News for February 11

News for February 11

We finished off the unit on fairy tales this week. The class watched a video of the story of Rumplestiltskin. The children know that a movie is another way to tell a story. This story illustrates another characteristic of some fairy tales, that of a "magic" character. In this case a little man that could spin straw into gold.

The students have now memorized the story of The Three Little Pigs, told in song. They know the words and actions and how to perform the song as "actors". A copy of this was sent home with the children on Friday.

The class worked hard each day to practise their blending of sounds to make word (decoding). This practise also helps them when they write in their journals (encoding). The students learned the songs, sounds and shapes of the capital letters I and J. We have also started playing with the first sounds in the children's names by assigning an adjective with the same beginning sound, for example, Cool Chris and Nice Natali.

On Friday, the class learned about Valentine's Day and made their "mailbags" for exchanging Valentine cards next Monday.

The students created a banner for our 100 Days party by coloring designs for the repeating pattern 1, 0, 0, heart.

At our 100 Days celebration, the students did many activities to help them learn about the concept of 100. The children strung 100 fruit loop cereals pieces, like beads, on string. They drew and stamped on a grid of 100 rectangles. They coloured on 100 themed colouring page and could have their faces painted. There were also bins of 100 different objects to play with, for example blocks and pennies. The students learned a new song to help celebrate the day (sung to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell"):

100 days of school,

100 days of school,

1...0...0.... days,

100 days of school!

A video of photos from our day can be found at the end of this posting.