February 16th

Having fun outside in the winter! 

We enjoyed our winter walk last week.  The weather was perfect and we noted many signs of winter.  Hot chocolate was the perfect ending to a great day.

We have been reading many books and watching many videos about what animals do in winter to survive.  We discovered that not all animals do the same thing in the winter to meet their needs.  Some animals hibernate. Some animals migrate. Some animals adapt. We made a list of all the animals we could think of and decided what they do in order to meet their needs in winter.

We created a web for each category and the students drew and cut out animals and then placed them in the correct web.

We visited our tree to see how it was doing in winter.  We noticed its branches were bare.  Some students thought the tree was dying so we had a discussion about how many plants go dormant in the winter but they are not dead. We made a journal entry about our class tree. We noticed that there were dried up leaf bunches on the tree as well.

We made these cute senses bears.  They were coloured brightly and had googly eyes to represent sight.  They had a Starburst candy to represent taste.  They had rough sandpaper and a soft cotton ball to represent touch.  They had a cinnamon nose to represent smell.  They had a bell around their neck to represent hearing.

 The students had a neat writing assignment this week.  Their job was to draw a very detailed snowman complete with lots of colour and accessories. Then the students wrote four clear clues about their snowman.  The pictures of the snowmen were posted around the school.  Students worked in partners to find the snowmen by reading sets of clues.  They set off on their search and when they thought they found the snowman that matched the clues, they took a picture of it on their iPad and returned to the classroom to see if they were correct.  They had a blast!

After spending a week on number bonds and learning about how two parts make a whole, we have begun our addition unit in Math. We played our first addition game by rolling a double dice and adding the pips. Each player coloured in the amount they rolled on a 10 frame and whomever filled all their 10 frames first won the game.

We concentrated a lot this week and last on reading our Rainbow Words.  Here is a video of the students playing a super fun game called Rainbow Roll and Spell.  Students had a race to see how many rainbow words they could write in 5 minutes.  Each day the students improved on the amount they wrote.

  

Valentine's Day created an opportunity for some descriptive writing.  We read the cute story about the Love Monster.  As a class, we created a long list of descriptive words for the body parts that a monster may have.  Mrs. Nuttall did a guided writing that the students helped write by giving her ideas.  When the teacher writes in front of the students, they learn important skills that all writers should have.  When the guided writing was complete, students used the sample writing pattern to create a descriptive paragraph of their Love Monster.  They then drew their Love Monster, capturing all the details from their writing in their picture.  

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

CONGRATULATIONS TO BRAYDEN FOR BEING STUDENT OF THE WEEK!