Find Your Popcorn Word Partner

We have been building our Popcorn Word vocabulary, through various activities, such as chanting/acting out the words, playing memory games, etc.

In this game, students were given a card with a popcorn word written on the top, and one of the letters in the word written on the bottom.  They had to walk around the classroom, shouting the name of their word, until they found their partner(s). The students then had to tell the class what their word is and they had to spell it out.

Wii Bowl

Some of our students participated in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Wii Bowl Fundraiser.

Funky Sock Day

We celebrated Funky Sock Day, in honour of  Down Syndrome Awareness Day.

Writing Wizards!

We continue to build upon our writing skills. In this activity, students were asked to complete the sentence "Over school break, I am going to....".  Most Senior Kindergarten students and a few Junior Kindergarten complete the sentence independently, using their knowledge of phonics and their acquired sight word vocabulary.  The remainder of the students are copying the teacher's scribed writing, discussing the letters and sounds that compose each of the words.

This student is looking at the word wall, for assistance in copying the word "play".

Stand Up to Bullying

We are in the process of decorating our door for our school's Pink Day on Friday.  The students came up with a list of things we would say to a "Bully". They each chose a saying, or thought of a different one, and copied it onto a fish template.  We painted the fish, and cut them out.

The students were excited to help decorate our door!

Here is our finished product!

Skip Counting

We have been practicing counting by 10's, 5's, and 2's.  In this activity, students were given a number, they had to arrange themselves in the correct order, and "read" their numbers.

 

February Students of the Month

Congratulations to these students who were awarded "Student of the Month" for February.  All of our students have been so deserving and it's very difficult to choose. Stay tuned to see who receives the awards in March!

Literacy in Action

Many of our students have been interested in writing words from various sources.  These students found a word app on our iPad and enjoyed copying the words.

Zumba

This morning, we had the pleasure of welcoming Mrs. Scott, our grade 5/6 teacher to our classroom. Mrs. Scott runs a Zumba club with the junior and intermediate students during break time. She offered to come to our class and teach us some moves.  We all had a lot of fun and worked up a sweat!

Rocks and Rings

We got to try out curling yesterday.  We met the instructor who explained the rules of curling.  We then got to try sweeping and throwing the rock into the house.  It was fantastic!

Estimation Jar

We have begun to improve our Estimation skills with our Estimation Jar Special Me.  Each day, a student brings in 2 jars.  In the jar labelled "10", they place 10 items.  In the other jar, they place anywhere from 1-20 of the same item.  Students are using the anchor of 10 to estimate how many items are in the Estimation Jar.

First, we put out our number line, placing the numbers in the correct order.

Then, students wrote down their estimates.

 Finally, we checked our good guesses and placed the items on the number line, to make sure we had one-to-one correspondence.

Savvy Scientists

We did a really fun experiment with candy hearts last week.  We made a mixture of vinegar, water, and baking soda and added candy hearts.  We observed how in the beginning the candy hearts went to the bottom.  Then they danced their way up to the top, being carried by the bubbles.  Eventually, the water changed colour as well. We documented our observations as a class.  Some students chose to draw their own observations.

We followed up this experiment with another candy hearts investigation.  This time, we placed a few candy hearts in containers filled with water, air, clear soda, vinegar, and rubbing alcohol.  The students observed how the different liquids had different effects on the candy. Unfortunately, our classroom camera was in MIA from Family Math night, and we couldn't document with photographs. However, students filled in their own observation journal which has been placed into their Science Journal.