Christmas Traditions

This afternoon we had a tasting party!  Parents sent a variety of special foods for the grade ones to taste and enjoy.  We had lefse, roll kuchen, beetniks, kilkees, pulla, krumkake and Belgian Christmas waffle cookies.  Everything was delicious.  Take a look at the food in the slideshow below:

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Ways to Show 17

This is my first attempt at "producing" a video!  In Math, we have learned many different ways to show numbers. Each student told a different way to make the number seventeen.  We used words like:  more, less, between.

Dominoes

Our lessons this week in Math have been about comparing groups of objects and using words like more, less, fewer, and equal.
Today we played "War" using our new domino sets!  Students worked in pairs.  They each turned over a domino and had to add the number of "pips" (dots), then compare their domino to their partner's by saying:  "9 is more than 7". 
Here are a few pictures:

Christmas Crafts

This afternoon we worked together with the other grade one classes to make some Christmas crafts.  I meant to take more pictures to show everyone working, but we got a little busy!  (Imagine forty-nine six and seven year olds all in one space talking, gluing and cutting at the same time!!)  It was a lot of fun!
Some other things we've been working on this week:

• Math - comparing groups of objects using words like: more, less, fewer, same, equal.
• Reading - reading and writing CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words with short vowel sounds.  We practice sorting the words into word families, spell the words, match picture and word cards.
• Social Studies - our current unit is Traditions and Celebrations.  Today we did a survey and 17 out of 19 students' favorite celebration is Christmas!
• Music - singing Christmas carols!  "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" is a favourite.

Pictures from our craft session:

Have a great weekend!

Daily Five

We have been practicing several routines that reinforce various Language Arts concepts that we have learned. We call these routines the Daily Five. They are: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Word Work and Work on Writing.  The following pictures show students engaged in these activities.

Word Work - This student is spelling some of our "heart words"
using play dough.

Listen to Reading - Students follow the text by listening to a
story cassette.

Work on Writing - Students choose their own story topics. 
We have been working on adding lots of details to our
stories!

More Word Work - Students use letter stamps and stamp pads
to practice spelling word family words.

Read to Self - Students find their own spot in the room and
practice reading the "just right" books from their book
baskets. 

Read to Someone - Students take turns reading the books from their
book baskets to a partner.

More Word Work - This student is using stencils to practice
spelling words.