Les aventures des jeunes

Oral language and story telling We are beginning to talk about the elements of a story. Recently we learned that the beginning of the story introduces the characters (les personnages) and the setting (le lieu). We are learning that the characters can be people, animals or even things. The middle of a story usually has a problem that is solved by the end of the story. When reading stories at home, I invite you to talk about these story elements with your child.  We have been reading many versions of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears (Boucle D'or et les 3 ours). The children have story props that they have coloured and cut out. They are practicing retelling the story to build their vocabulary. We are focusing on speaking as much French as possible and including adjectives such as big, medium, small, hard and soft. When everyone has had a chance to tell me the story as well as several friends, they will use the story props to create a new story.  Retelling Goldilocks. Number

Spider studies, healthy eating and Halloween. We have been learning about spiders throughout the month as you saw in the project that came home. We have also started discussing the various food groups and which foods in our lunches come from each food group.  For the next week or so we will be building our halloween vocabulary. We will draw a haunted house and write about it. We will also create a monster and talk about them with our classmates.  In the next several weeks we will be learning about the forest as well as the beginning, middle and end of stories. Math- How numbers relate This is a game we have been playing to reinforce the relationship of numbers. In this version of the game, the students are practicing how number relate to 5. For example 8 is 3 more than 5 and 4 is 1 less than 5. This concept is important for easy adding and subtracting, as it supports us to do mental math. If I know that 8 is 3 more than 5 and I am trying to add 37 + 8. I can divide up th

Colours  We have just finished a unit on colour. You may have seen the booklet that came home with colour names in French and Hul'q'umi'num'. The goal of this unit was to reinforce French colour vocabulary and to help the students access speaking French in an easy way. We started by reading  "Pat le chat- J'adore mes souliers blancs" followed by "Rebellion chez les crayons".  After we read the book about the crayons rebelling, we did a vertical drawing activity. In the hallway, I had taped up coloured construction paper. The students got a chance to go to each paper and draw something that is the same colour as the paper. After they finished drawing, we took the papers back into class and the students practiced speaking French by saying either "Je vois..." (I see...) or "J'ai dessiné..." (I drew...)  We explored primary and secondary colours using play dough. I made play dough in blue, red and yello

Friendship and Community Building The class and I have been busy getting to know each other and learning the routines in class. As I meet the students at the door, I ask them how they are feeling today with the aid of a poster on the door. They are pointing to the poster and also repeating the French vocabulary. Some are even using full sentences.  We are also building French vocabulary for body parts as we sing the song "Un petit pouce qui marche".  In gym this week, we were playing games that involved colours and following directions that include a colour word and playing a tag based colour game.   We have been enjoying many read aloud books about school and friendship. On Friday we read the story Stick and Stone. This is a wonderful book that shares the story of an unlikely friendship between a stick and a stone. After we read the story the students were asked to work in groups to create an area where a stick and a stone could play together. Working together, sh

The last few weeks I have had a wonderful year with this class of very special people. I will treasure this year for a long time to come.  Dinosaurs In these last few weeks of June we have been exploring ideas about dinosaurs. We have learned how to identify carnivores and herbivores as well as how to tell them apart. We have talked about some theories as to why the dinosaurs became extinct. This led to a conversation about palaeontologists and what they do. After watching a short video about palaeontologists, the students were able to hone their own scientific skills. The students had a chance to delicately remove chocolate chips from cookies, to mimic how palaeontologists extricate bones from the ground. They really enjoyed this activity and there were many requests to try with different kinds of cookies. As we are so very short on time, perhaps it is something to do on a quiet day this summer. 😀 Dinosaurs and measurement We have been using dinosaurs to facilitat

Field trips and special events Dinter's- We had a wonderful trip to Dinter's this week. We toured the greenhouses and the tropical area of the store. We learned what the plants need to grow. We also learned about ponds and the predators that eat Koi in the ponds. We also released ladybugs to help keep the plants healthy by eating the aphid. Of course we also transplanted tomatoes to a bigger pot. I hope that you were able to find a good home for the plants at your home. The plants will grow an Italian type tomato. Museum trip- We will be heading to the museum and Beacon Hill park on Tuesday. As we will be walking and eating outside, please pack layers as well as a hat for your child so that we are prepared regardless of the weather. At the time of writing the temperatures are supposed to be cool, like they were at the beginning of this week.  At the museum, we will be focusing on the second floor, the Natural gallery as it matches well with the science curriculum

Subtraction We started subtraction this week. We describe subtraction as one big group separating into two other groups. Like our definition of addition, this definition usually stays true even when applied to negative numbers. The goal is to lay the math foundation in grade 1 and 2 that does not have to be relearned as the children deal with negative numbers, absolute values and the imaginary number set (if and when they do calculus!) We spent a few days playing with toys as is shown in the pictures to help solidify this concept. This is something you can definitely do at home! We are now working with cuisinaire rods to demonstrate that subtraction is the difference between 2 numbers. We are beginning to write math equations for subtraction from 10. We will expand to equations from 15 and then 20 over the next week or so.  Story writing We spent this week talking about a time when we were hurt. You may have heard about how I hit my chin on the side of my cous

Dandelions and the Garden We have been learning about dandelions this week. Have you noticed how dandelions close at night and reopen in the morning? We voted first thing this morning on whether or not the dandelions were open or closed. Then we went outside today to look at the dandelions first thing this morning and then again mid-afternoon. Ask your student what we noticed at the different times of the day! Yesterday we went on a scavenger hunt to find dandelions in all 4 phases of growth; bud, open flower, closed flower and in seed. We also looked for insects that act as pollinators such as bees, ladybugs and butterflies. Today we returned outside and drew the 4 phases of the dandelion. It was a beautiful day to be outside! We have started to clear out our class garden to plant flowers. We are still working on that project. I am looking for volunteers to come in after 1:30 any day next week to help the children finish weeding and begin to plant our seeds. If you are inter

Castles As we move towards the March Break we have worked hard to finish our research project on castles. The students have been using library books and we have been watching videos about the life in castles. In their research reports (which came home March 8th), the students wrote about who lived in the castles, what they ate and the role of knights.  They enjoyed making catapults and several groups created successful catapults. In order to have a successful catapult, they had to create a structure to support the spoon. The catapults were to be able to launch pompoms. They also made a shield to represent themselves as knight carried shields that represented their families and rulers. The shields include their favorite natural object(s), favorite activity, favorite shape and favorite animal. The background was to be their favorite colours. 100th day of school The 100th day of school (more or less) :)  The Friday before the break, we celebrated 100 days at school. We

Home Reading The snow definitely slowed down the momentum over the past week. Thanks to everyone who read the home reading books and returned the bags so that your children could bring home new books to share with you. Our exchange day is Wednesday, but if your child has read the books several times they can exchange any day at reading time.  We talked at school about always keeping the books in the cloth bag and keeping them in the same place so they can be easily located and brought back to school. The backpack is not the best storage location as sometimes water bottles spill etc. The books can only be ordered as a set and the sets are very pricey (in the hundreds of dollars) so I thank you for helping me to preserve the books for as long as possible.  If home reading is not something that fits with your busy schedule and you prefer not to have extra books at home to keep track of, please just let me know. At this point I would rather your child enjoy school and have the books

Home Reading The children chose 2 books from their reading basket to bring home to read. The books are due back every Wednesday so that they can be sure that they are reading a variety of books. To help keep our books in good condition, please keep the books in their book bag in a safe place at home.  If your child is ready to change the books more often, just send the books back and they can switch the books during the reading block.  Storytelling and Fairy Tales We are continuing to work on telling stories with character, place, problem and solution. We are beginning to talk about fairy tales and what they have in common. Fairy tales usually have a mean/ wicked character, magic/ talking animals and they have a moral to the story. Next week we will read a version of Beauty and the Beast.   Math We have been working with 2D shapes. The students are really capable of describing shapes to each other. We played a game where on partner picked a shape from a bag a

Report Cards Report cards are coming home today, January, 24. These reports are a summary of information on Ed Inform up until mid- January. The more recent entries on Ed Inform are not included in this report. The language has changed for the report card. We now use the descriptors emerging, developing, proficient and extending. The description for these terms is on the back of the report card cover. As always if you have any questions or concerns, please contact me and we can chat about your concerns and questions.  Please return the envelope and report card cover to the school. The report card is yours to keep.  Ed Inform I am adding new examples of learning activities to Ed Inform. The learning activities show what activities  your child is doing in class to meet the expectations for this topic/ unit. On Ed inform this week I am including learning activities under the following learning samples: New reading videos under « reading » New activities under « geometry a

Force and Motion We are studying force and movement as part of our science curriculum. We have explored "push" and "pull" outside on the playground and the swings. We have briefly talked about friction and gravity as well. We will be doing experiments in class to further explore gravity and friction. We will be trying to see if we can change the amount of friction on an object by using different materials. Thank you for the caps that we will use in these experiments. 2D Shapes We have started a unit on shapes. We are beginning to explore the properties of shapes. This is mainly to build the French vocabulary. The children are also building the shapes which reinforces the attributes of the shapes e.g. a triangle has 3 sides and 3 corners. We will move on to finding the shapes in our environment here at school. The main goal for the students is to be able to sort shapes according to their attributes. They can sort by size, colour, shape or thickness. We will