'Twas The Week Before Christmas: JV Edition!

'Twas the week before Christmas,
And all through the halls,
The students (and their teacher),
Were bouncing off the walls!

To keep the kids focused, 
To keep them engaged, 
Loads of fun things were planned,
For the last 5 days!

As our week began, 
The third candle was lit,
The pink candle of JOY,
Oh, what a perfect fit!

We did an art project,
Built a stable of wood,
Added our Holy Family,
Beneath a star they stood.

We rehearsed for the concert,
Sang of the holy night,
We practiced and practiced,
No sign of stage fright!

While the gym was so busy, 
We moved by stacking cups!
Dexterity and patterning
Made our cup stacks go up!

We made words and were reading,
For math we had time,
These kids do love writing,
A favourite pastime!

We worked in small teams,
Made a zipline to save
Poor Elmer the Elf,
We're creative and brave!

Cozy in jammies
We gathered to see
The movie The Star
Told by a special donkey!

The week reached it's end,
And the holiday drew near,
Merry Christmas to all!
See you in the New Year!

Love and blessings, 

Mrs. Beliveau

Heaps of Snow!

Our playground and field are covered in snow, so it was fitting this week to read Eric Carle's book Dream Snow!

In the story, a farmer falls asleep and dreams that snow covers his farm animals. This book is very clever! Clear plastic sheets, with "snow" on them, can be lifted to reveal the animal underneath! The students loved this!

Inspired by a similar project on Mrs. Bainbridge's blog, we began creating our own version of Mr. Carle's book, but with a twist! Students were each going to write several clues about an animal of their choosing. An illustration of the animal would accompany the clues. Just like in Mr. Carle's book, a clear page with painted "snow" would cover the animal, so it would be lifted up to reveal the animal hidden under the snowbank!

Here is the criteria the students followed for the project:

Children got right to work writing clues for an animal of their choosing. They were very secretive about their animal, and worked nearly silently on their clues.

Students were challenged to write four clues, each beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period. As well, students were challenged to spell Word Wall Words correctly (weekly spelling words posted on the wall).

Once we completed our clues, we moved on to our illustrations. Students drew their animal, as secretly as possible, on a snowy landscape.

The very best part of the project was adding "snow" to a transparency placed over each student's illustration.

These amazing writing projects are on display in our hallway, and everyone is enjoying peeking under the snowbanks to see the animal hidden underneath! Can you guess the animal by reading the clues?

It's a fox!

Because of their fantastic work, the hallway near our classroom has been packed with curious students, reading the clues and peeking under the snowbanks! Well done, Grade One!

Advent: Joyful Waiting!

This past Sunday marked the first Sunday of Advent. 

We have been learning about the liturgical calendar. Can your child point out Advent?

Advent is a time of hope and anticipation. We are waiting for the birth of Christ! 



We changed our prayer table cloth from green, when it was Ordinary Time, to purple for Advent. Can you see our wreath? We light one candle for each of the four Sundays in Advent. This week we lit the first candle. As we light more candles each week, our world becomes brighter, symbolizing our growing anticipation of Jesus, who is the light of our world. 

At mass, the priest now wears purple vestments, the altar has a purple table cloth, and the advent wreath is displayed. 

Each morning, we will have a little Advent celebration during our daily Connection Time. 

Throughout Advent we reflect on the birth of Christ by adding to our Advent lapbook! These will come home prior to Christmas break. 

As we journey towards Christmas, may we prepare our hearts with kindness as we joyfully wait for the coming of Jesus!

Subitizing: Seeing Spots and Polka Dots!

We have completed our math unit exploring numbers to 20! A major concept we have practiced is subitizing. Subitizing is being able to look at a group and know how many there are, without having to count each individual item. In short, subitizing is "instantly seeing how many". 

We subitize when we roll a die. You didn't have to count the dots to know you rolled a five, right?

What better way to practice this new skill of subitizing then to play games?

Here is our class playing an "I have ... Who has..." subitizing game together:

We also have many small group and partner subitizing games, too!

This group took on the challenge of playing a subitizing BINGO game:

These students play Snakes and Ladders, but rather than roll a die, they use subitizing cards:

Our memories are tested with this subitizing memory game:

Find It is a game we also enjoy!

Ready to subitize? Below is a link to a subitizing YouTube clip. Numbers appear on a 10-frame, a handy way we sometimes count in class. We know that a full frame is 10, and just one full row is 5. Sometimes seeing the empty spaces is more helpful than looking at the full spaces, too. Careful, it's really fast!




The skill of subitizing is key in developing our number sense, and will be integral in our exploration of addition and subtraction. 

Dressed in dots!

Kids Who Wiggle!

We wiggle. We shimmy. We squirm, we twist, we bounce! It is highly possible there are ants. In. Our. Pants. Lots of 'em! 6 year-olds just aren't built to sit still, so we change activities about every 5 to 15 minutes. The boys and girls are certainly not expected to sit still all day!

When we are in need of a wiggle break, and there is no Phys Ed or recess on the horizon, we visit GoNoodle! It is an online hub for goofy, sing along movement breaks! We stretch, we dance, we sing along, we shake it during Zumba, and we always laugh! Each time our class does a movement break, our "champ" grows! It is so motivating!

Here are the boys and girls in action:

Here is one of our favourite movement breaks from GoNoodle ... Milkshake!




Given that we are the wiggle experts of Jean Vanier, it only made sense that we read the book Lines that Wiggle! Silly monsters showed us so many different types of lines. 



So we got to work practicing our lines:

Then we drew 5 or 6 across a white page, added a small black frame and got to work colouring each "piece" inside the frame!

Look at this careful, creative work!

Enjoy are our fantastic, colourful, wiggly, squiggly masterpieces!

Sentence Exploration

When we started Grade 1 together, we knew the sounds the letters make and a few words, too (thank you Mrs. Sombyk & Mrs. Nestorowich!). You'll never believe it, but we are now working on writing FULL SENTENCES! 

We really began examining what a sentence was this past Monday. 

We learned three things every sentence has:

Then Mrs. Beliveau revealed her hidden talent ... rapping!

We sorted letters, words and sentences as a class ...

... and then continued our sorting independently!

During our writing blocks, we are practicing writing our own complete sentences.

Writing strong sentences is a skill we will work on frequently throughout the year. Support your child by finding sentences in the books you read, by identifying components of a sentence in our daily agenda message, and by writing sentences together ... the sillier the better!


"Is It a Sentence" poster was from here. 
Pete the Cat Letter, Word and Sentence sort was from here. 

Peaceful Hands & Hearts

Remembrance Day can be a challenging concept for our littlest, so this week we took it down to their level; kindness, peacefulness, and gentleness became our focus. How have others made our world peaceful? How can we thank them?  How can we be the hands of Jesus? Our focus this week was peace.  

As we often do, literacy introduced these topics:

Together we read the book I Call My Hand Gentle.

Then we traced and decorated our hands, reflecting on when our hands are gentle. 

Please enjoy this little slide show of how gentle our hands can be!



We also took time to read The Peace Book by Todd Parr.  He is an author we all enjoy!

As a class, we made a book together about when we feel peace, inspired by Mr. Parr's book!

Peace is ... playing my iPad, when I pet my dog, playing the guitar, and reading in bed.

We spent some quiet time creating some beautiful "stained glass windows" that can be hung at home during the fall break as a reminder to pray for all peacemakers. 

Today, we gathered as a school community to pray, remember, and express gratitude for all those who have worked and are currently working for peace.

What a meaningful week. Hopefully the boys and girls are able to look at the poppies on their collars with a little more understanding and a lot more gratitude. 

May we all use our hands for gentleness and peace, as we are Christ's hands here on earth.