Les aventures des jeunes

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 unde...

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 ...

December news Story telling We have begun a story telling unit based on the fairy tale "Hansel & Gretel". We have read several versions of the story.  We have talked about who the characters are, the locations in the story, the main problem and the solution (happy ever after ending).  The children have paper Hansel, Gretel and the witch. This week they retold out the beginning of the story with the characters. At the beginning of next week we will retell out the middle section with the witch and finally the grand finale. I have plans for the children to create a cage that will hold their paper witch as well as an activity where they write up a "For Sale" ad for the witch's candy house. It should be a busy week that will include a lot of hands on activities to help with the pre- Christmas energy! Of course we have our candy house building afternoon as well! Patterns  We have begun a unit on patterns in the class. The children are ...

Squirrels Inquiry Project We have been working on a research project about squirrels. We have a wide variety of books in the class from the library. We have been researching the following details about squirrels: their appearance the size of their families and who cares for the babies the materials used to build the nest the food that squirrels gather We have been enjoying many stories about squirrels, just ask about "Those Darn Squirrels." It was a favourite. Starting tomorrow we will begin to write all the things we have learned to accompany a directed drawing art project that we finished yesterday. As part of our research, we have been talking about how squirrels collect food for the winter. Next week we will begin to look at animals who hibernate and what hibernation is since animals do hibernate differently. Math- number sense For counting collections, most students are counting up to 40 items independently. Some students are experimenting counti...

Halloween This past week we have added halloween stories and activities to our usual routine. In the morning we have started with centres to support reading and writing. We have searched the room for halloween vocabulary, sorted halloween objects by syllable and drawn and labelled halloween objects. We drew a haunted house and wrote about the drawing.  We started a project to build a haunted maze. The first step was to practice making mazes with materials in the class. (pictures on Ed Inform) We then spent some time, individually designing a maze. The maze had to have at least 4 turns, 2 or more dead ends and one goal. The students will meet in teams on Thursday and decided on the maze they were going to make. Before they can build their maze on Friday, they all have to have the same drawing of the maze as a blueprint. Then they can begin to build. Forest Our trip to Goldstream was the beginning of our unit about our relationship with the forest and squirrels. Next ...

Family and Healthy Eating Over the last 2 weeks we have started a unit on family and healthy eating. The Thanksgiving weekend gave us the perfect excuse to talk about the relatives we had visited with and the food we ate. After the weekend I asked the students "What did they think they knew about food?" They had several ideas including that it is healthy for them and it helps them grow. So then I asked "What puzzled them about food?" They came up with 2 main questions that we are now exploring. Where does food come from? We are tackling this question first. Earlier in the fall we went to the forest in search of salal berries as there are many salal plants in our neighbouring forest. On Thursday we returned to the forest to look for mushrooms. We set out to count how many we could find and we found over 270! On Friday we returned to the forest as scientists to observe the mushrooms and record what we saw in drawings. We had a fabulous time.   We re...

About my beliefs about our learning community I hope that you find this post enlightening and that it helps explain the cryptic things that children sometimes say at home.  In our class, I try and foster an environment that helps children develop to be critical and creative thinkers. I try to create a physical environment that gives the students different areas to choose to work either with others or on their own. They are welcome to work anywhere in the class. However, if it is a math block, we all work on math or writing block, we all work on writing for the whole block which is a bit different from a Montessori experience. Deep learning and thinking takes time and trial and error. That being said I pay careful attention to the mood of the class and am very mindful of their stamina as little people. When it is time to stretch or move or play outside, that is also a part of the class culture. We leave our work and take a break together. We use a lot of hands on materials...