Week 21: Pictures, Puppets, Perseverance

Books We Read
I Will Surprise My Friend
Boo Hoo Bird
Old Black Fly

Special Activities
Matija's Goodbye Book
I was Matija's last day at Jackman on Monday, as he's now going to a different school.  We made him a "Going Away Present" in the form of a book.  Each page had a picture of us, our name written in big letters, and a space for us to draw a picture of a memory we had of Matija.

Letter Q
Since we did our Letter O last week, we made a whole new letter by adding a line, creating the letter Q.  We also learned that, to start most words with Q's, we have to add a "u" afterwards to create a "Qu" sound.

Zodiac Puppets
We found out that we were all oxen in the Chinese Zodiac, and talked a little bit about the Year of the Horse.  To celebrate, everybody got to create either an ox puppet or a horse puppet, creating it with foam, paper, googly eyes, pom poms, craft sticks, markers and stick-on jewels.

Letters to Shapes
We went back to our shape knowledge and turned some common numbers and capital letters into shapes by adding lines or by colouring in the spaces.

Other Things We Did
Reading Buddies became Math Buddies this week!  We went down to the library to work with the laptops and tried out IXL!  It was pretty fun and, when given the choice to keep going or read a book, most students stuck with IXL.

We had an assembly on the Olympics and talked about the idea of "Perseverance", which means trying really hard and never giving up, even if something is difficult.  We talked about times we've persevered in our life, both in school and out of school.

"Yummy Yellow Yogurt" helped us learn the "Y" sound!

February Calendar

Week 20: Gung Hei Fat Choi

Apologies for the shortened blog posts as of late.  A combination of time being spent on report cards and IEPs and some computer space shortage around the school.  The blog should be updated on a more frequent basis next week.

Books We Read
Log Hotel
Bringing In the New Year
The Very Quiet Cricket

Weekly Centres
January Portfolios
In exciting news, some of us were able to write words all by ourselves just by trying to write the sounds on the page!  For those who aren't there yet, Mr. McCullough wrote some of the words and then had us fill in blanks with our sight words!

Red Rabbit Lanterns
Using construction paper sheets and strips, along with markers and scissors, we created Red Rabbit Lanterns for our Lunar New Year Parade!

2D Shapes Buildings
We used our 2D magnet shapes and our building straws to create larger 2D shapes by combining smaller 2D shapes.

Zodiac Pointalism
Q-Tips, paint and pictures of animals from the Chinese Zodiac, we first decided what animal we were most like (not what animal we like most) and then used the Q-Tips to dot paint onto the pictures.

Other Things We Did
We adopted a Pine Seed Bug that we found crawling in our classroom.  We talked about what we could do to keep him happy, what kind of things we would need to put in his house, what kind of food he might eat, and why we shouldn't be scared of most bugs...

...unfortunately, our bug didn't last too long, so we had a talk about how tough it must be for a Pine Seed Bug to survive in a class where there weren't any pine seeds.  Everybody took the loss of the little guy pretty well, though.

We learned how to say "Happy New Year" in Chinese, and also talked about how we should always respect other languages, even if the sounds they have are a little different than the sounds we have.

Our Reading Buddies helped us with our first attempt at RAZ-Kids!  We were able to go online, read some books with them on the computer, and then try out the fun things in our RAZ-Rocket!   

On Friday, we had a "Lantern Parade" around the school, showing everybody our Red Rabbit lanterns while singing about Dragons, Horses and Lanterns!

Week 19: These Are The Shapes We Know!

Books We Read
Lin Yi's Lantern
Get Out Of Bed!

Song of the Week
These are the Shapes I Know
Sung to the tune of "These are the Daves I know"

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 to end the song
These are the shapes I know, I know. These are the shapes I know.

Weekly Centres
Letter O
After working on Letter C on Monday, we tried our hand at the Letter O, remembering to complete the circle we started when we were making Cs.

Sandbox Shape Sort
The sandbox was filled with triangles, rectangles, squares and circles, and it was our job to figure out where they were and which containers to put them in to.

Snowflake Making
We continued using how to learn scissor, as Mr. McCullough gave us folded pieces of papers.  We cut traingles, rectangles, squares and circles into the, added some glitter, and then hung the snowflakes from our winter branch!

Sight Word Beyblade Battle
 A list of sight words was printed up and put into a container, and Mr. McCullough "let it rip" with one of the Beyblades in the class!  When the Beyblade landed on a word, we had to find it on our paper, making a simple graph.  We tracked each game to see which Beyblade one and, at the end, some of us tried doing it on our own!

Sounds of the Week
We worked on the difference between the "oo" in "book" and the "oo" in "too", and we also worked on our "V" sound in words like "vroom!"

Other Things We Did
We turned some of the letters in our message into shapes, changing an H into two squares and a rectangle, an L in to a triangle, and a C into a circle!

We talked more about the Lunar New Year and spent a little time discussing the difference between what we are like, and what we like.  This will be important when we do our Zodiac activity next week!

Week 18: For He Was Working Hard!

Books We Read
The Boy Who Ate The World
What Animals Really Like
The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac

Weekly Centres
Letter Y
One of our two printing letters this week, Y was the first one where we had to start in the top corner but go diagonally.  We had to practice hard to not draw a "V with a tail", but eventually, we got it!

Tissue Paper Pictures
We used squares of tissue paper to create houses, horses, princesses, mermaids, and whatever else we could think of.  We then counted which squares we used the most, and which squares we used the least.

Medical Centre
Our drama centre was set up as a hospital this week, with people coming in with all kinds of "ailments", like flus and broken arms, in order to get fixed up.

Sight Word Magnets
FOR, WAS and HE were our sight words this week.  We lined up our magnets underneath and tried to sound out as many sight words as we could.  Some of us even practiced finding older sight words!

Other Things We Did
We talked some more about most, least and equal, using it to talk about our brand new sight words and many other things in the class.

Letter X was our full-class letter on Monday, and we got a chance to share our printing skills with our Reading Buddies.

We learned that, in China and other parts of the world, people follow a different calendar and celebrate the Lunar New Year.  We also learned about the legend of the Chinese Zodiac, why the cat and rat are still enemies, and we guessed what animals we might be!

Week 17: Welcome Back Kindies!

Books We Read
A is for Musk Ox
I Want My Hat Back
The After Christmas Tree

Song of the Week
Round the Village

Go round and round the village (repeat x3), as we have done before.
Go in and out the window (repeat x3), as we have done before.
Now come and face your partner (repeat x3), as we have done before.
Now follow me to London (repeat x3), as we have done before.
*Ask your child if they remember the dance

Weekly Centres
The Letter X
We started off the year with the letter "X", combining two big lines with one big letter.

Holiday Highlight
Everybody drew a picture of their Holiday Highlight, sharing one important, fun or interesting thing that happened over the holidays.  We heard about birthdays, presents, playing in the park and people without power!

Winter Tree
With a different colour palate, we "repeated" our autumn tree activity, this time making winter trees, looking through our nearby windows to see what differences we could see.

Most, Least & Equal Cubes
Mr. McCullough gave everybody a bag of cubes.  We had to figure out which colour we had the most of, which we had the least of, and which two colours we had equal amounts of.  Then, we coloured some squares that matched the words on a piece of paper so we could show what we know.

Other Things We Did
We had a big talk about all the fun things we did over our break!

We talked about how equal doesn't mean same.  Our daily math question helped with this, as Mr. McCullough would put up groups of shapes, asking us which groups were equal.  We learned that equal refers to the number that are the same, not if something is the same colour, or same shape, or same size... although sometimes it can!

Our Drama Centre has been redone as a Hospital, and we had lots of people acting out slip-and-fall injuries!

January Calendar