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?
