Mrs. Vail & Mrs. Rabidoux

As the holiday approaches, we invited a special guest to our class today. Check out the picture below to see who it was:

You should have seen the kids faces as we sang, “Here Comes Santa Claus” and listened for the bells.

Check out more pictures of our day on the link to the right entitled, “Christmas in Sk-1″.

Santa: Thank you for sparing the time in your very busy schedule to come and great all 50 very eager and excited kids!

Today we read a story called Rudolph Shines again by Robert Lewis May. It’s a story of how Rudolph is again bullied. As he becomes more and more devastated he begins to feel sorry for himself. As he wallows in self-pity his nose begins to lose its shine, until the glow is completely gone. After running away he finds that he doesn’t need to feel sorry for himself.

While reading this book we worked on becoming good readers by stopping part way through and predicting what might happen next.

Here are what a few of the students predicted might happen:

Sam said, "I predict that Rudolph will go to the North Pole and find some Polar Bears."

Jadyn said, "I predict that Rudolph will go into a cave."

Today we learned all about what the word texture means. We used our sense of touch to describe the texture of some different items in a bag. Some of the words to describe how things felt in our bag were, “prickly, smooth, hard, not bumpy, and pokey.” At the end of the day we started our own texture book. Look for the book coming home over the next few days. It is full of different textures with words that we can read.

At home: Can you find an object that has at least 4 different textures on it? What about 5? What different words can you come up with to describe the texture of these objects?

Today we had our dress rehearsal for the Primary winter concert, “Stars.” The students did a great job of sharing the singing role of many songs and poems and listened very well to a native story teller who told of how the season of winter came to be. Thank you to everyone who remembered to send their child to school in black today. Please remember that he/she should also wear black tomorrow for the real performance. Hope to see you at the concert at 9:30 am!

We have been learning that not everyone celebrates Christmas at this time of year. This week we centred in on the holiday of Hanukkah. Our weekly song (1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Candles - it is in your child’s red “I Can Read Book” this week) taught us all about the menorah and the length of the Hanukkah holiday. We also did some research in fiction and non-fiction books. Today the book that we read taught us some new information about this Jewish holiday. Here is what we got from our story:

At home: The book wasn’t able to answer all of our questions. Try doing some of your own research to find out: 1. What is a challah? 2. What is a Kosher deli? What is their importance to the Jewish holiday?

… can make a world of difference.

This students asked if he could write a letter to the class today. This is what he wrote:

Dec.7, 2011 Dear boys and girls, Mrs. Vail and Mrs. R came to my piano lessons. From, Ricky

Last night we had the pleasure of sitting in on a piano lesson of one of the students in our class. He was so excited! Even today, a day after the fact, he could hardly contain his excitement as he danced around the hallway in the morning announcing to everyone what had happened the night before! We should have been the ones dancing as it was us, the teachers, who got to see what a great piano player he is! What a blessing it was to be able to sit and watch him learn and excel in something that was outside of the classroom. And because of it, he wanted to write a letter to tell all of the kids in the class about it! How can a teacher refuse to let a child want to write when it’s not writing time!

We would love to connect with more students in the class. Please let us know if there is something that your child does outside of school hours that we can come and watch. We’d love to show them how much they are appreciated, loved and valued as a part of our classroom, both during and outside of school hours. It doesn’t matter what it is: another music lesson, a hockey game, gymnastic meet, dance recital, swimming lessons, or a Girl Guide/Beaver meeting, we’d love to come and spend a short time watching your child do something that they love. Please let us know.

Every Monday morning we write in our journals about something that we did on the weekend. Here is what a few of the students in our class wrote about.

Nadine write - "I made a snowman. I had a great time."

Aiden wrote - "I decorated my christmas tree. I wrapped presents."

Christopher wrote - "I went on a bumpy road in a car."

Dale wrote - "On the weekend I played with my car."

We have been learning all about how many syllables are in words. We graphed our names.

How many syllables are in your name? What if you added your middle or last name? How many now?

Since the first day of school, we have had a daily message in the form of a letter. Today we started to take that letter apart and talk about the different important parts that need to be in every letter. The kindergarten curriculum states that students should experiment with a variety of writing forms, while Grade 1 students must generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to write for an intended audience. Can you guess who our “intended audience” will be within the next few weeks?! (hint – Ho Ho Ho)

As we wrote our letter, we added the punctuation. We left out some very important punctuation. Check out the picture with your child, and have him/her find the missing punctuation. Will it be a period? Maybe it’s a comma?

At home: Have your child sit down with you and write a Christmas letter to someone. Make sure you get all 5 important parts!

Today we looked a little closer at time.

After finding out that we can hiccup, turn around, jump once, and say a letter in a second, we looked at a minute. First we watched the clock for a minute. Then, we jumped around for a minute. After that, those who brought in show-and-share showed us what they could do for a minute. We had some great ideas come in! Here are just a few things that we can do in a minute:

This student wrote, "I can sing "I found a penny" in a minute."

This student's writing about her show-and-share says, "I can make a shaker" and she did, right in front of our eyes!

Another student brought in a piece of paper and a marker and said that she could draw a snowman in a minute. Others, brought in their tooth brushes, skipping ropes and a few brought in their toys, saying that they could play for a minute.

At home: What can you do together for a minute at a time?