La la la la letter L

I like to play the Barenaked Ladies song La La La Lemon when we talk about the letter L.

We love snowmen! (and women)

We have had lots of fun making snowmen. It took a few weeks, but we are finished!

This is what they looked like after we filled our jars with white stuff and glittery stuff. Then we chose heads and Ms. Brown hot glued the heads to the jars. Then we painted the heads with glue and made glittery snow fall on them. When they were dry (the next day) we glued on eyes, noses and mouths. Most students insisted that the noses had to be "carrots" (they were given free reign from our very large collection of collage stuff). The first few students who work on an art project usually set the tone, because the rest of the class has a hard time "thinking outside of the box" once they have seen one finished. Sometimes I try to hide the finished works so the next students can be more creative!


Then we dug into our fabrics and Easter grass to make scarves and hair. Some students even cut crows from tp rolls!


We're going to keep these in the classroom for a few more weeks to admire. I'm not ready to part with them yet :)

Thus a Child Learns

Thus a child learns;
by wiggling skills through his fingers and toes into himself;
by soaking up habits and attitudes of those around him;
by pushing and pulling his own world.

Thus a child learns;
more by trial than error
more through pleasure than pain,
more through experience than suggestion,
more through suggestion than direction.

Thus a child learns;
through affection,
through love,
through patience,
through understanding,
through belonging,
through doing,
through being.

Day by day
the child comes to know a little bit of what you know;
to think that a little bit of what you think;
to understand your understanding.
That which you dream and believe and are
in truth, becomes the child.

As you perceive dully or clearly
as you think fuzzily or sharply;
as you believe foolishly or wisely;
as you dream drably or goldenly;
as you bear false witness or tell the truth--
thus a child learns.
(Frederick J. Moffitt)

Math 5 Frames

We are using 5 frames to learn some basic number facts.

I asked them to build numbers: "Move 3 counters to the frame"
We used questions like: How many frames are full? How many are empty? How many counters are there? How many more counters do we need to fill the frame?

We are working on developing our number language. I had the juniors each work with senior partners. The juniors did the work (we sat at the carpet and I asked them to show me something), the seniors checked to see if the Jks were correct. If the juniors were not correct, the seniors tried to explain and show how to do it. It was really hard for the SKs not to just jump in and do it! This is really helping to develop our oral language :) ("Put it beside it!" No, on the other side!")

What happens if your frame is full and I give you another counter? (We always put it below and to the left -- just like if we were reading or writing)

(six)

We're ready to move to ten and beyond!

(if you would like to try an online 5 Frame activity with your child, click here)

Clementine boxes

If you have any (empty) wooden Clementine boxes that you were going to be throwing out anyway, please send them in to school. We're using them to store things in for now, but we might have a use for them in an upcoming art project......

January!

(I thought that my blog was automatically posting, but it wasn't, so we have a lot of catching up to do!)
So far in January we have been focusing on some letters (M, W, O)

We have been talking about the properties of snow. Why can't we make snowmen every day? -- there is lots of snow, so why can't we? (It's not packing snow. What is packing snow?) The snow went from light and fluffy to much so fast that we weren't able to make snowmen. Oh, well -- I'm sure that there will be many more opportunities to make them soon!

Some of our favourite books in the last few weeks:
Stella, Queen of the Snow
The Biggest, Best Snowman
The Snowy Day
Snow (non fiction)

Pool!

Pool is on THURSDAY for the AM class and FRIDAY for the PM class (until after the PA day Jan 21). I'll try to make announcements at drop off and pick up! (And hopefully the day care will pass the message on too!)