First of all we would like to give a big thank you to the parent volunteers who helped make the French Scholastic Book Sale such a success! We were able to buy enough books to nicely supplement our kindergarten classes. MERCI ! We owe all of our parent volunteers (lunch time helpers, classroom support, coordinators of large school wide projects) a huge MERCI ! FAH would not be the same without you!
Last week we continued to build our boats and make changes to our existing ones. We realized that we can make large boats with cardboard and paper but they do not make good boats, as they absorb water and slowly sink! If a boat is too heavy on one side it tips, flips, and sinks. If the sides are not tall enough the boats are not capable of carrying a load as water is able to enter the boat and it sinks.
We had a dietician, parent volunteer, come in and teach the children about the 4 food groups, as well as foods that are closer to their original form are the best for our bodies (e.g. apples are better than apple juice). They created placemats and sorted various food images into the four food groups. Next, they brought their placemats to the lunch room and divided the foods in their lunches to see if they could find food from all of the groups.
Karissa has been exploring Picasso with the children as they create flowers in their hand. They also created one-of-a-kind Mother's Day painting. This was an activity that allowed the children to discover the use of acrylic paints and express themselves in a meaningful way. They took so much time, care, and love when creating these masterpieces!
Yesterday, we had a tiny black visitor. One student has a new kitten and his dad stopped by to show her off.
Wow! Our trees are really growing! We have been watering and monitoring the amount of light our plants are receiving. The children have been measuring and discussing which plant is the tallest or shortest, as well as which plants are bigger than or smaller than (plus grande ou plus petite) another. They continue to document all of the changes they discover in the Science Centre.
The children are so excited to watch how the tiny caterpillars have grown so much over the last 2 weeks. It has become a morning ritual to discover how big they have become. We can't wait to hear what they say when they see the caterpillars start to form chrysalises. They have discovered that life cycles are patterns in nature. Today we saw how frogs, dogs, lizards, snakes, chicken, and even humans have life cycles. Journal writing comprised of creating life cycles of a living creature. One girl was amazed as she discovered that Mme Tipler was once a baby too!
Butterflies and math-patterns & symmetry. We discovered that not only is the life cycle of the butterfly a pattern, but butterflies are also symmetrical. We coloured in butterflies to show how much we know about symmetry, then we sang and danced around the room to a new song as we reviewed colours in French.
Petit papillon, petit papillon
Vole, vole, vole.
Petit papillon, petit papillon
Trouve une fleur "rouge".
Later, geoboards were used by students to create symmetrical images uses elastics.
Today we played various types of math games. The children particularly like "Bus Stop" a game where you need to roll 2 die. The red dice tells us how far we can move our bus. When we move our bus to a new position, we need to see if there is a "+" or "-" on that spot. Then we count the dots on the white dice and either add that number of people to our bus or take that number of people off of our bus. This is a very fun math game.
Eating lunch in the new room has proven to be quite successful.
Have an awesome night!
Reminders:
Pottery-To-Go has been moved to May 22nd. If you would like to volunteer during this activity, please send us an email. The children will be painting a Father's Day present. If you have not already done so, please send in $7.00 for this activity. MERCI ! :)
A Year End Celebration will occur in June, acknowledging the great accomplishments of all of the children. We will let you know asap the date that we have chosen.