Week 27: Worm Fiction

Books We Read

Worm Gets A Job

Life of an Earthworm
Ned's New House

Song of the Week

Think I'll Go Eat Worms

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
Guess I'll go eat worms,
Long, thin, slimy ones; Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms.
Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.

Weekly Centres
March Portfolio
Now working with a seven colour minimum, we kept adding to our portfolios, writing our words and using our sound out strategies.

Life of a Worm
Our art project for the week was creating "habitats" for worms, using pink pipe cleaners, paper scraps, mini pom-poms and glue.  We had to make sure our worm had a place to crawl through and that it had enough food.

Sight Word Beyblade
We added as, an, are, I and a to our sight word list and "did battle" with them in our Beyblade arena, charting which sight word we read the most.

? + ? = 5 and 5 = ? + ?
5 became the focus of our math this week, as we used rocks, coloured paper clips and bear counters to create math sentences, putting enough items in each circle to make five in total, and practicing using terms like "plus" and "equals".

Other Things We Did
We met our class worms, the red wrigglers!  We'll be keeping these worms in the class for a few weeks, feeding them vegetable scraps, before setting them loose in our garden once the weather improves.

We talked about finding good books to find facts, noting how Worm Gets A Job is a fiction book and probably not good for teaching us about how worms really live, while Life of an Earthworm is non-fiction and uses pictures, realistic drawings and key terms to teach us about worms.  We then decided what was realistic in Ned's New House (birds like to eat worms, worms eat fruit) and what was not realistic (worms having houses with doors, worms baking apple pies, worms getting dressed up like birds)

Math terms like "plus" and "equal" were introduced, as we tried to make 5 in as many different ways as we could.  It was a part of our daily math question and made its way into Mr. McCullough's Message.

"That's Not A Number" became a game we'd play in the class.  Mr. McCullough would write big numbers, letters and symbols on the board and we had to decide what was a number and what wasn't a number.  Then we practiced our number 5 and had a Number 5 Dance Party after!

"OI!"  We learned a new letter-combination sound!!!

For Earth Hour on Friday, we talked about where electricity comes from, why saving it is important, and how it can help the planet.  We then had Earth Hour, doing part of our centres and visiting the library in the dark!!!

Week 26: Spring is Coming

Books We Read
Where the Wild Things Are

Weekly Centres
Letter J
We're almost finished work on our capital letters!  "J" is the second-last letter we will learn!

Flower Blooms
With spring happening a bit later than usual this year, we thought we'd decorate the windowsill with our own spring blooms, made of coloured craft sticks, constuction paper, tissue paper, glue and dot stickers.

Book Club
Everybody in our class can read a little bit by themselves.  Now, we're working on reading together!  Mr. McCullough introduced us to a bunch of short books with easy patterns that help us learn to read.  He also taught us about using pictures and clues, along with the first few letters of a work we can't read, to help us decode new words.

March Break 5
After everybody talked about all the things they did on March Break, we discovered that we all did a lot of the same things, like watching movies, having special dinners, going someplace, playing with friends - so many different things.  So, we each picked five things we did on March Break and drew a small picture of each one.  We then explained our picture to Mr. McCullough

Other Things We Did
We talked about "luck" for St. Patrick's Day and what we should feel lucky for.  We talked about how we should feel lucky that we have nice things, family, friends, food, houses, toys, and all sorts of things that other people might not be lucky enough to have.

We discussed what a "symbol" was when we had to choose between the symbol of St. Patrick's Day and the symbol of Valentine's Day.  We figured out a symbol is a picture that means something without any words, like how a red octagon means "stop" - we didn't even need to see the words stop to know that!

It wasn't too painful when we learned the ou blend from our Jolly Jingles, a blend that let us read words like "out" and "ouch" and "about".

It was a March Break Show & Share week, as everybody brought in something from their March Break to talk about (although some people just brought what they wanted, which was okay, too.)

Week 25: Follow the Drinking Gourd to Break!

Books We Read
Abiyoyo
Aliens Love Underpants

This Week's Activities
The Letter I
We kept working on our top-middle letters, creating the letter "I".  We tried to make the "fancy" I, adding the two lines on the top and the bottom.

Make 5
As a special math challenge, everybody was asked to show us "five" one way or the other.  We had people using fingers, markers, books, colours, the actual number, and even names with five letters in it.

Drinking Gourd Maps
After rereading "Follow the Drinking Gourd" and practicing the song, we used the words and images to create our own maps, drawing pictures of dead trees, safe houses, rivers, hills and quails!

Other Things We Did

As soon as we heard the quail call, 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!  We looked for quilts to lead us to safe places and eventually made our way to the "freedom" of our classroom!  We also learned more about Harriet Tubman and how she helped slaves find their way to Canada!

Week 24: Riding the Underground Railroad

Books We Read
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Unspoken

Weekly Centres
February Portfolio
Mr. McCullough did a big lesson on what trying to spell looks like in kindergarten.  It cn luk lik this if it neds to, bcse it helps us lrn to spel.  Most of us tried to write all the words we could for our February Portfolio and we used our Sight Word Wall to help us!

Patchwork Quilts
After reading Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, we created our own patches for a class quilt, using brown construction paper as a background and different coloured scraps of construction paper to make patterns.  It was the same way Clara made her map quilt, except that she was sewing.

Map Unscramble
We unscrambled a bunch of map pieces, putting them all back together in our group, making four maps of the Underground Railroad.

Building the Railroad
Using some of our action figures and blocks, we created hiding places for slaves looking to escape through the Underground Railroad.  We then role played what an escape might look like!

Other Things We Did
We talked about how Canada is a safe place for people of all colours and types and, how a few hundred years ago, people who were treated badly in America were able to escape to Canada so they could feel safer and have a better life.  Mr. McCullough taught us about the Underground Railroad, talked about how it's not right to own somebody who will do anything you want, and about how it's wrong to think you're better than somebody else because of the way they look.

Letter "A" became our letter of the week, and the first letter that had us starting in the top-middle!

We tried to figure out the story of Unspoken, a story with no words, and how it tied into the Underground Railroad.

Our messages this week had missing words that we had to either find on the Sight Word Board, or work on our sound out strategies.

We looked at our prediction of how many days there were in the school year.  Some people had predicted a million days of school, or a thousand, and we talked about whether we'd even get to 200, and what that might look like?

Week 23: Finding Family

Books We Read
Ribbit
Violet

Weekly Activities
Family Squares
We talked about different "generations" in a family and then drew "portraits" of our family, with one level being saved for the kids, one for the parents and adults their age, and another for grandparents and older adults.  It was fun listening to everybody talk about how their families looked.

Letter S
Our first Jolly Jingle became our printing letter of the week.  It really helped us to think of the S as a snake as we were drawing it.

Sight Word Search
After Mr. McCullough jumbled up our message, it was up to us to find it using Word Search Strategies!  We then used these strategies to help us do a Sight Word Search, where we had to find all 12 of our sight words!  Everybody found some, some people were able to get 9 on the first try, and some tried it on the second day and got all twelve!

Other Things We Did
Ms. Scott, the Pape Librarian, came in to tell us about all the neat things at the Pape library.  She read us a book, told us about library cards and how to take books out, and listened to some of our stories about the library!

The KinderOlympics were set up in the kindergarten playground, with events like curling, alpine skiing, hockey, skeleton and figure skating!

Using "Violet" as a base, we started talking about differences in people and how it's not okay to discriminate based on how people look.  This will be very important next week, as we start talking about Black History Month and the Underground Railroad!

We had to "Hush" to learn this week's Jolly Jingle, where we put the letters s and h together to create the sh sound.

Our Friday Centre Mashup resulted in some neat creations, like marble Beyblades, Plasticine treasure boxes, heart faces, rainbows and road maps!

Week 22: 100s of Valentines!

Books We Read
Chicka Chicka 1-2-3
Penguin in Love

Song of the Week
Valentine's Day
Valentine, Valentine, Valentine's Day.
The day that I'm sending a letter to say
I love you!
Yes, I do!
Hope you will send me a Valentine, too!

Made you a Valentine, made it today
For you are my friend and I wanted to say
I love you!
Yes, I do!
Hope you will send me a Valentine, too!

Here is the postman, a Valentine came,
All tied with a ribbon and signed with your name!
I love you!
Yes, I do!
Hope you will send me a Valentine, too!

Weekly Activities
100s Day Activities
We had two great activities today.  In the first one, Mr. McCullough gave us a sheet that was broken in to ten parts.  It was our job to fill each part with ten dots, circles, stickers, pictures, or anything we wanted, so long as there were ten of them.  After we had ten groups of ten, we were done!

Working with a partner, we filled a 100s chart with Fruit Loops!  Once it was full, we created necklaces or bracelets that we could take home and, if we wanted, eat!

Letter G
Chicka Chicka 1 2 3, this week we worked on the letter G!  Starting in the same spot as our C, O and Q, Mr. McCullough got us to stop when we were almost done, "breaking" the circle with a little line.

Valentine Bags
To get ready for Valentine's Day, we decorated some simple paper bags with stickers, foam hearts, glittery sticker hearts and markers.  These bags were very important for...

Valentine Hearts
Everybody made as many Valentine Hearts as they wanted, using the same materials as mentioned above, plus some shiny jewels.  One side of the card had the decorations, while the other had who the card was to and who is was from.

Other Things We Did
We learned that 10 groups of 10 makes a hundred, got up to 100 on our chart, and learned that, after 100, we start counting by 1s again!

Everybody brought in a bag of a hundred.... something!  We had puzzle pieces, pasta, beans, corn pops, Cheerios and even stickers!

Even though we read Chicka Chicka 1 2 3 earlier in the year, we read it again, because a good book is like a favourite food - you don't have to have it only once in your life!

X (as in x-ray) and CH (as in choo-choo) were added to our phonics list!  We also played a little bit of phonics roulette, randomly recalling phonics we've learned so far.

We talked about Valentine's Day, why love is important and what it actually means.

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!