June 26-39, 2017

Last week of school!

On Monday we had a school-wide OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) day, with our class spending a full hour outside with the play materials.

We had our last puppet show, and the kids took their puppets home.

I gave out the class storybook, which was received with great excitement! I asked the kids to start by reading their own story.

Then I asked the kids to find partners and read their story to a partner.

 They also coloured some of the illustrations.

We again reviewed the number names, and we did some number games on the carpet.

Our trip to High Park was a great success! The kids played and hard and enjoyed yummy snacks together.

We have been looking at this blog together as a class in our last week. It's amazing to see how far the kids have come. The last day, the kids will be tidying up the classroom with me. There is a lot of stuff to pack up and clean! I'm sorry to be leaving Lord Lansdowne, but I'm excited to be moving on to Alpha Alternative School. Thanks for all your volunteering and support!

June 19-23, 2017

The kids did a lot of writing this week, and everyone finished a good copy of their favourite story to put in the class book of stories.

In math, they worked on a story problem that involved single markers and boxes of 10 markers. They also reviewed the French number names to 100, through a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSESUz5PV_0) and by playing bingo.

We also talked about the needs of plants again, and identified these as water, sunlight, earth and air. Then we designed an experiment to see which need was most important. We are depriving one potato plant of one basic need, and we will see which plant shows the worst effects.

The kids practiced their puppet shows with their partners, re-reading the script together many times until they knew it well. Some kids performed their puppet show at the end of the week.

 I will soon send out a link to share the puppet show videos. In the meantime, here are the kids with their puppets:

June 12-16, 2017

The pace picked up this week as the kids worked hard to finish the rough drafts of their stories for our story collection. They were also very busy preparing for their animal puppet shows. Over the weekend, each student chose an animal that they would focus on for their puppet show. They researched that animal's physical characteristics, habitat, diet and anything else of interest. This week they used that information, translated, to fill out a script template, a dialogue between 2 animals. I put the kids into pairs and they practiced their lines together several times.

They also made their puppets for the show. Most students brought an image of their animal from home, which they used to make a drawing. I enlarged some of the drawings, and they cut out the paper drawing to use as a template. They traced the outline twice onto felt and then cut out the felt pieces.

Then they decorated one side of each felt piece by gluing on more felt or yarn or feathers. 

I glued together the 2 sides of each puppet, leaving an opening, and the kids stuffed them. Then I glued the puppets closed.

We ended the week doing still more art, to make bookmarks for Father's Day.