and used our memories to remember the different obstacles characters in the book faced.  We then co-operatively drew a map.

We figured out that there were five days until March Break, and counted down each day, both at the beginning of the day, and at the end.

We went around the school on Friday afternoon, following the drinking gourd to safe houses, up hills, across rivers, past old forests, hiding from guards and dogs, all the way until we got to the safety of our classroom!

March Calendar