June Calendar

Week 36: Flutterby, Butterfly!!!

Weekly Centres

Monthly Portfolio Writing

We added another page to our monthly portfolio.  A lot of us are writing small words and sentences, and we know that we can look at our sight word wall to help us with spelling!

Foam Butterflies

Some easy to use foam butterfly kits from Dollarama have helped us learn more about symmetry, as we have to make sure that one side of our butterfly looks the same as the other side of the butterfly.  It's also helping us with our fine motor skills.

Magnet Math

Using both our bear counters and subtraction circles, we've been representing our math facts using magnets on our new portable magnet board!

Water Lego

We've been using Lego to build things all year.  We've never tried to build with Lego in the water table!!!  We're noticing some of the differences, like the pieces being more slippery, the challenge of trying to find a place to put things as we're building, and how we can make our structures float.

Todd Parr Drawings

We're working on creating faces and drawing of people by using the drawings of Todd Parr as an example.  Every day, we'll be reading one of his books, and then trying to copy the pictures from the book so we can make our own Todd Parr style portraits next week!

Books We Read

It's Okay to be Different

The Grandma Book
The Peace Book
The Earth Book

Song of the Week

Flutterby Butterfly

Why did the butterfly flutterby?
Why did the butterfly flutterby?

Why did the butterfly flutterby?

'Cause he saw the dragonfly
Drink the flagon dry!
Flutterby, butterfly, flutterby!
Flutterby, butterfly, flutterby!
Drink that flagon dry, dragonfly!
Flutterby, butterfly, flutterby!

Other Things We Did

Our butterflies are coming out of their cocoons!  At the start of the class on Monday, we had 4 butterflies.  By the end of the class, we had 8!  By Thursday afternoon, we had over twenty!  On Thursday afternoon, we released the butterflies into nature.  We had a class vote on where we should let them go and we decided the Butterfly Garden was the best since it had lots of shade, flowers for the butterflies to get nectar from, branches for them to hang off of and trees to protect them from predators!

We looked at the drawings of Todd Parr and looked at how to draw people like he does.  We discovered that he doesn't use noses, puts hair in small lines or big shapes, uses black dots for eyes, and uses simple shapes for body parts.  Mr. McCullough also had us look at Todd Parr pictures he drew.  We had to guess who he had drawn and then prove our answer by using different parts of the picture as part of our reason!

Show and Share was back, with one student reading us a Piggy & Gerald book!  We also got to see a manatee, a Transformer jet and an owl backpack with a baby in it!!!

We kept looking at the idea of symmetry and talked about how making something perfectly symmetrical is hard, whether it's folding it over with paint or trying to do it by hand.

Our new books for our Book Club arrived in class!  We've really enjoyed using the words and sounds we know, picture clues and patterns in the words to help us learn how to read!

Week 35: Cocoons are Hanging! REAL ONES!!!

Weekly Centres
Sight Word Writing
With our new sight words on our word wall, we practised writing sight words freehand!

Subtracting from 5

Using math circles with the "5", "-" and "=" already included, we started subtracting numbers from 5 using our bear counters and, for those who were ready, markers to draw pictures or write numbers!

Monarch Butterfly Folds

Using black, orange and white paint, we created half of a butterfly on a blue piece of paper.  We then folded the page to create a symmetrical Monarch butterfly!

Living vs Non-Living Sorting

We set up two hula-hoops on the carpet.  In one hula hoop, we placed things that were alive (small plants) or things that represented things that were alive (like a toy pig or toy person).  In the other hoop, we put things that weren't alive.  Some class debates involved whether cartoon characters like Dopey from Snow White was alive (we decided he wasn't, because he was only a cartoon) or if dinosaurs would go in the alive pile (they could, because they were alive a long time ago).

Books We Read

Baby Bird's First Nest

The Wooden Sword

Pill Bugs

Other Things We Did

Our butterfly house finally came!  All of our butterfly cocoons are hanging comfortably from the roof or from some tree branches, and some are definitely ready to turn into butterflies!  We also talked about things we should and shouldn't include in our butterfly house to make it a good home.

We used a non-fiction book about pill bugs to show that you could make up fiction stories from real pictures using only your imagination!

The idea of subtracting was worked on this week.  We used some hula hoops, a "ghost" five that would disappear when our "counters" (kids) would stand on it and reappear when the kids moved to other circles.  Using this technique and a little bit of singing and chanting, we worked through all the benchmarks for subtracting from 5.

We watched a video about the Monarch migration from Mexico.  It was amazing to see trees that looked like they were completely made from butterflies.

We talked a bit about the idea of symmetry and that it means both sides are exactly the same, only reversed along one line in the middle.

Week 34: How Things Live

Weekly Centres

Sight Word Tornado

We all played our favourite sight word game, as everbody did his or her best to work with our tops to find all the sight words they could.

5 groups of 10?  Or 10 groups of 5?

Using sorting circles and coloured bean, we made 50 by making either 5 groups of 10 or 10 groups of 5!

Painted Flower Pots

Decorating first with water soluable markers, and then with watercolours, we decorated the pots of our bean plants before taking them home!

Monarch Cocoons

Using green, grey, gold, green, black and white paint, we decorated the cocoons we made last week.  It was unbelievable how hard they got!

Rooted Flower Diagrams

We once again worked on drawing flowers, but this time we added a root system by using straws to represent how flowers "drink" water!

Books We Read

Jump, Frog, Jump

The Windy Day

Poem of the Week

Jump, Frog, Jump!

This poem is actually a cumulative poem/book, similar to the Old Lady Who Swallowed The Fly.  Each line starts with This is/these are and builds from there.
This is the basket put over the frog
by the kids who pick up the net
that wrapped around the turtle
that slid into the pond and ate the snake

that dropped from a branch

and swallowed the fish

that swam after the frog

that was under the fly that climbed out of the water.

How did the frog get away?

JUMP, FROG, JUMP!!!

Other Things We Did

Three new sight words this week:  HIS, THEY and WITH.

We talked about how flowers ate and drank, and we discovered that the roots of the flower help it get water and nutrients through the soil!

Mr. McCullough asked us if our class caterpillar would turn into a butterfly before it's string got too heavy.  Trick question, though!  Our class caterpillar will not turn into a butterfly because it's made of paper, doesn't move, can't spin it's own cocoon and, therefore, is not alive.  We then talked about what makes something alive before introducing our REAL class caterpillars, which should be turning into butterflies in a couple of weeks!

We kept working with the idea of "How Many More" by hanging our Monarch Cocoons everyday and asking "How many more are there today?"

We talked about problem solving in class, doing some role play and discussion about how we can solve problems before they start by talking to the other person (instead of just finding the teacher).

Week 33: Canvas and Cops

Weekly Centres
10 Groups of 5
As we keep moving towards the 50th Anniversary of Jackman, we reversed what we knew about the number 50.  This time, instead of making five groups with ten things in each, we made ten groups with five things in each!

Life Cycles
Mr. McCullough gave us words to follow so we could write out the different parts of either the life cycle of a butterfly, the life cycle of a frog, or both!  We then drew the different stages of those life cycles.

50th Anniversary Canvas
We had lots of parent volunteers this week, which helped us a lot when we were painting our 50-themed canvas!

Block & Bucket Centres
To make sure that the canvas wasn't too crowded, we made good use of our block centre and building bucket centres, giving our hands a break from all the painting.

Books We Read
I'm A Caterpillar

Other Things We Did
We couldn't get the feed from the International Space Station to sing with Chris Hadfield on Monday.  So, instead, we met up with our Reading Buddies in the music studio and everybody practiced singing the Jackman school song.

Papier Mache Cocoons
Thursday was a big day in the classroom, with three parents and two Reading Buddy volunteers helping us create our papier mache cocoons!  It was the first time most of us had used papier mache!  They've hardened well and, next week, we'll be painting them and hanging them near our caterpillar!

We went around the classroom and found fifty items to share on five pieces of paper.  Then, we doubled the paper and split the groups (which were even tens) and still have 50 items, even though they were grouped differently.

Officer John came in to talk to us about neighbourhood safety, introducing us to Elmer the Safety elephant.  We learned important things like always wear a bike helmet, don't play in between cars, look both ways before crossing the street and hold and adult's hand while doing it!

We figured out that our sunflower had grown an extra four cubes this week, making it 13 cubes tall in all!  Then we talked about the difference between how tall something is and how much it grew in a period of time.

Some of our parent volunteers led sing-songs in the class, giving us a few different versions of "Never Put a Frog in the Kitchen Sink!"

Week 32: Life Cycles and Moving Towards 50

Weekly Centres

April Portfolio

We're still working away at our portfolio drawing and writing.  Now everybody is writing as much of their words as possible with, when needed, some phonetic clues from Mr. McCullough.

Sunflower Snap Cubes

We measured our sunflower, comparing the height from last week (3 snap cubes) with the height this week (9 snap cubes).  We then had to make a prediction about how tall it would be next week, using snap cubes to represent the new height. 

Making 50

Similar to our "100 Dots" activity from the 100th day of school, we worked with a page that has been split in five section, adding ten items of our choice to each section. 

Spring Word Books

Our Spring Word Books were so big and detailed last week, we couldn't possibly get them all finished at once.  So we're finishing them this week, tracing our words, reading them with our friends, and adding pictures to each page.

Class Caterpillar

Some paint and some toilet paper rolls were used to create a body for our class caterpillar!

Books We Read

Little Red Riding Hood
A Froggy Fable
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
From Egg to Butterfly

Other Things We Did

We worked with the idea of 50, learning that 5 groups of 10 makes 50!  However, we also learned that 10 groups of 5 makes 50!

More "That's Not A Number!", this time with the numbers 6 and 9!

We talked about the life cycle of a butterfly.  We started with the egg, then went to the caterpillar, then proceeded to the cocoon, and ended up at butterfly.  We also played a metamorphosis game that involved switching between the different stages (though not always in order).

We talked about summer and how, even though it's really warm this week, we're not there yet.  We also used our sound-spelling strategies to creatively spell the other seaons.  We were pretty close!

We figured out if we were being good friends to our worms.  We decided we hadn't, since we hadn't fed them in a while.  So we gave them some cucumber and predicted if it would still be there by Monday.

May Calendar

Notes:
May 6th:  We will in the music class to sing with Chris Hadfield in the International Space Station as part of Music Monday!
May 10th: Officer John will be visiting our classroom to talk about neighbourhood safety!

New colour group postings will be out mid-week!