Holiday writing

In an attempt to entice our students to write, we have offered them a special “holiday reading pointer”. ( we did a similar thing at Halloween). Students are asked to write the phrase: I see.... and then complete it with a selection of Christmas words. They must have writing on all 5 pages, as well as some illustrations. They have loved the opportunity to get a reading pointer and have eagerly completed these little booklets!

Hopefully they’ll be excited to read to you their little masterpieces, some students worked really hard!

Festive activities

Here’s some photos depicting some of our festive activities this week.

Paper plate Christmas trees.

Our “ rooftop drop “ game has been a big hit, and it is great for math, not only are they counting the number of times their “present” makes it in, but they are recording it using tallies!

Hot cup of cocoa

We have a game set up where the students must roll a die and then add that many pretend marshmallows to their pretend hot up of cocoa. It is a great activity for students to count and solidify their understanding of number value, but also it helps the development of fine motor skills as they must use tweezers to pick up the “marshmallows “!

Colour Zoo

We have been talking a lot about shapes. We read the simplistic book called Colour Zoo.

The students are encouraged to use the coloured transparent shapes on the light table to recreate some of the illustrations from the book.

Don’t throw snowballs!

With this wet weather, it has been perfect snowball weather. Of course, we’ve had the discussion about how we “never throw snowballs” at anyone. Today, we made snowballs and threw them at targets. They had to stand in front of the first letter of their name, then aim and fire!

It was so fun having a target to practice on!

Next we tried feeding the birds, and then checked out snowforts belonging to the big kids! We are happy, tired and wet!

Migrating geese

Since we made some geese this week, and we’ve certainly been noticing them flying south. We wondered why they fly in a “V” shape. We did a quick little experiment and pretended that the geese wanted to fly in a straight line.

We discovered that it was quite hard to hold...especially with only one hand! Then, we folded it and pretended like our geese were flying in a V formation. 

We talked about why it was easier to hold our geese with only one hand.  One of the boys said it was because they were aerodynamic!

Seasonal adaptations

In both English and French classes, we’ve been talking a lot about how animals adapt to winter in order to survive. We’ve made some special migrating geese.

During a free activity time, some students have used their creativity to design caves and shelters for animals to hibernate in.

After reading “Bear Snores On”, by Karma Wilson, some of our JKs had a discussion about what they thought a bear would want in a cave. They decided it should have 3 walls, open space and a covering, etc. They then worked in pairs using different building materials and built caves for a hibernating bear!