Can Drive

Families, we are collecting cans and dried goods for our school wide can drive beginning Monday. There is a competition to see which class can collect the most! We are also hoping to use the cans for some counting and math work each day. Anything you can donate would be most appreciated! Many thanks!

Race to 100

We continued with our fun math games today in an effort to help children subitize and calculate simple addition by using dice. We placed a hundreds chart, a basket of dice, and some game pieces on a table for the children to use.

 

Each child got a game piece. Everyone started at the number 1 and took turns rolling dice in order to move their player forward. The children were challenged based on how many dice they used; it was easier to roll 1 dice as you only needed to recognize the dots representing the numbers 1 - 6. To make the game more challenging we used more dice for some children - as many as 5 - and the children had to calculate how many spaces to move by adding the dice together or counting all the dots.

 

 

This simple game had children identifying the numbers from 1 to 100, adding more than two digits together, identifying the faces of a die, recognizing patterns in the hundreds chart, and thinking about probability terms (e.g., "If I roll more than 1 die I have a greater chance of getting to 100 faster than you"). We are always amazed by the abilities and enthusiasm of our children!

Gentle Reminders

Happy Friday! A few gentle reminders for our families:

-Please send your child to school with outdoor winter clothing as we are spending our normal time outside each day. It would be appreciated if all items could be labeled with the child's name as we have many children in our room.

-Due to a few requests we will be accepting Scholastic book orders on Monday. Please let us know if you require us to keep the books secret.

-We do not have supervision available in our classroom until the morning bell rings at 7:50 a.m. Children should not be arriving before this time. Thanks for your understanding with this.

Three more weeks until the winter holidays!

Swirl Painting

The children had the opportunity to paint with swirly brushes today. We offered the primary colours of paint so the children could experiment with colour mixing. 

The results were stunning!

Hand washing Lesson

We had some special visitors to help us learn about hand washing today!  We used a special light to help us see the germs on our hands before and after washing our hands. 

We learned you should sing the ABC song when washing your hands to make sure you are scrubbing long enough. 

New Garage

The children worked cooperatively to build a garage for some new vehicles. 

Books!

Snuggling up to read on our new chair at the reading nook. 

Please Help!

Families, we are hoping to set up a 'run' centre and are in need of all kinds of pipes and tubes - paper, plastic, or metal. If you have any scraps around your house that you would be willing to donate to our program it would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks!

Invisible Writing

Our spy center has been a big hit! To celebrate and also to encourage some authentic writing, we placed 'invisible writing' tools at our writing center today.

 

The children were encouraged to write a secret message to a friend using a white crayon on white paper...

 

...and then to decode the message the children had to paint over the writing using watercolours!

 

It was a bit hit with the children and so much fun!

Teach Your Monster to Read

A new website was shared with me that looks promising for helping children learn their letters and sounds and then translate these skills into emergent reading. "Teach Your Monster to Read' can be found at http://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/ If you use this website, please let me know what you and your child think!

Spy Center

Could you hear the buzz of excitement coming from our room? The children have decided to turn our drama center into a spy headquarters! They came up with a plan for how to set the center up. 

This center will open next week. If you have any 'spy gear' we can have it would be most appreciated (e.g., old phones, cameras, sunglasses, notepads).

GAK!

Who doesn't love Gak? The squishy material acts as a solid and liquid and is so much fun to manipulate!

We made three different colours - blue, yellow, and white. 

It was interesting to see the colours mix into different shades of green!

Gak is an alternative to Playdough and is great for strengthening fine motor skills. Gak is so easy to make. Here is the recipe we followed. http://www.pbs.org/parents/crafts-for-kids/gak-attack/