Week 13

Housekeeping

Reminders:

• We have had a lot of practice for our Christmas Concert throughout the week but please be sure to practice the songs with your child. Check their book bags for the lyrics for "Frosty the Snowman"(https://youtu.be/u0QqQNIpeiw) and "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" (https://youtu.be/VGLGJV01C0Q)
• Take the weekend to get plenty of rest, we have a busy week coming up! If your child is not feeling well on Monday please keep them at home so they are feeling their best for the Christmas Concert!
• Grade 1/2 Christmas Concert on Wednesday, December 7th at 1:10pm and 6:30pm.
• Last day for Christmas Elves donations is Thursday, December 8th.
• Scholastic December Book Order is due December 9th!

Language Arts

I read the book, Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg to 1C this week. Our phonological awareness activities revolved around the book. Late one Christmas Eve, a boy boards a mysterious train: The Polar Express bound for the North Pole. Once there, Santa offers the boy any gift he desires. The boy asks for one bell from the harness of a reindeer. The bell is lost. On Christmas morning, the boy finds the bell under the tree. The boy's mother admires the bell, but laments that it is broken - for you see, only believers can hear the sound of the bell. 1C created a Story Map for the book, they focused on the title, the author, characters, setting and the problem.
1C is doing quite well identifying the initial, ending and medial sounds during the listening games associated to this book. Their new challenge is Phoneme Addition (i.e. "Lane. Ass /p/ to the beginning of lane. What's the word?"), Phoneme Substitution (i.e. "Rope. Change /r/ to /s/. What's the new word?" and Phoneme Deletion (i.e. "Say trouble. Say trouble without the /t/.") You can try any these activities at home with your child!

Throughout the week, the students explored the -op -ot and -og word families with words like hot, pot, cot, dot, frog, log, dog, mop, top, pop. The class did a guided drawing of a frog! Super cute!
We will be focusing on building stamina Reading to Someone and Listen to Reading this upcoming month.

Math

Throughout the week, 1C were challenged to learn place value to 20 with tens and ones. They had some practice counting with base 10 blocks. The ten block and the one block. The students will continue to work on this skill for the remainder of the unit.

Science 

The class is learning new topics in their Seasonal Changes unit. This week, the students were introduced to thermometers and temperature. They learned about how thermometers work and what they measure. In Canada, temperature is measured in degrees Celsius. It was really fun sharing our temperature recordings from the other night.   Today, we had a class survey about what our favourite season was, summer won (...no surprise there)! Later on, each of the students wrote about their favourite season. 1C created some wonderful sentences.
The students continue to use Explore Tubs when they have completed their work and made sure to do their best work. Each tub focuses on a different topic in our Seasonal Changes unit, for instance, cloud formation, dressing for the weather, extreme weather, and shadows.

Social Studies

The students reviewed the similarities and differences between a globe and map.Also, the students are completed their"Me on a Map" project which will illustrates how they belong to a town, province, country, continent, and planet. The flip books are showcased in the classroom.

Other

We have recently started the study of owls. The students learned that owls live on every continent except Antarctica, there are over 200 different species of owls, owls are oviparous (they hatch from eggs), owls are nocturnal, and that a group of owls is called a parliament. Some of the students thought it was pretty gross that owls swallow their prey whole and then spit out the remains. We will continue to study owls for the next week or so. Stay tuned!

Hoot! Hoot!

Enjoy Your Weekend!