Ms McClellan

Well that was a short week! It was so lovely to see the children’s smiling faces all through school as they returned from their holiday.

As part of our Healthy Habits unit, our homework this week is to check and feel your heart beating through different exercises. If you don’t want to do the ones suggested in the homework pack, it’s OK! You can choose some of your own exercises.

Speaking of feeling our hearts beat, that’s what we studied in IEYC the last couple of days. We did exercises and felt our hearts. We tried to take our pulse on our necks with limited success. We used a toilet paper tube as a stethoscope and listened to each others’ hearts when they were beating heavily and we played the drums like a heart beat. This morning before the rain started we were able to get out to the water table with some red food colouring in water and use a pipette to understand how the heart pumps blood all through our bodies!

On Monday we have a special guest coming to talk to us about our teeth! How exciting!

In Literacy we’re still all about that Gingerbread Man. We made life-size gingerbread models and decorated them. The weather didn’t cooperate today for some outdoor roleplay but things are looking better for Monday!

In Maths we continued to study capacity in a much dryer context than last week. We used unfix cubes in measuring cups and tried to see which would hold the most or if two containers that Ms. M knew were of equal capacity but were different shapes could hold the same amount. That proved surprising for some of the students.

In Phonics we looked at the letter “o”. We’re trying our best to work on blending words orally. So if Ms. M says the sounds of “h-o-t” we’ve got to try to figure out that she’s sounding out the word “hot”. That’s going to take a little bit of practice. Our friend Fred Frog is an expert at this so he’ll help us!

Mrs. Sim, our phonics guru, has made a document explaining how we teach phonics. I will email it directly to you all. We are currently working on Set 1 Speed Sounds and the information on “Fred Talk” will also be helpful. I hope you take the time to read the document and use it to ask any questions you may have about how to help your child with learning phonics.

That’s it for this week! Short and Sweet! Stay dry this weekend and if you haven’t emailed me pictures of your Chuseok holiday, please do so!

We had such a fun week! There was so much active learning going on it’s hard to capture it all in just a few paragraphs and photos.

The students really enjoyed sharing their photos and videos in this week’s Homework Sharing Time and those students who didn’t have homework to share were a little sad. This week we don’t have homework per se for the Chuseok holiday but if you could kindly send a photo or two of what you did during the holiday so the students can share with the class that would be great. If you’re taking the whole week off, just send photos when you return! The students love learning about each other’s lives outside of school.

On Monday we got to see our Happy Boat friends again! We made a wonderful space-themed name craft and played outside on our great playground structure. Next month, we’ll go to Happy Boat and visit them on their turf.

In Maths we’ve started measurement and pattern. We measured different pieces of ribbon to see which was longer or shorter. We tried to wrap presents to see if we could cut a piece of paper big enough to wrap the item. We began looking at mass by comparing items on a balance scale as well as making playdough balls to compare. We ended the week at the water table beginning to compare the capacity of different containers and generally making a mess.

In Literacy we’re continuing to learn about that gingerbread man. We realized Mr. and Mrs. Baker made the gingerbread man because they were lonely but he ran away. Maybe our gingerbread man is being so naughty because he has no friends and he doesn’t know how to reach out the right way? We decided to make him some friends and a poster to invite him back. Well wouldn’t you know! He wrote us a letter that he’d lost his jolly jelly buttons with letters on them. Those letters just happen to be the letters we’ve learned this far in phonics! We’ll be exploring those more for sure. (We were able to find them after a hunt around the school). We also played pretend that WE were gingerbread men running away. That was great fun.

In IEYC we started our new unit about being healthy. We were surprised when our puppet friend Mr. Mole told us there’d been a terrible accident. Luckily we were just learning about what we would need if we were doctors. We found all our stuffed animal friends laying out in the lobby. They had tried to move their blue box house themselves and gotten in quite the pickle. We used stretchers and ambulances and brought them into the classroom hospital. They’re resting well now.

Then we learned about germs, especially on our hands and why it’s important to wash our hands. We made germy hand puppets. We read a book about a princess who didn’t want to wash her hands but learned how important it was to keep us from getting sick. And we followed Ms. M around the classroom after she sneezed all over her hands and didn’t wash them. We had icky yucky germ stickers that we stuck on everything she touched. Boy was our classroom germy after that!

What a wonderful week it was and I’m sure everyone is happy for the Chuseok rest. Have a great holiday. Happy Chuseok if you’re celebrating! See you on Thursday!

Wow! We’re really into the swing of things now! A couple reminders before I begin:

Please send a full change of clothes to keep in your child’s locker. There may be a bathroom accident or we may want to play with the water trays or another messy activity. Either way, it’s best if there’s a full change of clothes in their lockers at all times. If an item of clothing comes home, please send its replacement the next day. We will be using the water table in Week 4 so please send clothes ASAP.

Some students are still not comfortable with the room temperature. Please send a cardigan or hoodie. We’re trying to keep the room comfortable for all but everyone likes a different temperature. If your child ends up wearing their extra layer home, please send it back the following day.

Snack should be in a separate container from lunch. This allows your child to unpack their back with increasing independence as we have a box for snacks and a box for lunch. It also ensures their snack isn’t mixed with anyone else’s.

I apologize homework didn’t go home on Friday. We went a little off-script Friday with the assembly taking the form of exit points for our IEYC/IPC/IMYC units and our usual routine was thrown off. Homework is in their backpacks today. It can come back Friday with their library books.

Thanks for helping keep our class run smoothly!

This week, we finished up our IEYC unit “This Is Me!” and we had our celebration of learning with the whole school in assembly. We sang a very fun rendition of “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. The whole school danced along with us.

In Phonics we learned the letters “i” and “n” and began reading some of our first words. It’s pretty tricky for the time being but we’re getting there.

In Literacy we found that that sneaky gingerbread man has been stealing EVERYONE’s tablets! He made videos giggling and running around different areas of the school. We made wanted posters and had our first attempt at labelling (some of us were able to add a letter like “f” to mark the feet, for example).

In Maths we finished up our Match Sort and Compare block, had our assessment, and began our new unit about Pattern and Measure. The students didn’t know sorting out all our toys that had gotten mixed up over the summer was our assessment but it was! We’re always learning in Ms. M’s class no matter what we do! In our new unit we began talking about size by trying to build block houses big enough for some of our small world animals.

And last but certainly not least, let’s not forget to welcome our new friend Maddison who joined us this week!

That’s it for Week 3! Let’s hope Week 4 is just as exciting!