April 30, 2012

Today, we welcomed back an old student.  Hailey moved back from Manitoba and rejoined our class.  The kids and I were happy to see her again.

In science today we learned about how our eyes play tricks on us.  Check out the following website that has a bunch of cool optical illusions.  The kids really enjoyed it!

In Math today we practiced using number lines.  You may remember that we did this before and made a little video.  I have attached it again below:

April 25, 2012

Today our school celebrated the Christ Rising by having a school wide liturgy.  Below, I have attached the music video New Again, by Braid Paisley and Sara Evans.  It was shared with us at the Liturgy and it is a very nice representation of Jesus' death and rise.

In Math today we continued to add facts to our fact family charts.  We now know all of the addition and the subtraction facts for the numbers 13 - 18.  Check them out below:

April 24, 2012

Today we welcomed a new student, Desiree.  We are really excited that she joined our class.

In LA today we read the story Grandma and the Pirates.  To learn more about the story click on the book below:

In Science we started to learn about the sense of sight.  The students were really curious about how the eye works, so we watched the following video on youtube:

We then explored around the classroom using our sense of sight and some cool magnifying glasses.

Have a great night :)

April 23, 2012

In science today we talked about hot and cold receptors and learned the basics of how senses send messages to brain.  We played the hand squeeze game (Like Telephone).  The students were linked in a chain.  The first child’s hand was squeezed a number of times and then they do it to the child next to them and so on.  It was fun to see what “message” the child at the end got.

We then then did a fun experiment as a class where each student got a piece of ice.  We touched different parts of our body with the ice for 20 seconds.  We discovered that the ice was the coldest on places like the sole of our foot and our lip, but not so bad on our elbow or fingernail.

In Math we played a game of spill and add.  The dumped red and yellow 2 sided counters on their desk.  They then added the number that landed yellow to the number that landed red.  They discovered the no matter what the sum didn't change.  It was always the total number of chips in their cup.  We then used the info they gathered to create the following fact family charts:

April 20, 2012

In LA today we wrote letters to Mayor Melissa Blake regarding our concerns about the environment in our city.  Here is an example of one student's letter.

In Math, we learned all about doubles facts.  Here is a fun you tube movie that I used to introduce the concept.

We then created our own list of doubles fact and noticed there was a pattern in the answers, it's like counting by 2's.  Check it out:

Have a great weekend!

April 19, 2012

This morning in Religion we read John 20: 1-18.  To read about the Mystery of the Empty Tomb click here.

In Science we talked about the sense of touch.  As a class, we brainstormed a list of things we like to touch:

We then did a fun science experiment where we used only our sense of touch to guess various mystery items hidden inside paper bags.

In LA we continued working on our Earth Day unit.  We decided to write a letter to Mayor Melissa Blake  about things we can do in our community to help our environment.  This is the list we came up with as a class:

In Art we then made our very own Earth's for Earth Day.

April 18, 2012

Thank you to everyone for providing food and drinks and joining us today at our potluck.  We had lots of fun and enjoyed a yummy meal.

In Math today we began our Addition and Subtraction to 20 unit.  The learning goals for this unit are:

1.     Explore addition and subtraction facts.

2.     Use mental math strategies.

3.     Create and solve story problems.

4.     Explore “doubles” up to 9+9.

5.     Solve simple addition and subtraction problems.

Here are some activities you can do at home.

1.  Use a collection of up to 20 objects.  Separate the collection into 2 groups, and ask your child to say the addition sentence, and find how many there are altogether.
2. Make up simple number stories for your child to solve.
3. With your child, pose story problems about things you and your child see or do.
4. The next time you go grocery shopping with your child, ask your child to add the number of items in your grocery cart.
5. Try out the following websites:

-http://www.kidsnumbers.com/add_it_up.php
-http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks1numeracy.html#digitmenu
-http://www.hbschool.com/activity/thats_a_fact/english_K_3.html

-http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/jetski/jetski.html

-http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/island_chase/island_chase.html

-http://www.playkidsgames.com/games/shuttleLaunch/shuttleLaunch.htm

-http://www.hbschool.com/activity/busy_bees/index.html

Today specifically, we talked about how you can tell addition and subtraction stories with detailed pictures.  Check out the ones we did as a class.

Have a great night!

April 17, 2012

First off, just a reminder that tomorrow is our class potluck from 11:15-12:15.  There are still some items to sign up for if you are interested in joining us, just click here.

Today we started talking about Earth Day, which is on Sunday, April 22, 2012.  I thought a fun way to start this mini unit would be to watch the original Lorax movie which I found on the internet.  Check it out below:

In Science, we learned about how animals use different senses more than others, for example a bat uses it's ears for echolocation and a cat uses it's whiskers as part of it's sense of touch.  We also played a fun online game as a class which you can play at home by clicking here.

In Math, we finished up our geometry unit by having a quick quiz.  It is coming home tonight, if you have any questions let me know.

Have a great night!

April 16, 2012

Welcome back.  I hope everyone had a great break, I sure did!

We got right back into the swing of things today.  In Language Arts we learned all about antonyms (opposites).  To learn more about these at home you can play this fun game; Word Frog.

We started a new science unit today, Our Five Senses.  The learning objectives for this unit are:

In Math today we played a fun review game, Shape Jeopardy.  Here is the game board that we used:

Have a great night :)

April 5, 2012

Happy Holy Thursday!

In language arts today we worked on descriptive paragraphs.  We wrote Easter Bunny paragraphs similar to the snowman paragraphs we did in March.  Here are some examples of their hard work.

This afternoon during centres we were really lucky to have some grade 6 students come in to hang out with us.  They have been working on leadership and role modeling skills since September, and wanted to put these skills to use. Therefore, we invited them in to have the 1E students read to them.  It was great!  Check them out hard at work below:

In art today we talked about how Jesus died on the cross and how the cross symbolizes his love for us.  Then using scrap construction paper we made our own version of a stained glass cross. 

Here are some of the finished product:

Have a great Easter Break and if you are going anywhere, have safe travels.

April 4, 2012

In Social Studies today we worked together to create an invite and a signup for our upcoming potluck.  Check it out...

Make a free invitation In Math, we continued working with shapes.  The kids especially love working with the Tangram shapes.  Click on the image below to play a great Tangram game online. Last, but not least, check this out...

April 3, 2012

We continued learning about synonyms in LA today.  We played the game Synonym Sam's Lab online as a class.  Here is the link:  http://pbskids.org/lions/games/synsam.html

In Math, we continued working with tangrams.  We even created our own puzzles.  The students made a shape with 3 of the tangram pieces, traced around the outside and then had a partner figure out which shapes they used.  Here is one to try at home:

In the afternoon, we had a liturgy about the Stations of the Cross.  This was a fantastice liturgy put on by 5C where they represented the 15 stations as a shadow play.  Here is another example of a Stations of the Cross shadow play:

April 2, 2012

Today we began learning about Synonyms.  We played a fun game of synonym hang man as a class.  Watch the video of us playing below:

In Social Studies we continued to learn about Francophone people in early Canada.  We talked about the story Puss in Boots and found out that this story has French origins.  The kids were really excited when they found out that a character that they were familiar with was French.

In Math we tried to put our Tangram pieces back together into a square.  It was really tricky.  You can watch how it's done by watching the following clip:

If you would like to have some tangram fun at home, click on the tangram picture below, print it up and try it out.

Have Fun!!!!