May 31, 2012

In Science today we started a month long experiment where we find out what plants need to survive.  We planted 5 different plants and then we created the following chart:

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to take care of the plants according to the chart and see how the different plants do.

We continued with the Stuart Little today in LA.  Stuart got himself in a bit of trouble in chapter 9.  Stuart was trying to hide from a dog so he jumped into a garbage can.  The garbage truck came and the can got dumped into the truck.  The garbage truck took the garbage to the river and dumped it on a garbage boat.  The garbage boat headed out to sea to dump the garbage and Stuart.  Oh no!  Luckily Margalo the bird came along and rescued Stuart.

In Health we continued to talk about the 4 food groups.  Today we used food group cards to play a healthy version of Go Fish.  

In Art today we worked on the concept of symmetry.  The students were given a picture of half of a butterfly and their job was to try and create the missing side.  Here is the image they started out with.

 9

Have a great weekend!

May 30, 2012

Today we had a liturgy where we celebrated the Pentecost.  The Pentecost is a feast which commemorates the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ.  Below is the closing song from the Liturgy:

In Math today we began reviewing addition and subtraction.  These are very important concepts that carry forward every year.  One way we reviewed was by playing the game "That's a Fact" online.

During centre time today I began to do reading assessments with the students.  Please continue reading at home and practice all of the skills we have learned this year.

Have a great night!

May 29, 2012

We read the Rpbert Munsch book "Pigs" today.  You can go on tumble books on the city library website to read it at home or you can listen to Robert Munsch read it here.

In Science today we started the unit Plants and Animals.  The learning goals for this unit are:

We then went online and looked at the BBC website "Ourselves".  We learned about the differences between living and non-living things.

Have a great night!

May 28, 2012

Today in Music we pulled out the Rhythm Sticks and practiced repeating various rhythms.  We then took them outside and played a version of Red Light Green Light with the sticks.  The students had to walk/run based on the rhythm they were repeating with the sticks.  It was lots of fun, and great to enjoy the fresh air and the sun.

In LA today, we used our story organizers from last week to create stories about the kids playing basketball.  Here is one of many:

We finished up our Senses Unit in Science today.  We talked about the sense of taste and how our tongue is divided into taste areas.  Check it out:

We also used our sense of hearing and sight to play the game Clifford Hide and Seek online.

May 25, 2012

First off, don't forget, the Family Dance is tonight from 6:30-8:30.  Here is a snapshot of the great book basket we put together for the raffle.  Thank you to all the families who donated money towards it.

Secondly, here is the finished product from our Pointillism Art project we did yesterday. The kids really seemed to enjoy and the finished product looks great!

Today in Language Arts we began getting our thoughts together to write a story about the following picture on Monday:

This time, we are going to include 2 problems and 2 solutions.  The kids came up with some great ideas and I can't wait to see their stories on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

May 24, 2012

The parent council would like to share the following:

We are doing a fundraiser next week for the Centre of Hope in Fort McMurray.  Here at St. Anne, we do fundraisers each year, but we thought it would be impactful to do one that would affect our community directly. The week of May 28th -31st, each classroom will be collecting Noodles and Oatmeal, as these are some of the items the Centre of Hope can truly use to help the community.

Please send in packages of instant oatmeal and/or packages of noodles (like Mr. Noodles) this week to feed some of our neighbors who need some help and support.

Thanks so much for your support.

Sincerely,

St. Anne Parent Council

We are continuing to work on story writing in class.  For tonight's writing homework the students are bringing home a story that they wrote about two dogs in a boat.  I have attached the checklist on the left to your child's story.  It outlines all of the important parts of a beginner story.  Please go through your child's story with him/her and check for all the items on the checklist.








In Science today we talked about the sense of smell.  We made a list of stinky things; socks, hockey equipment, shoes, and of course the washroom.  We also made a list of things that smell good; flowers, shampoo, perfume, our mom, and brownies to name a few.

In Religion we read the scripture Luke 19:1-9.  This is the story of the tax collector Zaccheus who Jesus saved.  I found this cute little clip on youtube that sings about the story:

In Art today we learned about Pointillism. Specifically, we made Pointillism Sailboats.  A picture of their masterpieces will be up tomorrow.

May 23, 2012

This free invitation card made with Smilebox

In Computers today we played on PBS Kids Island.  The kids can play by going to our class website.  The username is my email address and the kids know the password.  

In Math we continued with our investigation: Classroom Plants.  Today the kids were using tangrams to make flowers.  The challenge was to create the following flower with their tangram pieces:

Here they are trying to figure it out!

Here is the answer!

Have a great night!

May 22, 2012

Today we continued to learn about the digraphs ch, sh, wh and th.  Are you wondering what a digraph is?  Well:

Today for our Robert Munsch unit we read the story Angela's Airplane.  The kids then wrote a story using the prompt: If I could fly an airplane.....Here are a couple of examples of what they came up with:

In Math today we started a three day investigation called Classroom Plants.  Using the knowledge we have acquired over the last couple of months we are going to use manipulatives to solve various math problems.  Today we worked with macaroni to count by 2, 5, and 10.  We then compared the different amounts we had with pictures, numbers and words.

Have a great night!

May 17, 2012

In Religion today we read Matthew 28:19 -
               Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of  
               the Father, and of the  Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We then talked about how this called the Holy Trinity and that when we pray we bless ourselves in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit.



In Language Arts we read the Robert Munsch story "Get out of Bed".  The book is based on the following letter Robert Munsch got from a fan:


Dear Mr. Munsch,
I am writing to you with regards to an idea for a future book. I am a mother of two great kids. Our son Michael is 10 and our daughter Amy will be 7 in November. Amy is not an easy kid to get out of bed in the morning. Most mornings I call her several times and a lot of times have to physically pick her up and stand her on her feet. As you can guess, this gets to be time consuming and annoying.
One morning I went in to get her out of bed. She had pulled the covers over her head and told me “I am not getting out of bed and I am too tired to go to school”. I asked her what she should do? Her dad and I had to go to work and Michael had to go to school.
She said that she wanted to go to school but she just didn’t want to get out of bed. Then I told her that maybe we could phone the school and see if we could take her bed into the Grade 2 classroom. That sure got her attention.
Well, the next morning, it was business as usual. Amy and I talked again about the bed going into the classroom. We both had a good laugh imagining the looks on everyone’s face and about how funny it would be if that happened.
What do you think of the idea?

The students loved the book and we created a decision tree as a class about what we would do if we knew Amy and she wouldn't get out of bed.

This afternoon Mrs. Easton was away but the kids did a fun activity where they got to write their name in Braille using barley.  If you have ever wondered what the Braille alphabet looks like here you go:

Have a great long weekend!

May 16, 2012

In music today we did the classic The Ants Go Marching.  Here is the fun video we saw:

In computers we played nutrition games.  Check them out by clicking here.

This afternoon was Jump Rope for Heart.  We did activities like:

1. double dutch skipping
2. jumping jack skipping 
3. helicopter skipping
4. backwards cross skipping
5. And many more...

Here is a picture of some of the kids skipping away:

When we came back from skipping we had a healthy snack of juicy, yummy oranges!

May 15, 2012

Today in music we learned about each syllable of the musical solfege system.  You may recognise them below:

Now you can't teach about the solfege system without bringing up the movie "The Sound of Music".  The students really enjoyed watching Maria teach the Von Trap children all about it:

In LA we continued with our Stuart Little novel study.  The kids were glad to hear that Stuart made it out of the blind he was stuck in with the help of his brother George.  In chapter 6 Stuart made his way to Central Park to watch the model ships sailing at the pond.  After talking with the owner of the sailboat "The Wasp", Stuart was able to get a job captaining the boat in a race...Will have to wait until next week to see if he wins.

In Math we had some fun addition and subtraction centres.  One of the centres was the online game "That's a Fact".  Check it out below:

Tomorrow is the Jump Rope for Heart event.  If you raised money please bring it in tomorrow.  Also, please make sure you are lathered up in sunscreen and bring a hat because we will be outside all afternoon skipping.

Have a great night!

May 14, 2012

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day and I hope you enjoyed the Mother's Day Liturgy we put on today.  If you were unable to attend I emailed home a link to the video we showed and we hope you enjoy it.

This week we our beginning our No Excuse Word review.  We will be reviewing the following words this week:

1. the
2. of
3. an
4. zero
5. red
6. a
7. to
8. in
9. one
10. blue
11. is
12. you
13. that
14. two
15. green

In Language Arts we read the story Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt.  You can watch the story on TumbleBooks by going through the public library's website.  We created a story summary sandwich about the book where we outlined the title, author, setting, problem and the solution.

In Math we continued to work on addition and subtraction fact families.  Today each student was assigned a number and using their circle mats and their unifix cubes they created a list of facts.  Check them out below:

May 10, 2012

Today we continued with our Stuart Little novel study.  We left off chapter 4 with a real cliff hanger.  Stuart was stuck in a rolled up blind and Snowbell the cat had put his cane and hat in front of the mouse hole in the pantry.  Now the Littles think Stuart is lost in the mouse hole and cannot hear Stuarts little screams for help from the blind.  We'll have to wait until next week to see what happens.

In Health today we learned about bicycle safety.  We watched a McGruff the Safety Dog video where we learned the following things:

1. ALWAYS wear a helmet.
2. Look out for cars.
3. Lock your bike up so it doesn't get stolen.
4. Don't do tricks on the road or sidewalk.
5. On school property you HAVE TO walk your bike.

This afternoon we had a visit from one of the district speech therapists and she did a fun lesson with us on the TH sounds.

Hope to see you at our Liturgy on Monday at 9:15 in the gym.

Have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day!!!

May 9, 2012

We continued getting ready for Mother's Day today.  The kids are really excited about the Liturgy and the special surprises that they have made.

In computers we did some shape review.  Check out the websites we visited by clicking here.

In Math, we played an addition and subtraction game with our ten frame mats, a ten sided die and an add/subtract die.  The kids got to do lots of addition and subtraction problems while having fun at the same time.

Have a great night!

May 8, 2012

Today we started our new Robert Munsch Unit.  Robert Munsch is one of favourite authors and I really enjoy reading my favourite Munch books to the class.  Throughout this unit we will be reading various Robert Munsch books and responding to them in different ways.  To learn more about Robert Munsch and to hear Robert Munsch reading all of his great books click on the image below:

Today we read the story "The Paper Bag Princess".  This is one of Munsch's most popular books.  In this story, Elizabeth saves Ronald from the dragon by tiring out the dragon so he falls asleep.  After reading the story we talked about how we would tire out a dragon.  The kids came up with some great ideas:

In science today we learned about our sense of hearing.  We did a fun experiment called "Shake and Tell" where we had to guess the objects inside of container but just shaking it.  Check out the kids shaking away:

In Math we continued to work on addition and subtraction word problems.  We learned that it is very important to pay attention to every detail in the story so that you can figure out if it is an addition problem or if it is a subtraction problem.  Why not try the following at home:

May 7, 2012

This morning we continued to practice our Mother's Day Liturgy.  THe kids are getting really excited and can't wait to share it with you next Monday at 9:15am.

This week is the last week of our regular spelling words.  The words this week are:

1. why
2. how
3. eighteen
4. nineteen
5. twenty

This afternoon we went to Heritage Park.  Check out the pictures below:

May 2, 2012

Today the students are coing home with their own little tree to plant at home.  Every grade one student in Alberta gets one of these trees every year.  I remember planting my own tree in grade one and I can still see it growing in the backyard of my old house. In Math today we talked about related facts.  That is, the related fact of 4+2=6 is 6-2=4.  We worked together to highlight some of the related facts in our fact family posters we made last week.  Check out the 16 family below: We also played a game online as a class to review this concept.  Check it out by clicking here. Have a great night! PS We hope you can make it to our Liturgy (see invite above) because we have been working hard to prepare it :)

May 1, 2012

WOW, May already!  Time sure flies!

In Music we have started singing SPRING song.  Today we sand some fun bumblebee songs; Bringing Home my Baby Bumblebee and Bee Bee Bumblebee.  We also learned about the classic piece by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; The Flight of the Bumblebee.  We watched a video of a woman playing it on the piano and it was great lesson in tempo.

In Language Arts today we finished writing some stories about some kids at the fair.  The kids wrote some great stories, but here is a great example (spelling, punctuation and all) of one of the stories:

The Floting Problem

One day Jason, Kaitlyn and Brinda went to the fair.  When they were there a clown gave the kids balloons.  Kaitlyn got to many balloons and she started to flot away.  Jason and Brind ran so fast to cech Kaitlyn.  Jason jumpep so hi that Jason cot Kaitlyn.  But Kaitlyn lost all her balloons so Jason gave Kaitlyn 1 balloon so the kids went home.  the End

As you can see all of the words are not spelled correctly and there is some punctuation missing but that doesn't mean it's not a great story.  The writer used inventive spelling and homonyms to help with words he did not know.  His story also follows a basic story framework.  That is, it was a title, characters, a setting, a problem, a solution and an ending.   

I love reading student stories as I am sure you do at home.  Keep up the good work 1E!

Have a great night!