Baby Quilt for Ms. Poulis!

   Our Principal, Ms. Poulis, had her baby (a boy!) on Friday, April 17th!
She has been off on Maternity leave since March break, so we had a bit of time to sneak around and make her a surprise gift from the whole school. The students in Room 15 were a HUGE help delivering and collecting unfinished and finished squares.

I cut the fabric into 6 1/2 inch squares and lay it out on a set of desks to make sure that there were enough squares. Oops. There weren't -- and I only had 6 1/4 inch fabric left.... So I had to cut every single square down by 1/4 inch. Doh! Thank goodness that the rest of it went together without a hitch.

Each class was given a square of cotton to decorate with their finger prints (and non-toxic fabric paint).

Many classes used a stencil....

There was even a square for staff who don't have a "homeroom", office staff, lunchroom supervisors and caretakers. So, everyone in the school had their fingers in this gift :) (at least once).

 I then took everyone's squares home, heat set them, and stitched them together. Then I added a backing of soft "minky".

The colours below are more "true". The photo above shows the size better.

  (We used setacolour fabric paint and I heat set each square for 5 minutes to make sure that these fingerprints never wash off :)
  The quilt is about 3feet x 3 1/2feet (90cm x 105cm), and is backed with soft green "minky" (kind of like a super-soft velour).
**Technically, this isn't a quilt -- it is a baby blanket. It doesn't have batting in the middle, and I haven't done any "quilting" on it**

  We hope that Ms. Poulis likes it!

Inferring

 We have been learning how to make inferences.

To infer meaning, we use what we already know (our personal schema) to add information to the text. The text could be any media (i.e. we could be reading a book or watching a commercial or movie). We use our own information + the information that is given in the text to figure out what the author is saying.

We watched the (multiple award winning) short film, " The Red Balloon" with Mme. LaFlair's class. (Mme. LaFlair's class is a French Immersion Grade 1/2 class). The film has very little spoken word in it. We get all of our meaning by watching the action of the film and by using our past experiences to add extra meaning.
(We  use the pictures in every picture book that we read to infer meaning!). Even when the characters spoke (french) in the film, we didn't need the subtitles because we knew what the characters were saying by their tone of voice!

Please take a half an hour to watch this with your child! (you likely have already seen it -- it has been shown in classrooms around the world for the past... 50+ years!)

We also learned to listen to the music in a film -- the music helps to "warn" us about what might happen next.
The whole class sat with their eyes glued to the screen for this film. It made us laugh, it made us angry and it made us sad....it was magical.....

Punctuation Marks

We are learning that every sentence must have a punctuation mark at the end!

Please practice singing these songs at home. We will team up with Mrs. Wren's class and will be singing them at a sharing assembly next week!

I'm a Little Period is sung to the tune of "I'm a little teapot".

Exclamation Point is sung to the tune of  "BINGO".

Question Mark is sung to the tune of "Oh Where has My Little Dog Gone?"

 
 
 

Our Promises to Our Planet

We have been learning about energy and water conservation and recycling. Today we made some promises to our planet!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Senses

  We have been learning about our senses.
Scientist use their senses to observe the world around them. We are all scientists, so we learned how to safely use all of our senses.

We learned that our eyes send images to our brains and our brains tell us what those images mean.

We learned to  use our sense of smell to observe things.
 These are "smell jars"
In each one there was a different scent. The whole class was really good at figuring our what was in each one!

(banana, peppermint, cinnamon, soap, coffee, pickles)

(not necessarily in that order)

We also had listening jars, and we also listened to different sounds on a cd and tired to guess what the sounds were. (sound bingo!)

We learned about different textures that we can feel with our skin.

Finally, we learned about taste.

We learned that our tongue tastes different things on different parts of our tongue.

We tasted sweet (pixie sticks); sour (lemon); bitter (85% chocolate)(we usually taste dandelion greens, but the weather was just not cooperating this year!); salty (pretzels).

 

 We then observed a banana using all of our senses! We also learned that we can't use all of our senses to observe everything! You can see the sun, and feel its warmth, but you can't touch, taste or smell it!

Skip counting

  We have been exploring the 100 chart. We have learned that if you skip count, it is a numerical pattern.

We have been learning to skip count by 2's and 5's and 10's. By the end of Grade 1, we should be able to skip count to 100 by 2s 5s and 10s!

We are also learning to skip count and then count on. We are learning to count money, so this is essential!
For example, count 2 nickels and a penny. You HAVE to skip count and count on.
You say, Five, Ten, Eleven.
Please practice this at home!!!