Outdoor Events Next Week

Dear parents,
Monday afternoon all grade 1 students will participate in "Run, Jump, Throw" - a mini version of Track & Field. Please check with your athlete to make sure they have running shoes at school and please help them dress for success on Monday. Comfortable clothing, layers, hats and sunscreen will be important.

Next Friday morning is the Hula Hoop contest, being organized by Madelle Andrews. Please ensure that anyone interested in participating has brought back the fundraising form by Wednesday so that their name can be added to the list! We do have some Hula Hoops at school that can be borrowed if students would like to participate and need one. Forms are also still available!

Prints are up!

Hi families,

We have been busy this week!

In Poetry, we made ourselves a little rhyming dictionary on the board so that we could try our hand at some short rhyming poems. Next week we will begin the process of selecting and revising just one of the poems we have written over the past 3 weeks. We will present this poem for an audience at our "Poetry Café" next week.

In Science, we took up the experiment we started 3 weeks ago. Look at the results. Plante A, which was on the windowsill, grew and looks very healthy. Plante B, which was in the cupboard, has seen better days. Both plants were watered daily. Ask your scientist what they learned from this experiment!

We have almost finished our measurement unit. In the last couple days we have been talking about mass and using the terms lourd et léger. Today students used balances to weight several snack foods and put them in order from plus léger to plus lourd. We talked about how it's important to compare every package with every other package in order to be accurate. All groups presented their findings and then everyone was treated to an afternoon snack from the snack selections. Lucky kids!

We have worked on several art projects this week, including finishing the prints that we began with Mme Ally. Each student made 3 prints - one with black ink, one colourful print on a mural and one colourful print that they brought home right away. Students also kept the styrofoam print that they made. It can be reused as many times as they wish. At school we used a roller to apply the ink, but you could use a paintbrush and thick paint. Have fun!

 Click on the pictures below to zoom in on your child's black print. They look so amazing!

In the printmaking project, we talked a lot about creating texture in our art. Today, Mlle Bradfield did another art project with us focusing on texture. Each student used several different textures to decorate their montgolfière. Then we painted over and again were wowed by the resist technique we've used throughout the year. We have another cool texture project coming up next week!

In addition to bringing home one of their prints yesterday, you probably also noticed the rolled up piece of brown paper that came home. This is their piece of either "Casquettes à vendre" or "Tipingee" that they retold as a big group. It was sad to cut the stories into pieces, but alas, other cool things need to be displayed as well!

Earth Day

Hi families,

Friday was Earth Day! Students helped clean up the school yard and worked for part of the day with most of the lights off to save energy. We also had a visit from Mme Leslie who taught us how to write a list poem and then helped us present our writing in a stunning way! Some students chose to write cinquains or acrostic poems using the words we brainstormed about la Terre. I love the result!

Here we are working at our math centres (measuring area in lots of fun ways) in the dark!

Words of the Week

Review of ‘oi’ this week. See if your writer can invent some sentences using some of these words. For example, Je vois trois étoiles dans le ciel noir.

étoile, je vois, je dois, bois, j’ai soif, 
poisson, voilà, noir, au revoir, trois
Bonus words: boîte, miroir

What is wind?

Hi parents,

Yesterday we talked about wind energy in science. Our pinwheels are good examples of how wind makes things move and we talked about how large windmills can create energy that we use to power our homes. Ask your scientist if they can explain how wind itself is created. It has something to do with the sun...

In math we finished up measuring distances by racing some little cars down ramps and using rulers to measure how far each went. Next we will be learning how to measure area, mass and capacity.

In French we have added shape poems and colour poems to our repertoire. We also did our April dictée. The rubric is coming home today. I have seen lots of improvements over the past few months. Please help your student select one goal for future writing. For some students this may be checking the word wall or their dictionary for silent letters that are so often on the ends of French words. For others it may be to carefully check to make sure they are using lower-case letters within the phrase and not reversing their letters. If your writer has had the same level 1 or 2 item circled a few months in a row, let's make that their next step! Thanks for reviewing this at home.

A reminder that there is a Hula Hoop contest coming up May 6th. Some students have started signing out our hula hoops to practice at recess! Hoopers wishing to be in the contest were given a fundraising form that must be returned to Madelle Andrews in advance of the competition. More forms are available. All money will be donated to Kids Help Line.

Words of the Week

Review of ‘u’ this week. See if your writer can invent some sentences using some of these words. 

For example, J’ai vu une tortue turquoise!

une rue, numéro, j’ai vu, bureau, une tortue, une fusée, une tulipe, j’ai bu, j’ai lu, turquoise
Bonus words: musée, légume

Home sick? Here's what we've been up to!

Dear families,

We had a great outing Wednesday morning. Mme Gaudreault pointed out lots of important places in our community on our way to the post office. We actually got to go inside the Shoppers Drug Mart to see the postal office before mailing our letters in the box outside.

With Mme Bradfield, we have added cinquain and acrostiche poems to our repertoire. We learned the rules for writing these types of poems and wrote some together before trying our own hand. Here are a couple great examples:



In science we experimented with mechanical energy by folding our own spring and building a Jack-in-the-box! Students got to bring them home to show off and make adjustments to their new toy.

We also had a special visit from Nora's dad, who brought in the turtle their family found. We had an interesting discussion about hibernation, reviewing what we had learned earlier in the year about how animals adapt to deal with cold weather.

Wednesday was also Pink Day and we certainly had a lot of it going on in our classroom, though I forgot to take a group photo. Please ask your student to tell you the story of how Pink Day came to be. It's easy to lose sight of this in the excitement of getting dressed up. Mlle Bradfield also read us a story that highlighted the importance of helping friends who may be being bullied or having a problem with a friend. We had a great conversation about why people sometimes do mean things, for example, maybe they are bored, maybe they think it's OK because they saw someone else do it, or maybe they actually like you and want to get your attention! In all cases, we agree that saying something is always better than not saying something, and that maybe if we are a nice friend to the person making a bad decision, we could convince him/her to stop and help him/her to play a nice game!
It has been my joy this year to work with a group of students who are generally very good at working out little problems without hurting each others' feelings or bodies. In fact we have only had to have one or two class discussions about this. Continue le bon travail mes amis!

I must also give a GIANT Bravo to the class for Wednesday. I absolutely could not decide who was most deserving of a Bravo since everyone was on their best behaviour and working hard all day. Honestly, we had such a quiet classroom, with everyone doing the right thing at the right time... I was walking around wondering if I was in the wrong room! Fingers crossed that we keep having days like this even when we're not all so sick!

I'd like to mention also that the new-ish movie The Little Prince is playing at The Royal on College Street on weekend afternoons this month. The trailer looks really cute and I plan on reading the class the original book, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry later this year. The movie does not tell the story directly, it is focused on a little girl who hears bits and pieces of the story from her neighbour, the author. Still, we will be able to make connections to the film when we read the book. Maybe I'll see you there!

Words of the Week

Dear families,

I hope everyone is feeling alright! The kids have been dropping like flies, and I'm not feeling so hot either. Get lots of rest!

Please ask your scientist about the experiment we did with the special UV beads on Monday and why they changed colour even though it wasn't very sunny out. What does this teach us about sun safety?

We've been doing lots of measuring. Mlle Bradfield set us free in the classroom to measure the height of any object (or person) using any unit, as long as we kept our unit the same for each object we measured. We took notes of what we measured and how we measured it.

Don't forget out walking excursion first thing Wednesday morning and don't forget to dress up for Day of Pink!

Words of the Week

All of these words contain the letter o but in “gomme”, “pomme”, “colle” and “je dors”, it’s a slightly softer sound. Although “zoo” is spelled the same as in English, the word in French is pronounced with a true ‘o’ sound, so imagine the second o just isn’t there!

If you’re wondering about accents on letters other than ‘e’, join the club. Your children have already asked me about what they do, and the simple answer is nothing!

“Gros” and “grosse” are the masculine and feminine version of the same word (meaning large or big). In French, everything has a gender - spoons are girls, books are boys! Even my French friend can’t explain to me a fool-proof way of knowing what’s what, there are exceptions to every rule! Anyway, once you know if you’re talking about something feminine or masculine, you can adjust your adjective. E.g., L’éléphant est gros. La baleine est grosse. The kids have already seen that gender can affect words, for instance, un policier v. une policière, and cher v. chère.

gâteau, trop, le zoo, gros, grosse, tôt, 

gomme, je dors, pomme, colle

Bonus words: ciseaux, océan