Making a 'sweet' holiday happen!

Thanks Grade Six buddies!

Our houses were made better because you were there!

Winding our way to Christmas Day....

How can a whole week have passed by without me letting you know what has happened in our classroom?  We have just been so busy, having a wonderful time learning and keeping busy!

A glyph is a type of pictorial representation of information.  Our Grade Six buddies came to our class last week and helped each Grade One student create a gingerbread person that presented their interests and family.  Can you read this gingerbread glyph using the chart above?

Tomorrow, our Grade Six buddies will be joining us again, this time to hep us make our little gingerbread houses.  We love our buddies!

Snowflake has been busy as well.  Here she is last Friday, riding a reindeer...

and on Monday, she brought us a puzzle to put together!

We couldn't find her anywhere in our classroom on Tuesday, but then when we turned on our SMARTBoard, we found a message from her.  We took the hint and visited 'the big guy' who runs our school and sure enough, there was Snowflake and about another half dozen elves.  

They had been very busy!  They wrapped up all the furniture in our principal's office.

Silly elves!

Yesterday, we found Snowflake on top of the speaker above our window

and today she was trying to be in disguise....as a reindeer.

The Student Leadership group brought us a treat today....we think it was for getting all those socks into the bins last week.  Look carefully....what's unusual about our desks?

We all got a cup of hot chocolate!  It was yummy!

We have been exploring colour in our science lessons.

Today, we tried mixing some colour to find out what would happen.

 In this bowl, there are the colours blue and red.

Look what happened!  The bowl has purple in it, now that the blue and red are mixed together!

Here are the colours that we made....

red + yellow = orange

yellow + blue = green

blue + red = purple

THANK YOU to all the parents who brought their children to the best night ever.  I loved our Advent mass on Monday evening.  I teared up every time those darlings sang.  Our music teacher certainly knows how to bring the gift of song to us through our students' voices!

Sock Toss...and a little learning too!

Our Gingerbread story comparison continues with the Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone, which is a classic and a more modern twist (and a twirl) with the Gingerbread Girl.  Did you notice she is standing on the Fox's head?  My kiddos did!

I added these books to our little display.

We again practised writing a sentence about the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.

On Tuesday, it appears that Snowflake wanted to have her name added to our Word Wall,

and on Wednesday, she must have been a bit tired, as we found her snuggled up in bed!

It was our first experience for a sock toss.  Here's the view from the upper level.

The Student Leadership kids were there to assist the kiddos in getting a prize by holding up the containers to aim for!

Being small Grade One kiddos, we needed that advantage!

At the end of the day, there were 10 large plastic bags full of socks to donate.  What a wonderfully to share with others.  The children could relate to the idea that someone might not have enough money for socks and that socks are important.  Thank you all for ensuring that your children are learning very early, that they can make a difference!

Santa's Stuck!

Here's a cute story that led our class created beginning-middle-end writing today.

The students helped to create a problem (the beginning), and the consequence (middle) and finally how the problem was solved (the end).

They also made a little 'creativity' to show what it all looked like!

Most of the students are recognizing what size each of the letters should be and are fairly neat as they print.  It is important because one of the reasons for writing is to share our ideas with others.  If the person can't read your writing, they can't hear your wonderful thoughts!

If your child is still making letters too large or too small or backwards, please correct them.  They are asked to fix their printing here at school because we don't want 'muscle memory' to take over.  That's the memory in our muscles that help us ride a bike even if we haven't been on one for years.  If the muscle memory only knows how to make the letter the incorrect way, it is SOOOOO difficult to break that and create the letter correctly.  I have some students that are not making /a/ and /g/ correctly because they made them incorrectly all last year.  Please correct them each and every time.

Here are some of my proud boys who made bead and pipe cleaner candy canes for their Christmas trees at home,

and our St. Nicholas ornaments also were finished!

Your trees are going to be so lovely!

Operation 'WASH UP'

Snowflake, our classroom elf, sent to us by Santa himself, must have been missing the North Pole because yesterday we found her cuddled up next to our polar bear.

This morning, she and Saint Nicholas, were watching over our little sock Baby Jesus.

It made our heart melt!

Here I am, in my own 'proud mama' moment.

My youngest son, Aran, came to our class to present to the students and explain why it is so important to wash their hands often.  He is in first year Pharmacy at the U of A.

He brought some stuffed 'germs' and the kids were in love!

These germs didn't scare them!  It was quite the opposite!  They all wanted to hold the 'ear ache'

'stomach ache',

'common cold' and

'sore throat' germs....which are about one million times bigger than their real life counterparts.

After discussions, and demonstrations, and explanations, the students lined up and got a tiny bit of the Glo-Germ gel, on their hands. and then followed the six step process of washing their hands.  I am so glad I have a sink in my classroom!

Using a UV flashlight, their hands were checked after the 'wash-up' and they received their

official hand washing certificate.  You might have noticed that there was a letter for you in their Kanga pouches along with a little activity book to keep at home.

I hope that this lesson, will keep those nasty germs away from our classroom, and all of our kiddos healthy!

Sock Baby Jesus

The school I taught in last year had a chaplain.  He shook his head when I told him that my class was making "sock Baby Jesus" (an idea from a dedicated Catholic mom named Lacy Rabideau) but he quickly turned his opinion around when he saw how adorable these little bundles turn out!

Here's Grandma helping a little one stuff the body.

The eyes, nose and mouth are added with a sharpie pen.

A twist and a tie and suddenly that little white sock brings "oohs" and "aaahhhhs" from all the kiddos in the classroom.

All that straw in the manger isn't just cut up strips of brown paper.  Each one is a promise to do a charitable act in the month of December.  The children make the promise as they are crumpling up the paper strips.

My favourite part of this whole activity is 'listening in to the promises' and hearing sweet words such as "I am going to listen to mom and not talk back." and "I won't complain when there are carrots on my plate" and "Thank you for the sunshine today."