Bringing the Snow indoors!

We've been busy learning all about snow in our classroom this past week. We read a non-fiction book about snow where we learned a lot of cool facts! Did you know every snowflake has 6 points? Snow falls from clouds and when it is really cold it turns into powdery snow and when it is warm it turns into wet snow. We also learned when snow melts it turns into water and runs into sewers, the ground and even lakes and rivers! After we learned all about snow we painted pictures of snow, cut out snowflakes and even made snowmen out of shaving cream and glue. We brought snow into our classroom and predicted what would happen to it in our class. We took out our magnifying glasses and got a closer look to see if we could see the 6 points of the snow flakes. Our classroom and bulletin board are snow-fabulous! 

Taking a closer look at our snow!

Budding scientist Siobhan looks closer at the snow to see if she can see the 6 points on the snow flakes.

We also experimented with some new materials and toys in our classroom. We played with pattern blocks and made a variety of different shapes and animals. This was great for identifying shapes and colours. Check out this birthday cake!

Jadah patiently places her pattern blocks to make a perfect cake!

We brough in some new play dough and got our hands dirty making super heroes, shapes and snowmen! We had a lot of fun and developed our fine motor skills in the process.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle made by Marissa  and Enzo.

The happy artists!

Working together to cut and mould the play dough. 

Clothes Pins, Buttons and Rocks Oh My!

First off, we wanted to say thank you to everyone who has visited our blog. We hope this blog is just as useful for you as it is for us in our classroom.

We had a great week in our class and did lots of learning through playing. We had a second set of Popcorn words that we looked for in our class and daily lives: he, and, in, said and me. We really enjoyed making sentences with our new words and circling them in the sentences that we wrote. One of our favourite things to use are smelly markers - if you ever come across a pack of Mr. Sketch Markers they are a wonderful tool to use! The students love smelling them and then printing with them. 

Besides our Popcorn words we worked on our fine motor development, reading skills and counting! A video will be coming next week for how to read with your child but in the mean time if you have signed up for the Book in a Bag program keep an eye out on Monday as we will be sending everything home for the week. Please note: this is a short week, please return the books and work on Thursday.

Fine Motor skills are a very important development area for our classroom as these tiny muscles help our students write, draw and colour. Keeping these muscles working and developing in interesting fun ways is always a goal of ours. A new addition to our classroom has been the clothing line! We set up a line in our drama centre and the children use clothes pins to pin socks and mittens to the line. Opening the pin works the fine motor muscles in the our fingers and we can count and pattern with the socks and mittens! Below is an example a student engaging and playing with our laundry line: 

Lego is also another fun toy we use in our classroom. Squeezing the small pieces together and taking them apart is lots of hard work for our fine motor muscles! It is also a great tool for our imagination, below we are building buildings for a city using Lego.

Ms.Katsuras brought in a lot of new counting manipulatives for the classroom and the students have really enjoyed playing and working with them. We now have buttons and rocks for counting, patterning and sorting! Some days they even find their way into the Drama Centre and become cereal or soup (imaginary of course). Below are two examples of how we have used the buttons and rocks. We patterned and counted the buttons in our first picture and in the second picture we ordered the rocks numerically and then practiced our printing by copying the numerals from the rocks onto sheets of paper. 

Making a big, small pattern using our buttons!

Ordering our rocks, counting them and copying the numbers from the rocks onto our paper. This was a very busy activity!

Next week will be a short week with a PA Day Friday but we will be having just as much fun and will be just as busy! Keep an eye out for the Book in a Bag program that is being sent home Monday and please note that any Scholastic orders are due on Monday (the 20th). 

Getting Back into the Groove...

Our first week back has been a busy one! We started this week off settling into our routines and quickly picked up where we left off. This week we began looking at Popcorn words. Popcorn words are the words that 'pop' up everywhere and everyday. This week we looked at I, see, is, my and a. We had a blast coming up with sentences and reading them everyday. Below a couple of students used the popcorn word examples to copy using magnets and whiteboard markers. This is great reading, printing and letter recognition activity.

We also read the Jan Brett book "The Mitten". We sang a poem about a lost mitten, we retold the story using animal pictures and we also decorated and cut out our very own mitten. The art activity was great for our fine motor development - colouring inside the lines and cutting out our mitten. Next week we will start to look at why the animals liked the mitten and what do they do during the winter (hibernate? migrate?). We will also compare the Jan Brett book to another mitten book - how are they different? How are they the same?

Dumaka and his completed mitten! 

That's all for now - we hope you have enjoyed our blog so far :) Keep an eye out on Monday for a note that is going home about Book Bags! Have a safe and restful weekend!