News for October 13

News for October 13

Another four-day week this week, had the children busy writing their first books, learning about math fact families and dying fabric for pillows!

In writing, the class learned about the different stages that writers do, to complete writing projects. The stages are: planning, writing the rough copy, editing (correcting mistakes through self-editing and editing with the teacher), revising (improving writing through adding adjectives and more details) and publishing (otherwise known as “good copy”). The first first big writing project of the year is almost finished as the children create illustrations and design the front and back covers of their books.

In math, the students learned about “fact families” or related addition and subtraction facts. These introduce a helpful strategy for adding and subtracting, since if you know that 4+5=9, then you also know that 5+4=9, 9-5=4 and 9-4=5. The students also worked in partners to respond to the math challenge, “What is the sum of the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9?” There were many different ways to get to the answer and the partner demonstrated a lot of persistence to find the final answer.

In social studies, the children reviewed what a country is and the 7 continents. Then each child picked the names of three countries that they would like to know more about. They will each research one of these countries, starting next week. (Three are chosen initially so that everyone does a project on a different country and the class as a whole can learn more about 21 different countries.)

In art, the children spent a lot of time talking about colours! First the students learned about the “colour wheel” by creating their own colour wheels using play doh. The primary colours are yellow, red and blue and these colours are mixed to create other colours. The secondary colours are green, orange and purple and are made by mixing primary colours. When all the colours are mixed together, you get a range of grey to brown (depending on the amounts of each colour that were used). The children mixed other colours too. Adding white to any colour makes a “tint” and adding black creates a “shade”. Did you know that yellow, orange and red are considered “warm colours” and blue, purple and green are “cool colours”?  

The class was inspired by our pet snail George and two books read aloud about snails, to create art posters showing the warm and cool colours and writing about what they learned about colours this week. These posters are being displayed in the hall outside our classroom.

The students learned how to make block letters and used this skill to decorate their school portfolios. These portfolios are used to collect samples of work of each child. 

The children began a BIG project this week…making their own pillows! There are six basic steps to making a pillow and the class completed step one this week. The students each learned how to tie-dye a piece of white fabric. By folding and twisting the fabric and wrapping it with elastic bands, each child created places for the dye to go and to not go, in order to create a pattern. Did you know that salt is added to the dye liquid to make sure the colour doesn't leave the fabric when it’s washed? (This is called a mordant.)

Books read aloud this week:

The Biggest House in the World by Leo Lionni

The Story Snail - A Fairy Tale from Italy by Anne Rockwell

The Bookshop Dog by Cynthia Ryland

The Little Red Pen by Janet Stevens