Thank you for all your help with the Special Moments homework. We haven't had a chance to sound out our captions yet, but we will get to that soon and I can't wait to display this special work.
Last week we finished our Broken Hearts. We used grey and white oil pastels over top of our base colours to create shadows. Ask your artist how they knew where to colour. I have had several comments from other teachers on how beautiful the hearts are, and how great the level of work is for grade one! Yay!
This Thursday is our first work shop with artist Donnely Smallwood. Over the course of the next 6 weeks, we will be learning about lots of great techniques and materials and, I think, putting several different pieces together to form a sculpture. I'll keep you up to date with what we're making. Please do your very best to be on time for school this, and every, Thursday. I understand that mornings are crazy, but our workshops are from 9:00 am - 10:45 am, and I don't want students to miss valuable instructions and demonstrations with our expert.
In math, as you know we've been working on identifying 2-dimensional shapes. We have created a chart with the basic shapes that I expect every student to know (circle, square, triangle and rectangle) and can refer to this to check number of sides and how to spell the French name. However, in making our matching game cards, and in working with pattern blocks, many children have been starting to remember the names for shapes with 5, 6, and 8 sides, and even some other 4-sided shapes, such as diamonds. You can help your child review these shapes at home by playing the matching game, or building shapes out of toothpicks. Here are a few pictures of when we played the matching game in class!
This week, we have been using shapes to build pictures. For example, today we all made flowers out of pattern blocks, traced them and coloured them in. They are gorgeous! We have also done the opposite, used large shapes to fill in puzzles ranging from simple (every shape completely outlined) to quite complex (no interior lines). Tomorrow's challenge will be to colour in a design that I've made based on a colour-shape legend (kind of like a paint-by-numbers). In order to do this, students will need to recognise the 4 basic shapes that I mentioned, and will need to find shapes within other shapes. I think they'll like the activity. Later this year, we will continue with geometry and look at 3-D shapes, but for now, I think we're almost done and we will move on soon to Measurement.
In science, we have been doing our Lego experiments every day, each one adding to our knowledge of what makes a structure strong and stable. Children have really been drawing on their personal experiences to suggest improvements to our structures, or suggest where they have seen examples of these concepts in real life. A few days ago we did the experiment pictured below. We built two walls, one with bricks stacked directly on top of one another, and the other with the bricks overlapping. We discovered that the bricks that overlapped each other were much stronger and didn't fall over right away when we rolled a ball at them. Then we noticed that the walls in our own school are built that way!
Here are some of our strong walls!
Then... I discovered THIS in the subway station...
Hmmm... I haven't shown the scientists yet, so go ahead and ask them what they think!
You may wish to take a minute to talk about the writing process, and how you proof-read letters, emails, reports and memos that you write. It's important to me that children value this step and take the time to do it carefully. I have overheard a couple discoveries ("Ohhh, there's a silent E on tête!"). Love it!
Hopefully this gives you lots to talk about!
Tamara
(Oh, and tomorrow we're going to see a show put on by Mme Morgenstern's class. Ask about that too!)