January, Winter and Snowmen

Happy New Year! 
We began 2017 by reading Squirrel's New Year's Resolution, the perfect book to read that first week back to school after Christmas break.  It helped us understand what a resolution is and gave us many ideas to create our own. We came up with ways that we could bring kindness to others this year, how we can be helpful and also come up with some ways that we could better ourselves at school and at home.

 

 

Our focus this month was on Winter and Snowmen.  We read many books and wrote a lot about the changes that happen in Winter.  Above are some samples of the Winter Acrostic poems we created.  
Our focus in art was to show Snowmen from different perspectives using a variety of techniques and mediums. 


Side view of a snowman

 

 

Snowmen looking up

 

 

Snowmen from a Bird's Eye View. 

This activity is a great way to introduce mapping in Social Studies. 

 

In math we have been working on numbers to 20 as well as developing an understanding of addition and subtraction.  We play many games and use different manipulativeto help us develop our skills, and have fun at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 



 

December in Review

Well December was certainly a busy month!
We began the month preparing for Christmas.  The grade ones and kindergarten classes were in charge of the Advent Liturgies held at the school.  It was beautiful coming together as a school to mark each week of Advent and light the candles on our wreaths. 


We wrote a promise each week to try to do something that would help others.  We also wrote about who lets our hearts shine and has done something nice for us.


We did a lot of work around the theme of Gingerbread.  We read many different stories, comparing the different characters and endings.

 

 

We even did some gingerbread math, measuring items around the classroom as well as ourselves to see how many "gingerbread people" long things were.

 

After three weeks worth of Gingerbread work, the fun part came:  we decorated our own gingerbread cookie!  Some of our creations included characters like the Gingerbread Man, the Gingerbread Girl and some even decorated the cookie to be a Gingerbread Ninja!

 

Other activities this month included making beautiful winter tree scenes:

 

Making handprint angels:

 

It was a fun filled and busy month.  A wonderful way to end 2016!  See you in the New Year!

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

Owl Visit

We were so lucky to have a visit from our friend Ophelia the owl.  She came to visit with her handler Janis from the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society.  We learned so much about the Rehabilitation Center and the animals that live there, as well as many interesting facts about owls.  Ophelia had such a majestic presence in our classroom, the children were in awe! 

 

 

Some of our journal entries:

 

"What's That Smell?"

Today we explored our sense of smell. We had containers filled with a secret substance and tried to guess what it was by smelling it. There were some smells (like Parmesan Cheese and onions) that made our noses crinkle. Other smells like maple syrup and vanilla made us smile.

Genius Hour

                                                             Our challenges today:

Look at what we built: 

 

 

 

It was a challenge to keep them from falling!  Some of us decided that we would combine our towers to make them even taller.  A great lesson on working together and sharing our materials!