News for January 28

News for January 28

This week we started a unit on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. It's always fun to read nursery rhymes to young children and have them start to "read" along. They are always amazed to realize they have so many little stories already inside them! Nursery rhymes are a wonderful way for children to practise listening to the sounds in words, especially the rhyming words. We also learned about the "beat" in rhymes and poems by clapping the beat as we recited the nursery rhymes. We also had fun playing clapping games with a partner while saying the rhymes Pat-A-Cake and From Wibbleton to Wobbleton. We now have a set of little nursery rhyme books in the reading centre that the children love to pick up and read.

The class had fun listening to the classic fairy tale, The Three Little Pigs. The students are learning what makes a classic fairy tale so special. A few things this week that we talked about was that the stories begin with "Once upon a time..." indicating that the stories are set in a time long ago (e.g., before computers and cars) and the fact that animals act like people (e.g. they talk and wear clothes). As always, more information on the books read aloud in class can be found at our sister blog, http://planet5books.blogspot.com/.

The students have worked very hard to learn the sounds and shapes of 21 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. This week, the class learned the shapes, sounds and songs for C, K and T. They are getting very good at sounding out phonetic words (e.g., dog) and recognizing irregular words (e.g., the). They are now writing regularly in their journals and becoming more confident in their attempts to write words on their own. We learned the story of Zac the Rat and the children practised reading the words of the story as they touched each word. A copy of this story was sent home with each child on Friday.

Together we wrote an article about the scientist's visit to our class last week. It was very interesting to see what they remembered and which activity was a favourite. Everybody loved the Fishing Game! This article will be in the February school newsletter.

There was a school-wide dental screening this week. Carol, a dental hygenist, came and checked the teeth of the students in both classes. Before her visit, the children discussed how and why it is important to take care of your teeth. We also talked about dentists and the job they do in our community.