October 27th

The tie dyed shirts turned out GREAT!!

Starting off our week with a little Read to Self.  

It is SO wonderful to see them share their books.  

They read the pictures AND the words together

and they are excited to do it!

Joy!

We have done a lot with the story Big Pumpkin, 

including learning all about the parts of a story:

Setting

Character

Problem

Solution

Beginning, Middle, End

This week we finished off our book study by performing a reader's theatre about the story. Each student had a chance to play a part and, boy, did they have fun and laugh!  Great job, students!

Receiving their applause at the end of the play

Working together to pull the big pumpkin off the vine

Their thinking poses

The students created their own reading ropes, which they can use all year while they are reading to help them comprehend what the story is about. Such a great visual tool for them.

We moved onto writing this week and the kids blew me away 

with what they produced.  

First, the students drew a pumpkin.  

We talked about adding as much detail as possible and 

the only rule was that the pumpkin had to be orange.

Second, we came up with a sentence starter together:

My pumpkin is .............

or

My pumpkin has ...............

Third, the students completed the sentences with their own ideas and spellings.  

Some children wrote one sentence and some wrote many - it was whatever they were able to do for their level of learning.

And last, the students got to share in the Author's Chair!

They were so proud and so was I.

In Social Studies, we created a class flag.  We exercised our right to vote and our decision making skills to decide on a class name, animal, and flag colours.  We are the 1D PUPPIES!

 Our week was also full of crafty, witchy, wormy fun! 

To finish off our patterning unit in Math, we made some super cute 

patterned worms and patterned witch legs.

CONGRATULATIONS TO CODY FOR BEING STUDENT OF THE WEEK!

October 20th

We kicked off our exploration of colours in Science this week with lots of fun activities.  We started by discussing what we already know about colours and found out that we know A LOT! We read a cute story called "The Crayon Box That Talked" and then we created a colourful giant crayon box that showed how we are all unique but fit together as a group in 1D.  We sorted our crayon caddies into colours as a group and started to learn to read colour words.  Our Colour Science Day was so much fun!  We tie dyed t-shirts and watched the colours spread and mix right before our eyes.  We painted with dye extracted from food.  We made tints and shades on our very own paint chip.  We examined opaque / transparent liquids.

We celebrated the 30th day of school with Zero the Hero by sorting, counting and patterning with Fruit Loops and making a 30th Day Pumpkin!

We created, labeled and extended many different kinds of patterns this week in Math.

We are getting the swing of Word Work.  Our activities this week included Rainbow Writing and playing Rainbow Writing Roll and Spell.  Their printing is getting to be so neat!

The next segment of the Daily 5 that we have learned is called 

Read to Someone.

During this time, students read with a partner following the EEKK rule below.

We practiced this skill by reading our Big Pumpkin mini books to each other.

We continued our focus story - Big Pumpkin - this week.  We focused on the setting, characters, beginning, middle and end parts of the Reading Rope.  Students had to show the beginning, middle and end by drawing about it in their writing notebooks.  

We made our own big pumpkin patch! All the pumpkins are unique, just like us!