Happy Friday! Monday is Library Day!

Thanks to all who came our for a fabulous literacy night!

Reminder: Monday is our library exchange day!  

We did not have exchange this week because of the two short weeks back to back.  Fridays are day 0 so Monday is the next day 3 in our schedule.  At library, students choose their own books based on personal interest and we are practicing using the library and finding information books.  Some students might still prefer to bring a book from the library "story corner" instead and that is their choice.  Please remember that your child is not expected to be able to read their library book independently at this point.  They are learning about choosing books and learning how to use pictures to tell a story along with words, so the library book is a book to share at home.   

We did not make it to our "Home School Journal" - if you were looking for that, we are rethinking how and when to get that done, as Fridays tend to be very busy with the earlier dismissal time.  Next week, we will plan to fit that in on Thursday instead!  

We had a great Friday of learning.  

We continued experimenting with Primary Colours this week as scientists.  We made predictions, followed directions and found our results today from mixing paints.  We also had a parachute time in the gym with Mr. J.  Lots of listening, and cooperating to be successful with that! Then we had a special math challenge time today.  We partnered up with a grade 2 class to create shapes using a loop of string and adhering to group work expectations to listen, take turns and cooperate to meet a challenge.  We managed to get new books into our folders for those who remembered to bring their little book!  Please send that little book back in the folder every day!

We do a lot of reading each day.  We share favourite picture books with friends or have a quiet book time on our own.  We listen to stories read aloud, some by the teacher and some shared by our peers! We listen at the listening centre, we read with partners and practice our little books daily.  Students are choosing what book to bring home and they are deciding when they would like to change it for a new book.  At school, we record our book titles on a reading list to help with printing practice, recognizing titles and tracking our reading journey. 

We have a little list of sight words that we revisit daily and go hunting for in our poems and books. We are learning how word families, such as "at", "in", "op" for example, are also rhyming families!  We are learning how to use our alphabet knowledge to create word and rhyming families - knowing that we do not use the vowels, because our little words already have a vowel!  Every day we take some time to talk and share.  Often we share in the "author's chair" to have a chance to show and share what we have written that day!

In class, we do number talks around one more than, one less than, and recognizing numbers, as well as the number talks about building up to 100 and beyond.  So far, we have made 3 bundles of 10, as today was our 30th day of school so far!  We talk about representing numbers including 10 and beyond by recognizing for example, 1 ten and 2 ones is 12, or 2 tens and 9 ones is 29.  We talk about building numbers and understanding that counting by 10 can start anywhere!  1, 11, 21, 31, 41,... is one way to count by 10.  As such we are finding many patterns in our number charts.  We are practicing skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's and noticing which counting methods are faster. 

This week we also built with a variety of Math or STEM bin materials, such as magnetic connectors and lego.  We recorded our drawings and wrote a simple sentence about what we built and recorded in our drawing. 

Every day includes some basic numeracy, patterning and building numbers activities, either recorded or through games with our cups, cards, dice, and/or a number chart. 

Looking forward to Monday!  don't forget to send those library books!