Pumpkin Investigation

You could feel the excitement in the air!

Grade Ones LOVE their Grade Three buddies!

Today the two classes were able to spend time together to  learn 

a little bit more about pumpkins.

Surprise!  Heavy pumpkins float!  Do you know why?

The students learned that there are many ways to measure

a pumpkin.  One of the ways is to find out how heavy the

pumpkin is.  The students used balance scales and little toy bears

to find out if their predictions were correct.

The students learned that it is alright not to be correct when you predict.

The students looked at three ribbons, a short white ribbon, a

medium green ribbon and a longer red ribbon.  They

thought about which ribbon would be the best to choose

to find out how large the pumpkin was around.

Back in our regular classroom we had read some books about the

stages of a pumpkin, known as the life cycle.

The Grade One students had painted a paper plate orange, and

used it to be the backdrop for pasting small flip cards for the

six steps in the pumpkin life cycle.

There was a lot of co-operation needed as the life cycle needed

to be coloured, cut out and pasted in the correct sequence.

Using a finger, the students added pumpkins to a vine, to

create a counting book.

The students were busy, busy, busy!

These moments of watching the older help the littles are magical!

In the Spirit of Reconciliation

You can click on the play button to watch the video that was

shown to our students at our assembly.  It helped all of us

understand the importance of Orange Shirt Day.

This was a WIN-WIN for the students in our Grade One class

and the students who are in one of our Grade Three classes.  The 

two classes will 'buddy' up about once every 4 to 6 weeks,

with the older students helping our littles to learn how to be

great students.

The Grade Three students helped the students in my classroom

write a sentence about why they matter.

It was an opportunity for all the students to recognize that

they have the spirit of Reconciliation within them.

Our school was a sea of orange.  We all look forward our Treaty

Six mural that will be featured prominently near our front school

entrance later this school year.  We KNOW that every child matters!

When the students were in Kindergarten, making letters

of the alphabet was new and many made the letters any way

that they could.

Now that the students are in Grade One, the focus is on

making the letters in a correct efficient manner.

All printed letters, both upper and lower case start at the top 

and go down.

As well letters are not all the same size.  Some are tall and

fill the whole space between the two dark lines.  Some are small

and are only 1/2 line tall, or fill the space from the dotted line

to the dark bottom line.  Some letters fill that same space,

but have a tail that goes below the bottom dark line.

Letters follow a pattern in being made.  The students

are using a variety of materials to assist them understand

how letters are properly made.  One of the tools we are

using is play dough.  They are seeing how making the 

lowercase /c/, is the basis for making the letters /o/,

/a/, /d/, /g/ and /q/.  They all start the same way.

In their printing duo tang, the students start by using a highlighter to trace

over the letter, using the proper motions, and then use a pencil to

make the letter in the spaces in between.

Please, if your child is making the letters starting at the bottom, stop them, and remind them

that though it may be a little difficult, the letters are to be made the 'grade one' way.

This is a BIG deal!  The students have learnt how to

put a sheet of paper into a duo tang!  That means I don't have 

to do it for every child!  Hooray for progress!

In mathematics the students are working on patterns.

I have a set of six Math Centre boxes and the students

work with different manipulative to practise

their new learning.

You can see that they love it!

They are so happy to show what they know!

Some of our visitors

Last Friday, our Grade Six buddies came to our classroom and helped the Grade One students transform a white sock, some elastics and a few other odds and ends, 

along with some rice,

into a handsome little snowman!  Thanks for Reagan Tunstall for the original idea!

Father Raj did not have time to visit us last week but we were pleasantly surprised to welcome Father Jim into our classroom today.  The students asked him a few questions, the best one being "Do we have to get baptized?"  Father handled that very tough question with grace and love.  The students just LOVE when he comes to visit!

Tuesday, Zero the Hero came to visit our class, as he does every ten days.

He arrived to announce that it was the 90th day of school and he left the students a 'craftivity', which they completed today.

Zero the hero wanted to know what the students would look like when they were 90 years old.

The pictures and the writing that the students did eventually will become one of our classroom books.

They were just too cute, so they went up on our wall to enjoy for a while!

Do these two look the same?

Enjoy the following...

love the beard,

and the wrinkles,

and the bald spot!

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!