It seems that the nice weather is finally here! :) It is important that your child come to school wearing sunscreen and have a small container of it in his/her backpack to reapply during the day. We recommend that it be cream instead of an aerosol spray. We also recommend that your child bring a hat to school to wear outside because we do not have much shade on our school yard. Remember to pack your child a refillable water bottle.
![]() We have been learning about rainforests. Did you know that the rainforest has four layers: forest floor, understory, canopy and emergent? We painted a mural of the different layers of the rainforest, then using pool noodles and some twine, we made a rainforest in our dramatic play area. Through our inquiry, we became interested in the jaguar. We then focused our learning on the jaguar. We can now tell the jaguar, leopard, and cheetah apart. Do you know the differences? Jaguars are carnivores and love to eat peccaries - a type of pig that lives on the forest floor. Our writing is posted in the classroom, along with our diagrams of rainforests. So much learning taking place! Mark your calendars for our Mother's Day Tea party. On Friday, May 9th beginning at 2:00 p.m. in our classroom, we will be hosting our Mother's Day Tea Party. Mothers will be invited to visit our classroom for a short presentation by their children, followed by a light snack to celebrate your special day. We would ask that you make childcare arrangements for younger siblings, as space in the classroom is limited. If mommies are unable to attend, perhaps your child would like to invited a grandmother or aunt instead. We will share more details as the day approaches.
May is a busy month for us in Kindergarten! There will be many opportunities to volunteer with us in this month. Please check the following dates on your calendar. More specific information will follow for each event leading up to it.
![]() The past two days we have done a mini-inquiry on volcanoes. We have asked all kinds of questions. Where do we find volcanoes? Why do volcanoes erupt? Why do they have fire? Why is there smoke? After reading some non-fiction books and watching videos, we have learnt that in the inside of the volcano the rock melts into magma. It only becomes lava when the volcano erupts through the vent. The smoke we see is really a cloud of ash and gases.There are photos on Twitter of our volcanic experiments! Some friends painted their own volcanoes. We had a blast! Next week we are off to the Amazon! This week we have been working on making the number ten in as many ways as we can! Some of us have made "stories of ten" in flap books to show all the ways they to make ten (e.g. 5 + 5 = 10). We have been working with manipulatives (e.g. crayons) to show two groups that make ten. We have also been practising printing our numbers. We are learning that four (4) is the only number we have to lift our pencil while printing, all the other numbers we can print in a fluid motion.
![]() Why are we participating in Play for Change today? Our grade students continue their initiatives for Free the Children, an organization that helps children all around the world to have an education. All the funds collected throughout this school year will contributed to this wonderful organization to build schools in developing countries. 1 Brick = #20.00 A Lot of Bricks = A School A School = An Education Thank you for your continued support! ![]() We hope everyone had a great March Break! We are back at school and ready to share our last three months (or so) together! Where has the year gone?! This week, we have been discussing fairy tales. What is a fairy tale? What characters are in fairy tales? What are the settings of fairy tales? We have discovered that fairy tales are fiction stories because they are "not real". In our classroom, we painted a castle wall in our kitchen area and brought out some new dress-up clothes. We also brought out our puppet theatre and borrowed puppets from Mrs. Brennan's class. Some of our friends are truly enjoying creating and acting out their own fairy tales! Next week, we will be comparing some of our favourite fairy tales. All of our work with fiction stories will help us when we begin to look at the differences between fiction and non- ![]() Did you know that Dean in our class shares his birthday with Dr.Seuss? We think that is pretty neat! This week we have done a few Dr.Seuss inspired addition activities with the book One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish, with Miss Mackenzie and some fish crackers - although we were not allowed to eat them! We also made lists of /at/ and /ip/ rhyming words. We want to be able to rhyme just like Dr. Seuss.You never know, on Monday we might find some wockets in our pockets... ![]() Over the past two weeks we have completed a class inquiry about our solar system! Together we made a model by painting foam spheres and hanging them,in orbit, from our ceiling.We have drawn our own diagrams of the solar system and learnt new information about each planet. Do you know which planets are known as the "gas giants"? We do! We kept track of our learning on a large chart and wrote on post-its every time we learnt a new fact. Some of us wrote about our favourite planet.This writing in hanging up in the hallway outside of our classroom. Don't forget to ask us about our favourite planet? Some of us made rockets using tanagrams (various two-dimensional shapes) by tracing and colouring our design on paper. At our art centre, many of us painted diagrams of our favourite planets. Using marshmellows and toothpicks, we made our own constellations. Our learning was out of this world! |
AuthorHi, I am Mrs. Pearen! I am in my sixth year of teaching with the Ottawa Catholic School Board. This is my first year at St. Gabriel and I am very excited to be one of your child's educators. We are going to have a great year together! Archives
May 2014
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