May Fun

Our favourite part of the day:

On Monday we talked about ducks and learned the number 6.

On Tuesday we had centres and Rafael (the librarian) was here. 

On Wednesday we learned the number 7 and worked on puzzle pieces.

On Thursday we learned about the parts of a butterfly and decorated cookies. 

On Friday we had centres and we drew a horn.

Duck Wrap Up
We wrapped up our unit on ducks by talking about all of the things that we learned about them. The children wrote down four things that they learned. It was a hard writing activity but it turned out quite well. They are getting ready for grade 1!

Caterpillars & Butterflies

Our caterpillars are growing! This week many of them even formed their chrysalis. Hopefully next week we will start to see our butterflies.

We discussed what we already knew about butterflies to start our unit. The children knew much more than I thought they would.

We learned about the parts of the butterfly this week. 

Mother's Day!
It will be Mother's Day this weekend so we have been working hard preparing a gift for our mothers. I found a great craft from Princess Pinky Girl. We placed two of the children's handprints on a mug and added their name and the year. It is a wonderful, useful keepsake. We filled the mugs with herbal tea and a decorated cookie.

The idea for our cards was found here.

Puzzle Pieces:
Our social puzzle pieces are coming to an end. For the final piece the children had to say what made the student of the day special. Then that student wrote down all of the wonderful things on the last puzzle piece called "I'm Special".

Now I will be putting their puzzles together so that they are ready for the end of the year. It has been a wonderful project and memory.

Animated Literacy:

We learned about three new characters this week:
Quentin Quail who is a quarterback. His sound is "kwah" and can be written "q" or "qu".
Joy and her noisy toy who needs oil. Her sound is "oy" and can be written "oi" or "oy"
Orty Orsen who is an orangutang who likes playing sports and wearing shorts. Her sound is "or".

Please go over the handouts that have been sent home with your child to review the sounds and letters. They can colour the picture and then circle the special sound within the song at the bottom. Remember that Animated Literacy focuses on the sound (phonics) and the writing (graphemes) so for Sheriff Shadrack we focus on the "sh" as seen in the words shirt and fish.

This week we drew a picture of a horn and wrote a sentence. I introduced nouns and adjectives to the students as well. I told them that nouns are people, places or things (ex: Lisa, Toronto, horn) and we created lots of examples. Then on Friday we discussed adjectives (they are words that describe a noun). For example: pink shirt, fast car and noisy toy. After we drew and labeled our horn we added an adjective to our label and showed the connection with an arrow. We will be doing this more as the year progresses. A couple examples are shown below. 

Handwriting Without Tears

We practiced writing the numbers 6 and 7 this week. When you have a moment practice writing numbers, the alphabet or simple words with your child. Please watch for size and spacing. 

Don't Forget:

Feel free to contact me anytime with any questions or concerns. I can be reached at the school, by email or just drop in (I am usually around before school).