Bitter, Sweet, Salty, Sour Week!

This week was such a fun Science week as we tied up Smell and started up Taste!
To finish up smell we talked about how when we smell something we are smelling all the particles in the air. I cut an orange at the front of the room and we waited to see how long it would take for the smell to travel from the front of the class to the back. This was also demonstrated with our classroom Diffuser! (Thanks Mrs. N!) We put in peppermint oil into our diffuser, and as we worked on our animal senses books the smell wafted from the back to the front of the classroom. It was pretty relaxing!

To kick start taste we did our taste tests! This is such a fun experiment. Before we got started we talked about our 4 different Taste bud zones: Sweet, Salty, Bitter and Sour. Then we tried 4 different snacks to determine which category they would belong in.


 

I don't think they loved the Baker's Chocolate (unsweetened) haha!

And finally, we have had time to finish up our Senses books! I hope you enjoy them over the weekend! Have your child read them to you, they're all becoming such great readers!!

 


In Language arts we are continuing with Daily 5. The Read to Self focus this week was to make sure we are picking Good Fit Books. These are books that will help us grow and become stronger readers and build our stamina! A good fit book is not too easy for you, because that won't help you grow; or too hard, because our brains will get too tired too fast!
We introduced the acronym - IPICK, we will keep reinforcing this over the next week or so.

In Math we are continuing to practice counting and grouping quantities up to 100. This week we worked on one more and one less for numbers to 100. Next week we will start talking about different ways we can show a number up to 100!

Have a wonderful weekend!! 

February just flew by! 

Valentines' was a hit and a blast! Thank you for the parent helpers and all the students for their wonderful valentines!! 

In Daily 5 we are building our reading and writing stamina! The students are elaborately loving Word work and we have added stamps to our word work centers! During word work students practice their weekly spelling words through hands on activities. 

On Thursday, we celebrated our 100th day of school! We dressed up like we were 100 years old! As a class, we brainstormed - what would life be like when we really are 100 years old? Where would we like to live? What would we like to be doing? The students then had the chance to write about where they would be and what they would want when they're 100 years old. I also took some photos of them, ran it through an aging app and the results were absolutely hilarious! 

 

Click here to see the album of our 100 Years old pictures! 

In Math we have been practicing counting all the way to 100! This includes skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. Try practicing at home with your child on their counting! Instead of counting all the way from 1 - 100, you can give them a starting point and have them count by 1's, 2's, 5's or 10s to an end point. 

We started off the week with a treasure hunt! Around the room the numbers 1-100 were hidden. Students had to find a number and then using their super math brains, place the number where is belonged on a hundreds chart! 

Next we did some estimating! We went around to different jars, estimated how many objects they were holding and then grouped &  counted! Some of them were pretty close! 

 

In Science this week we tested out selling! Using covered bottles, students had to use their noses to smell out what was inside (banana extract, coconut extract, vanilla etc.) It was pretty funny to watch them make their guesses! I think my favourite was pickle juice! 

In Social we are starting to discuss how we take part in our community. We talked about about what makes a Super Citizen! Super Citizens show the 3 keys to citizenship - Being responsible. respectful and working together! We brainstormed some ideas of what a super citizen could do and then made keys to good citizenship!

And to finish off our week we had Winter Fun Day! As a school we were in groups from kindergarten to grade 6 played structured games outside all afternoon! It was so much fun!! 

 

Two Short Weeks!

The past two week have been short, but packed full!

In Daily 5 we are really grooving into our rotations! Students have been doing a great job at working the whole time and picking and sticking to one spot in the classroom.
Over the past week we have introduced Word Work into our rotations. Word Work is an opportunity for student to experiment with popcorn and spelling words using hands on manipulatives or activities. The students really took on this new responsibility and worked extremely hard at building their stamina!

Word Work - Rainbow Writing!

As a topic focus for the week we have been talking about Kindness and what it means to us. As a class we are trying to practice being more kind to one another, as well as, how we can help others and be kind in our world. Each student wrote about what in their lives makes their heart feel warm and full.
We read, "How Full is Your Bucket?" which discusses how each person has their own invisible bucket and when we are unkind to others, that dips in their bucket and takes out of ours as well. A full bucket helps us feel happy and we can fill others buckets by acts of kindness. To practice we  drew names and thought of compliments for that person, wrote them down anonymously and I read them aloud to the class.

In Math, we have been counting all the way to 50 and talking about how to group numbers to help us count fast. This, in turn, helps us gain a stronger understanding of skip counting.

Students have been working in pairs and on their own to try different ways of grouping sets to 50. To practice counting by twos we brainstormed things that come in pairs and drew pictures of objects to match a given number.











In Science we have spent some time exploring our sense of sight! We walked around the school using our "binoculars" and each group was assigned to look only at things up high, straight ahead or downwards. Then we discussed what you could see from each view point and where more things were placed to get our attention or for safety reasons (fire alarms up high and visible to everyone in an emergency; signs and posters are at eye level to get out attention). We are also currently working on our very own google slides presentation about eye safety!!!

As a class we brainstormed what tools we use to enhance our eyesight, like binoculars, glasses and magnifying glasses. Afterwards, we used tools to enhance our eyesight to find our popcorn words in pictures! 

Over the past two weeks we have had Mission Impossible in the gym! This is an obstacle course set up for the kids all week and they loved it! It was pretty funny to watch them all concentrate so hard!