Les aventures des jeunes

December is such a busy month for everyone with so many things to remember. I have put together a calendar with upcoming events as they pertain to the class. I will send home a paper copy in the agendas this week as well. We have several special days planned starting with this coming Friday. In celebration of our story telling unit, the children have an opportunity to dress up as their favourite story character. We will watch Hoodwinked  in the afternoons on both Thursday and Friday. As you will see on the calendar I have set aside a day for the children to where their Santa hats and other special head gear. I try to keep it to one day when we all wear Santa hats to help keep the excitement down in the class. Thanks for your support in this endeavour. December Calendar

Le petit chaperon rouge We have been reading "Little Red Riding Hood" stories in class. It is a familiar story which helps the kids to build their French vocabulary by listening to a familiar story. They link the new words they hear to what they already know in the story which lends itself to greater understanding.  We have read different versions of the story from the library here at school. You may see some of those versions come home tonight in the book bags. Also coming home tonight is a version of the story that most of the children can read. I hope you enjoy listening as your child shares the story.  The story maps The children had a chance to write their own story about the forest or a version of "Little Red Riding Hood" using the vocabulary up in the classroom. We also made story maps of the story and they retold the story to a partner using the maps.  They are experimenting with logic and coding. They are using a board set up as the forest, ...

Math- Patterns Our selection of Loose parts for sorting and patterning Our chart of sorting rules This week we started by practicing sorting assorted objects in the class. We then brainstormed all the ways to sort objects. We discovered that we can sort by colour, length, weight, by shape, by using our 5 senses and by how many. We recorded our ideas on a chart in the class. We will explore these ideas further as we begin to get more creative making patterns.  Our ideas for "What makes a pattern?" The next step was to figure out "What is a pattern?". At first as an answer to this question, the students just listed a lot of different patterns. We wrote them down, talked about them and made corrections to a few. But the patterns that we had up on the chart paper did not answer the question. After lots of partner talking and building on everyone's ideas, we came to the conclusion that all patterns include a core part that repeats. In French we...

Halloween We had a wonderful week together. For our Halloween celebrations we drew a haunted house. We added several Halloween characters as well as fall things that we have been practicing as French vocabulary. The kids then wrote about the picture they drew. On Monday we made trees out of paper bags. The children used what we have been learning about fall to add leaves to the trees. On Tuesday for Halloween, we brainstormed a list of Halloween words. The children used plasticine, felt and pipe cleaners to make their paper tree haunted. They had a lot of fun with this activity.  Tuesday afternoon, we changed into our costumes and the children drew a picture of themselves in their costume. Then we went to the gym for the Halloween parade. It was a fabulous celebration! Fall The class as a whole really enjoys writing stories and has a good stamina for drawing and writing. So in the next week we are going to spend time talking about what makes a good story. We wi...

Fall leaves We have started a new unit about fall and leaves. The goal of this unit is to notice how our environment is changing and to explore how the reason the plants are changing. We started this week by asking questions. The students each had a post-it note on which they drew what they were wondering about fall. Some of the questions were things like "Why do the leaves fall?" "What happens to rabbits during fall?" and "Why do mice and squirrels both gather food in the fall?" To answer the questions about leaves falling, we have read some non-fiction books about the seasons, we have also gone on walks around the school and into the forest to look at the signs of fall. We have also examined leaves to note the change if colour and the absence of the chlorophyll in the leaves.  We have been using our 5 senses to observe leaves and share our descriptions of leaves.  Next week we will write about fall and learn more about the leaves.  Math- Pat...

Social Studies In the last 2 weeks, we have been talking about ourselves, our families and our school community.  Ipad project We have had a very busy 2 weeks. We have been talking about the roles and responsibilities at school. The children brainstormed their roles at school which included being kind, respecting others, listening and following directions. I added that we are also here to "grow our brains". The summary of these ideas is the first picture below.  We then brainstormed what Lisa does at school. These are the ideas from the grade 1 perspective; Lisa works, helps others, and gives people things. The kids also said that she talks to others in the hall a lot.  Susan (the librarian) and I then introduced the iPads and the children were to make a video of Lisa and 1 other staff member. Lisa was to help the other person and the children were to use as much French as possible. The end result was really fun. I will try and put the videos up on Ed Inform fo...

Class Allergies I thought I would send an update about allergies as I now know more about the people in our class.  There is a tree nut allergy in the class. This does not include peanuts so we are a class that welcomes peanuts, and peanut butter. Please no hazelnuts (Nutella), walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pecans etc. While coconut has "nut" in the name, I have recently learned that it is a fruit! School! In class this week we have been sharing fiction and non-fiction books about school to build vocabulary and also to share ideas about different schools. Out of one class discussion about classes we decided to try a new seating arrangement that gives the children more space. This came from the kids themselves and I am happy to work with them to make our space more comfortable.  During the week we read a book called "The Way to School". Each child used objects in the class to make the route they would walk to school if we did not have cars or busses...