Joyeuses Pâques!

Well, I'm happy to announce that out of the 120 eggs that I hid, we managed to find all but 2! Not bad. Now if only I could remember all my hiding places...

The kids did a fantastic job of finding what they were allowed to find, and leaving the rest behind for others. I think they enjoyed the hunt!

This afternoon, we put our new counting skills to work. We counted 82 pennies, and we counted nickels (by 5) up to 200! Any French counting you can do at home is a bonus. It gets tricky up in the 70s 80s and 90s, but we have some tricks that should help us (e.g., looking back at the teens for the 70s and 90s). We have also been experimenting a little bit with different ways to make the same amount of money. For instance, 16¢ could be 16 pennies, 3 nickels and 1 penny, 2 nickels and 6 pennies etc. This is a fun game to play at home with your pocket change.

  Have a wonderful long weekend!
Tamara

Scientist-in-School

Dear parents,

Please see below for a copy of the letter being sent home today regarding our very exciting scientist visit!

The new words of the week are:

je nage, j’aime, je range, je me lave, je danse,

je plante, je décore, je chasse, je vole, j’ attrape

All words follow the same rule as last week (conjugate with an 'e' ending).

I can't believe it's already Easter! I wish you all a lovely long-weekend. We have had a lot of sweet treats in Area 24 lately, so please do NOT send treats this Thursday. The kids will receive a little something from me, and that's enough. Thanks!

The following letter is coming home today: 

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Dear Parents of Area 24,

On Thursday, April 11^th, Area 24 will have a science workshop with a “Scientist in the School” presenter. The workshop will be a hands-on session focusing on our current Matter & Energy unit. In the past, this workshop has included making a bubble grow using heat, building a class circuit to make light and sound and creating abstract paintings using solar power!

“Scientists in the School” is a wonderful opportunity that we like to take advantage of each year. It’s like a field trip, except without the hassle of travelling. Our scientist will provide lots of cool materials that we don’t have at school, and is an expert in the field.

The cost for the half-day workshop is $5 per student, the remainder being covered by the school. I would appreciate having the money returned by Tuesday April 9^th or earlier so that I can pass it on to the office before they have to pay.

I anticipate that we will require 3 or 4 parent volunteers to help with supervision. Please indicate on the return slip whether you are able to volunteer. Thank you in advance!

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks you,

Tamara Mitchell

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please return this portion along with payment by Tuesday April 9^th!

Area 24’s “Scientist in the School”

Student:__________________________   

□ $5 is included!

□ Yes I am available and would like to volunteer._______________________________   (name)

□ No I am not able to volunteer.

Eggs in a basket

Next Monday and Tuesday we will be decorating Easter eggs. I will give each child 2 hard-boiled eggs to dye. Please send a small container/basket/egg carton for the kids to bring their eggs home in. I'm not sure I would be able to provide something of the right size for everyone, although I will definitely be able to help out a few people if they forget.

Please send the container to school MONDAY, they will bring the container home TUESDAY with the finished eggs (obviously, the eggs are not for eating). The container should be not too big, not too small, JUST big enough to hold 2 eggs. Something similar to one of these containers would be perfect. Thanks for your help getting these eggs home safely!

Dance-a-thon & more!

Hello again,

I got to see some stellar dance moves today at the rally for Dewson's upcoming Dance-a-thon! Each dancer now has their fundraising envelope and a note. Please be sure to return this envelope, regardless of whether you raise any money, by Thursday, April 4th. The dance-a-thon is Friday the 5th.
There is a cool website where far-away relatives can make online donations in your student's name, and where kids can request songs!

A reminder that we would appreciate having snack contributions back by this Friday. I've received a lot already. Thanks for supporting the snack program!

When we got back from the rally today, the kids kept their promise to me and were able to settle down enough to complete some fun math work. As a first step in practising our counting to 100, we have been working on filling in an incomplete hundreds chart, dividing it into pieces and cutting them out to make a puzzle. The kids spent a good amount of time diligently trying to put each other's puzzles back together. It's not so easy! Look for this coming home later this week and try to do your wizard's puzzle!

During this exercise, we have noticed some patterns that help us fill in the grid, and learn our numbers. For instance, in each row, the first number stays the same and the second number goes up by 1. In each column, we count by 10.

 

We have learned how to say all the 'tens' (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100) in French, and armed with this information, we can read pretty much any number on the grid. This is a great thing to practise once it comes home. Here's our class reference sheet for at-home use:

Starting this week there has been one big change at Dewson, and that is our morning and afternoon recess entry routine. All students are now being let in by the teachers on-duty, and supervised by the rest of us in the halls until the teachers have all gotten to their classes. Ask your student what they do while they wait for me to get back from my supervision post.

Here is the result of our printmaking activity I was telling you about. Isn't it gorgeous? I've already received complements on it! I think the stencils themselves are pretty to look at with their colour still on them, so they are decorating our board as well. When they come home, they can be used again to make more stamps, just brush or roll a thin layer of paint on and press it firmly onto good paper. For now, students (except the artists of the month) have brought home an individual print that they did in addition to the mural.

Welcome back!

I hope everyone had a lovely March break and is well-rested for the last few months of grade 1!

First off, students have another snack program letter and donation envelope. Please return whatever you feel able to contribute by this Friday. The snack program is wonderful, but we are desperately in need of funds. Already, the kids have noticed that we are no longer able to afford chocolate milk. Thank you for your support!

If you haven't been counting, Area 24 has officially studied over 100 words (110 to be exact) as part of the word-of-the-week program. Félicitations! Now we are going to spend a bit more time on verbs, while still trying to practise our sounds. The words for this week highlight the rule for conjugating -er verbs (this means that they end with 'er' in their infinitive tense, e.g., manger) in the present tense, for the first person (I or je). Notice that all the verbs end with 'e'. I introduced this only very briefly today, so we'll discuss in more detail what a verb is and which verbs fall into the -er category. As always, working on these words and memorizing the rule will help us develop good spelling habits.

The words for this week are:

je mange, je regarde, je joue, je saute, je parle,

je chante, je cherche, je donne, je marche, j’ écoute

Before the break we finished up our last sound, "-ent". When a word ends with "ent" it is normally silent. You do say everything up to and including the 'e', but not the 'nt'. So, for example, "ils chantent" would be pronounced "ils chante". This is the 3rd person plural conjugation for -er verbs, so I will officially teach this very soon, but for now we just know that, with a few exceptions, we never pronounce "ent" at the ends of words. Look at this amazing wall of sound words that we have been building since September!

 

In addition to our regular reading and writing time, we decided that we would like to put on some plays in our class. Before the break, everyone told me if they preferred a small, medium or large part in a play, and I have assigned roles accordingly. Every student has an important role in one of three plays: Les trois petits cochons, Le Petit Chaperon rouge or Le bonhomme en pain d'épice. Ask your child what his/her role is! This week your actor/actress will receive a script and we will work in-class on reading it with our group! This should be very fun work!

In Math, we have reviewed the measurement concepts that we covered before the break (comparing length, height, weight, surface area and temperature). Starting tomorrow, I will do another round of interviews with everyone to see how we're doing. Our next unit will be number sense, focused on counting up to one hundred and adding and subtracting single-digit numbers. We will use coins a lot to help us with these tasks, and I encourage you to do some review exercises at home as well (e.g., counting change, pennies, the number of marbles in a jar etc.).

In Science we had just started talking about the sun as a source of energy, and we made a list of things we knew about the sun. We put together a little experiment by gluing a yellow sun onto blue paper. Over the break, these pictures hung in a sunny window, so when we took them down and peeled off our suns today, we found that the paper had faded quite drastically! It's amazing what the sun can do. We made connections to our hair, which sometimes lightens in the summer months. We will do a few other sun experiments, such as how it affects plants and how it affects water and ice.

Before the break, I think I mentioned that we had also been discussing things that move and what makes them move (what gives them the energy to move). Here is a list of examples we came up with:

We went outside and the kids took some pictures of things that move, such as a car, people and the branches of a tree. I printed them out and together we labelled each picture, as follows:

 

 

In art, we are finishing up a fantastic print-making activity. Each student already planned and made their own unique stencil using styrofoam. Now, we're painting them using rollers and rubbing them onto paper to make the stamp. They look incredible, can't wait to show you the finished mural! Next week I'm planning to dye eggs for Easter. We will probably do the messy part on Tuesday between 11 and 11:45 am. If you're available to help, you'd be most welcome! Let me know!

Finally, almost everyone took extra white books home over the break. Please have a good look around and make sure your child has returned them all. Many students are waiting for books that are currently at someone's home. Let's keep the exchanging going!

Thanks, and have a fantastic week!

PS!
Here are some bonus pictures from the Friday afternoon before the break. We used the SmartBoard (an interactive whiteboard that functions like a mouse) to play some word and coin games before watching some French Caillou videos (all of this is linked to this blog). Aren't the kids cute with their little individual bags of popcorn?

 

We're Famous!

Check out the Dewson Blog! There's a post about us!

Yesterday, students brought home another upper/lower-case sentence to correct, exactly the same format as last time. Some of us are really catching on now, and some of us are still a bit confused, and that's ok. We'll keep working. Once again, the homework doesn't need to be returned, so it doesn't have a deadline, but it would be great if you could find 5 minutes to sit with your writer to help them with (or let them teach you about) when to, and not to, use capitals.

March break is just a day away. If you'd like your reader to bring home extra levelled books to last for the whole week, that's fine with me. Just let them know how many to take and I'll remind the kids to exchange them tomorrow. It's really important to keep up whatever reading routine you have established, just like brushing your teeth.

In math, we're spending just a few days on measuring temperature. We talked about some seasonal benchmarks (e.g., when it's 0 degrees, water freezes, so we get snow and ice).  We read the temperature in our classroom, and then took some thermometers outside for recess and watched the temperature drop right in front of our eyes. We also used signs outside (e.g., puddles of water) to determine if the temperature would be below or above zero. While we're not reading the exact temperature on little thermometers, we are able to say, "It's between 0 and 10, and closer to 10". We know that when the mercury rises, the temperature is getting warmer, and vice versa. When you're outside in the next couple weeks, ask your child to guess if it's above or below 0 degrees just based on signs that they see outside!

In science, we talked about how the sun is a major source of energy. We made a list of things we already know about the sun, for example, the sun is a star, the sun keeps us warm, the sun gives us light. We prepared a little sun experiment and we'll see the results after the break!!

Our second last sound is "è" (e accent grave) and ê (e accent circonflex). We talked about it being a "lazy" e sound, compared to é and regular e. Think of the e in the word "dress". There are actually 5 ways to make this sound, and we found examples of each, as shown in the pictures below. There's a lot to remember here, but the happy thing is that all of these combos make the same sound.

ICE-O-RAMA

Hello!

As per last week's note, this Thursday is Dewson's Ice-O-Rama! There are lots of fun activities planned for outside. If possible, please send ICE for building. Big pieces are especially good, and ice dyed fancy colours is really neat. Yogurt and ice cream containers work great for freezing large blocks of ice, but you can't leave it until the last minute! If you are free to help, I think volunteers are still needed. There is a sign-up just inside the front doors.
Our class will be outside all morning, so please make sure your participate is appropriately dressed (hat, mitts etc.) and send an extra pair of socks for when we come back inside.

Friday is the last day before March break! At the end of the day, we will take some time to clean out the cubbies and make sure we have everything packed. Please check the lost & found before the break if you are missing anything. I think it will be emptied and remaining items donated to charity.

The words of the week are:

septembre, octobre, novembre, décembre,

janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin

We talked about how many months there are in a year, and discovered that the summer months are missing. Those are juillet and août, if you'd like to add them!

This afternoon we attended a fabulous musical presentation. Please ask your kids about all the different instruments they heard!

Last week...

Last week we finished examining words with the 'ch' sound. We only have 2 more sounds to go, and I hope to do both this week so that we can focus on grade 1 verbs after the break. As always, please keep reviewing all previous sounds at home. It's amazing how far the kids have come, from learning basic vowel sounds (a, e, i) to being able to put all kinds of sounds together to read simple stories. Unfortunately, we can never know everything! The French language is full of exceptions to rules, and we're learning about them as they come up.

Following our attempt at measuring our heights using our hands, which led to some funny-looking measurements, we discussed other things we could use to measure that would be the same for everyone. Some ideas were for everyone to use a new eraser, one person's hands or a piece of paper. Eventually, we settled on using a ruler, because it's a tool made for measuring. We are not going to talk about centimetres this year, but we counted how many rulers went into everyone's height. Most of us were around 4 rulers tall. Our new graph makes much more sense!

Last week, we solved a math mystery. We wondered if our height would be equal to our "wingspan". At first, very few of us thought this could be true, but after using rulers to measure both distances, it turned out to be exactly true, except a few cases where our shoes made us taller. It would be great if the kids could check this on an adult at home!

 In math, we worked in teams to put pieces of string in order from shortest to longest. (This would be a fun game to play at home too.) We also worked in teams in science to make a machine that moves using our bodies. Here are the pictures with the answers!

 Rocket Ship

 Teeter-totter

 Bicycle

Motorcycle 

 Our artists completed their workshops with Donnely by finishing off their wooden sculptures with wire and beads. They have insisted that I post no pictures of their sculptures at this time, but we are talking about putting them in the Dewson art show next month. For now, they can be seen on top of our cubbies.