Yesterday we read the story, “Ojiichan’s Gift” by Chieri Uegaki. It is a heartwarming story about the relationship between a girl and her grandfather. In the story they work in a rock garden. We compared our classroom sunflower garden and gardens at home to the one in the story.
Then we continued the learning outside and created our own rock gardens! Wonderful cooperative projects were created!
We are so fortunate to be able to engage in a learning buddies project this year. We have partnered up with the grade 5 class. Once a week we get together to engage in reading, games, and cooperative play. The grade 5’s have the opportunity to build their leadership skills as they tutor the K’s and the K’s benefit from one-on-one learning. The amount of talk and smiles that we have observed tell us that this is a successful project!
Thank-you so much, grade 5’s for going on this learning adventure with us!
After much research, inquiry, building and creating we have engineered a classroom farm!
It all started with the delivery of the eggs. Thank-you to a student’s family for donating the incubator and eggs! We are eagerly awaiting the hatching sometime next week!
Then we talked about things we knew about farms – some students knew a lot as we do have some farming families in our class. Many students had questions, especially when it came to animals. So we moved into some inquiry projects around farm animals. Students broke into small groups, did some research with books and videos, recorded their thinking and learning on a poster, and then presented it all to the class. Reading, writing, oral, and cooperative skills were all at work!
Then the engineers got to work building a barn, a silo, a farmhouse, a pasture, and a pen for the pigs and cows complete with a mud puddle! The students created animals for the farm including chicks, horses, cows, and pigs. They even managed to turn 2 big boxes into tractors!
Now, we’re all having fun playing in our classroom farm! Students are building relationships and social skills as they engage in the dramatic play. What a fun way to celebrate all of the work we engaged in with this farm inquiry!
Lots of exploration and learning is happening in our Literacy Centres this week!
This week we spent a lot of time exploring the concept of diversity and thinking about how we can work and play together to make others feel good. We read the book: The World Made a Rainbow. The students realized that the colours came together to create something that made people smile, even when we couldn’t spend time together.
We then listened to and sang the song, “A Rainbow World” This song was a great way to introduce the idea that we all look different but when we come together we can be something great-just like a rainbow! Here is a video of another group of students performing the song!
Students all made a rainbow to display in our class. They used cutting and gluing skills.
Students used their drawing and writing skills to create a mural about working and playing together.
Then, students explored the concept of diversity further as they played with dolls representing children around the world!
With two more stories we made self-to-text and text-to-text connections, further exploring the idea of celebrating our differences and how we become something amazing when we come together!
It was time to do some writing! Students participated in a sharing circle, “What makes you special?” The students helped me to write some ideas to complete the sentence, “I am special because…” and then they got to work with independent writing.
It all came together with one bulletin board, “Each one of us is UNIQUE, but when we get TOGETHER the picture is COMPLETE!
Here are a few of the literacy-based centres that students are working on!
We have spent some time reading the book, “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”. First we read it several times as students talked about the sequence of events and identified the letters. Many students made some text to self connections as well!
Then, we brought out the shakers and added a beat to the story. You could try it with your child as well. The video below has the story read with a rhythm. Try tapping, clapping, or shaking as you listen. You can even make your own shakers with empty kinder eggs filled with rice.
A visual arts provocation was set out for students to design their own coconut tree!
Each morning students come into the room and choose a literacy centre to engage in. There are a large variety of centres for students to choose from that tap into a variety of learning styles. Students move around centres at their own pace and according to their own preferences/interests. Most activities are open-ended so that all students may access the learning activity as well as feel some challenge.
Here is a sampling of today’s activities. Activities change often!
We are midway through our nursery rhyme unit. We are having a lot of fun as students learn about the rhythm of language, listen for rhyming words, develop new vocabulary, sequence events and begin to attach oral language to written text. Here are rhymes we have learned so far.
Parents: Ask your child to recite the rhymes with you. Have fun saying them in different voices. Draw a picture to go with the rhyme. Say the rhyming words and think of some more. These can be real words or nonsense words. The goal is to make a rhyme!
If you would like to read more about the benefits of Nursery Rhymes try reading this article.
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This week we have been reading the story, “One Big Pair of Underwear” written by Laura Gehl and Tom Lichtenheld.
The students enjoyed the humorous pictures and language as they listened to it the first time. The next time we read it they thought about the message in the story. Many students expressed empathy as they realized that some of the characters were being left out and didn’t feel happy. Students made connections to the Zones of Regulation that we talk about everyday in our classroom and decided that some of the characters were in the Blue Zone. Many students felt as Matthew did, “I feel bad about that!”
Students then had the opportunity to be word detectives. They grabbed a clipboard and pencil and hunted around the room for words and pictures from the book and recorded what they found. This provided students with practise writing words and letters and also helped them to retell the story.
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