'Matthew's Dream' Art Activity

Advent is around the corner....

Sunday, December 3rd to Sunday, December 24th

Our favourite time of year is fast approaching. We are looking forward to preparing for the birth of Jesus by learning about what Advent means, doing Advent and Christmas crafts, and singing Christmas songs of course!!

Here are a couple of reminders from our school:


1) WHITE ELEPHANT SALE is THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7th. This is a very popular day in our school that gives children the chance to buy gently used items for their families.

2) LOOKING FOR: gently used items that can be sold for the White Elephant Sale.

3) WINTER CLOTHING DRIVE:   It's that time of year again...as the cold weather
approaches there are many in our community in need of warm outer clothing. As you organize your winter clothes please feel free to send in any snowsuits, jackets, mitts, hats or boots that you no longer need (for adults and children). Georges Vanier will be collecting these clothing items and then distributing to members within our community and to other schools in need within the greater Ottawa area.

MATH:
We are finishing up our unit on 2D shapes this week and moving on to Data Management: Graphing. We will be tallying results of our Christmas-themed surveys and learning how to graph them like mathematicians. Here are a few snapshots of students making tangram puzzles.

LANGUAGE:
We have just started our Writers' Workshop program. Students brainstormed things they knew a lot about (i.e. Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters, grandparents, pets, toys, sports, activities). They stretched and spelled, and looked up words in picture dictionaries and classroom picture-vocabulary lists. They put their ideas into a HEART MAP which will live in their writing folders. Then they wrote one to several sentences about an item of their choice.

This week we learned a new reading strategy: CHUNKY MONKEY: 
We also learned about the AR sound, otherwise known as "bossy R"!


Here we are reading our postcards from a class in California for our Global Read Aloud:

Doubles Facts Song

Friendly Numbers for 10

We have been doing a lot of single digit addition in math class.  The students have been practicing their addition math facts with sums up to 18 through math games, calendar math activities, number talks, etc.  One of the strategies we have been applying to help us to solve larger multi-step addition questions (e.g. 3+7+1+6) or  addition questions with sums that are over 10 (e.g. 9+6) is to look for the 'Friendly Numbers for 10' in addition questions.  These are the number pairs that add up to 10 (9 & 1, 2 & 8, 3 & 7, 4 & 6, 5 & 5).  Learning to identify 'Friendly Numbers for 10' in math equations can help us to solve larger multi-step addition questions (e.g. 3+7+1+6) or  addition questions with sums that are over 10 (e.g. 9+6).  Each day we do activities that reinforce the 'Friendly Numbers' concept. Here is an example of a question we did together:  3+7+1+6  

There is 1 friendly number set in this equation (3+7) so we rewrote the equation as 10+1+6.  The students were able to tell me that 1+6 is 7 so we rewrote the equation a second time as 10+7 and very quickly they were able to figure out that the sum of that equation is 17.  We invite you to practice this strategy at home with your child! 

   

Special Visitors!

Yesterday we had two special visitors in our grade one class: Mrs. Fields and her baby boy Thomas! 

The students were very respectful, calm and quiet when they came into the class! Mrs. Fields told us all about baby Thomas and how he has grown and changed over the past four months. Through our discussions and questions we learned that babies need three basic things: food, love and care.  These are some of the insightful questions that the students asked during the visit: 

"Can he walk yet?" 

"Does he have any teeth?" 

"What does he eat?"

"What toys does he like to play with?"

"Where does he sleep?"

"Does he listen to music?"

"Can he talk yet?"

Practicing our reading

Here we are practising our reading strategies!

Fields of Poppies

Here is the final product created by our Grade 1 artists:

This Week

DATES TO REMEMBER:

1. Remembrance Day Ceremony 10-11am Friday, November 10th in the Gymnasium. Poppies will be sold, send a donation with your child if you wish.

2. Parent-Teacher interviews next week Thursday, November 16th from 4:00-8:20pm

3. PD Day FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24th

This Week:

We have been reading 'Tough Boris' by Mem Fox this week, and learning about describing words (adjectives). This is part of our GRA 2017 project. We have received postcards from three schools. One was located in Rhode Island right by the ocean. Ask your children about the turtle eggs they saw in the pictures!

We have been talking about 2D shapes this week and discovering how many sides and vertices they have.

We art painting poppies in perspective this week. Yesterday we painted a "moody sky" to classical music. We tucked in our chairs and stood up like real artists. Lots of fun! Today we are painting the poppies and adding green stems with oil pastels.

Here is a snapshot: