Another busy and productive week in our classroom! We mixed art and math (and a little bit of science!) this week when we made some of our own “dyed” macaroni. The students used them to make patterns for their necklaces and bracelets. They also glued them on cardstock ornaments. Those will be coming home soon for a little festive decoration!
We have started to do some revision of our previous weeks as the holidays are coming up and there will be holiday homework sent home. Speaking of holidays… guess who replied to our letter! The students were so excited and were eager to see if they made it onto the “Nice List”! Of course they all did! They are great, cheery, hardworking, caring, and sweet students. 🙂
Letter from Santa!
Who is Ms. Fond? Hahaha.
The elves wrote us some messages too!
We added another station to our RBLM routine – this is called the Tub Train! This helps the students develop a stronger awareness of their muscles and joints. It is like strength training, where they are doing heavy work with their bodies. We remind them to do it slowly and to follow the line to help develop coordination and stability.
Final week of school next week before we break for the holidays! Let’s continue to learn and grow together! 🙂
It has been a week of cloudy weather, but we were in jolly spirits in the classroom! We started off the week with a Show & Tell! We got a friendly visit from Mario and Luigi, presents for our October birthday buddy!
zoom zoom!
The focus of this week was writing letters to Santa! The students worked hard on presenting their best printing Santa, especially when we said otherwise he won’t be able to read what they want for Christmas! 😉 We also encouraged to think about others and something to bring for someone else. We want them to understand Christmas and the holiday season is not just about presents, but about spending time with family, loved ones, and helping others. They put in great effort and decorated the letters with wonderful colouring! Santa will be so proud and happy, just like us! 🙂
The writing and wishing begins!
Decorating our letters!
Done!!
Ready for Delivery!
RBLM has become a regular part of most mornings, and the kids are getting stronger. They are building their core muscles for stability and are able to hold the Superman pose and the Popcorn pose longer and steadier. This week we added two stations called the Roll & Crawl and the Rabbit Hop. Roll & Crawl builds hand and shoulder strength, body awareness (turning to follow the zig-zags). Rabbit Hop stimulates eye-foot coordination and balance, and controlling our body during the “heavy work” of jumping. We will gradually add more stations, with each focusing on varying skills.
Station 1: Scooter Drills. Scooting along!
Station 2: Roll & Crawl
Make sure to turn at the right spot!
Station3: Rabbit Hop. Hop to it!
Keep your balance!
We had another birthday celebration today! This morning the students sang Happy Birthday for our December birthday buddy, and then enjoyed cupcakes and fruit juice! Have a great celebration this weekend and wishing you a fantastic 7th year!! 🙂
Here are some fun gym time photos – we have gym with Division 2 (also grade 2), and it is always a great time! We get to interact with other students outside of the classroom (not counting lunch and recess, learn about cooperation games and turn-taking and run off some of the excess energy we sometimes have! 🙂 This was a game called Astro Ball!
And a sweet photo of them all working and drawing quietly during calming time! They all chose to sit at the same table and kindly made space so they could all squish in comfortably together. :):):)
Thank you for signing up for conferences and I will see you next week! There will be a sign on the door with a number for you to call so I know to come down and let you in!
Stay warm and cozy up with a nice hot cup of cocoa!
It is the last week of November and the weather is definitely reminding us of that! Grateful to have the sun shining amidst these dropping and near freezing temperatures. We continue to work on our writing and reading and have mixed in computer programs that provide additional auditory methods of learning. We also mixed in some simple addition by turn our spelling words into “Scrabble Words”! The students enjoyed this new twist on spelling!
Which word “has” the most points?
I “will” do my best!
We “want” to learn!
Working on phonics on our computer programs
We have continued to develop the RBLM (Ready Bodies Learning Minds) program and the students are loving it! We introduced a new station, the Scooter Drills! It is an activity that works on developing the students core muscles and focus, as it helps stimulate their body movement. It works both ways where it can energize students but also calm them down as they focus to do a specific task with their whole body.
Good control and focus!
Scooter Drills build our core muscles.
We had two celebrations this week! The students were lovely and took some time to colour beautiful letters to make a banner for me, as I had my graduation ceremony for my Masters on Wednesday. You all are the reason I am a teacher, thank you! Ms. Joy took the time to put it all together and I was surprised with it when I arrived on Thursday morning! Thank you for all your hard work Division 8, and Ms. Joy for organizing it! 🙂
Then we had another fun celebration for one of our student’s birthday today! Cupcakes were brought in during our Fun Friday time. They all enjoyed Pokemon-themed cupcakes after singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to our November birthday buddy! Thank you for the treats and wishing you a great year ahead!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
Yum!
What’s the name of this Poke Ball?
He knew that it was fondant that was used to make the design!
We gotta catch them all!
Delicious!
Just some quick reminders – if you have not signed up for a conference yet (Wednesday Dec 11th or Thursday December 12th), please do so by clicking the button below. If the times do not work for you, please email me so we can discuss alternative options (such as a phone conference).
New Pizza forms for January orders are going home on the coming Monday. Please check the back pocket of the planner. They are due Friday December 13th!!
We had an eventful week of writing, literacy programs on the computer, handwriting practice, and celebrating Ms. Joy’s birthday with a mini math activity! We also practiced some in-class physical activities to improve our focus and boost the energy in our bodies so we are ready for learning!
We had to try to make the square cake into ten equal slices!
Math on the paper, party hat on the top!
Here’s a slice for you.. a slice for me…
Practicing our ruler skills.
Working hard for a piece of cake!
Thank you for the cake, Ms. Joy!
We are practicing the Superman/Supergirl Pose! This helps strengthen our core and develop our balance.
The students have become more comfortable with writing and are gradually able to write more lengthy sentences with guidance. There is a lot of emphasis on proper letter formation and sentence structure, such as where we begin writing letters and what we have at the beginning and end of a sentence (upper case letter and a period/punctuation), respectively. Please take the time to review these concepts with your child at home too!
Also, mid-term conferences are coming up in two weeks! They will be on Wednesday December 11th and Thursday December 12th after school from 3:35 to 5:10pm. Each conference slot is around 20 minutes. Please sign up for a time slot by pressing the button below. It is the same website as before – SignupGenius.com.
We started Show & Tell and it has been great to see what students bring in to share with us! It gives them the chance to practice public speaking and gather their thoughts to present in a coherent manner.
This was his football team and medal!
Congrats, champ!
Please remember to sign up for a conference. If there are any questions or issues, please email me!
In between the daily writing and reading activities, we squeeze in some math and art! It develops their fine motor skills and language skills in explaining the processes. We worked on counting by 2s and 5s with stackable cubes.
We also introduced some new multi-sensory stations to strengthen various ways for the students to learn their vocabulary. We have “Type the Word”, where they look for the letters on a keyboard and type them out (it’s a paper screen though! :)). This helps with their hand-eye coordination. There is also “Sand the Word”, which they all love! They have the chance to write the vocabulary words in sand with a chopstick (we switched from popsicle sticks once we saw they were too short!), which practices their pencil grip and and proper letter formation (without going through lots of paper)!
We also made some Talking Sticks last week and they will be coming home today! The students enjoyed choosing their own feathers and beads to decorate the Talking Sticks. It’s nice to throw in some art and encourage the students’ creativity! Thanks to Ms. Joy for the great art project idea! 🙂
We changed up our regular journal writing to do some Sticker Stories! I gave the students each a sticker to begin with and they were asked to start writing a story. Once they felt it was as far as they could go, I would give them another sticker to continue the story. The students tried to use their current and past vocabulary words as well. It was fun to see their creativity!
Sticker Story time!
Relaxing at the end of the day listening to the BFG!
Stay tuned for another post this Friday about what we’ve been up to this week and upcoming events!
We are finally back up and running on a new website after a few weeks of technical/digital difficulties. Thank you for your patience, and now here’s a big post with lots of photos and updates!
We had a fantastic Halloween party on October 31st, complete with a literal song & dance during the school sharing assembly! We joined with Division 3 to make up a dance to the Ghostbusters Theme song; the students loved it and were great performers!
Pictionary
Take a guess!
Make that spider go faster!
Keep track of the eyeball!
Can you pick up candies with a mitt on?
Toss the ball into the egg cup!
The alligator takes a bite!
All about that balance!
Guess how many eyeballs there are!
Look at Captain stack!
Halloween Bingo!
Keep the pumpkin balloon up!
Celebrity Guest Appearance by The Paper Bag Princess!
Regular posts will be every Friday, but as there is a bit of catching up to do, I will try to post again next Tuesday. Stay tuned for more news happening in this TEIR-rific classroom!
Please check out the “Extra Extra! Get it Here!” page for the show & tell schedule.
Teaching TEIR-rific Kids! 