O Come Let Us Adore Him!

Christmas break is upon us! Despite the unexpected move to online learning, our students were still able to deepen their faith and prepare their hearts with kindness for the coming of Jesus!

Have a look at our journey through Advent!

May your families be blessed with peace, joy and health throughout this Christmas season!

Christmas blessings and lots of love, 

Mrs. Beliveau

Dream Snow!

Last week we read 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! 

Armed with our knowledge of sentences, we made our own version of the book, but with a twist! 

Students each wrote clues about an animal of their choosing. Kids were challenged to write a sentence beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period. As well, students were required to spell Word Wall Words correctly (weekly spelling words posted on the wall).

An illustration of the animal accompanied their clues, too!

Just like in Dream Snow, a clear page with painted "snow" covered the animal, so it would be lifted up to reveal the animal hidden under the snowbank! The very best part of this was adding "snow"!

Here are the clues:

Peek under the "snow" to see the animal!

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

Advent: A Season of 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. 

Today our class led a school-wide virtual assembly, celebrating the first week of Advent and lighting the candle of hope. 

Families can share in our celebration from home:

Each morning, we will have a little Advent celebration during our daily Connection Time. As we journey towards Christmas, may we prepare our hearts with kindness as we joyfully wait for the coming of Jesus!

Sentence Superstars!

When we started Grade 1 together, we knew the sounds the letters make (thank you, Mrs. Sombyk and Miss Wilson!) and a few words. 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:

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

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

... and then continued our sorting independently!

As a class, we worked together to correct sentences, adding capitals and end punctuation. 

Using supported sentence frames, we practiced writing our own complete sentences! Soon we'll learn how to use the criteria checklist, in the top right corner.

Writing strong sentences is a skill we will work on 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. 

Spend a Morning in Grade 1!

Ever wondered that a morning in Grade 1 looks like? Come spend some time with us! Although the pandemic has changed how we move through our day, our learning continues to be rich and our classroom community strong. 

We begin each day in a similar way. After announcements and agendas, we head to the empty room next door for Connection Time! We always begin with prayer. Then we greet each other in different ways each day . . . and today was a dancing greeting! "1, 2, 3, 4, Come on (student), hit the floor! We're so glad you're here today! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"

Then we all share our news! Today we heard about wiggly teeth, a cat's birthday, a new outfit, a homemade movie theatre, and a show and tell that was earned from reading!

Then we solve a social problem as a class, and close Connection Time with a carefully chosen story. For more about our daily Connection Time, click here!

We head back to our classroom to count our days! We also work with the same poem or rhyme all week long. This allows the children to build their reading fluency. This week's focuses on reading with expression.  

Can you believe we have only been in class for 40 minutes?!?

We sharpen our literacy and numeracy skills using our daily Building Skills activity!

We are starving! Snack time, and then out for recess! Each day our grade 1 cohort has a different place to play. Today we are on the big wooden park!

Back inside and we are off to buddy read! We re-read the home reading book we took home last night to a friend, then quietly exchange for a new book. 

Each day we review our 5 weekly words, and today we played an individual dice game and did some play dough to practice!

Today in Math we continued to focus on writing addition sentences. We acted out a variety of problems, and recorded the addition sentence on our whiteboards. We also practiced this skill in our math books, too! 

Thank you for "joining" us in our classroom for a morning. Please know that I very much miss having family members present in our school, and it is my hope that this post helps you get a feel for what learning looks like during this pandemic. These children have adapted to the protocols and we have created a wonderful classroom family to learn with each day. 

Harnessing the Halloween Energy!

Between the full moon and Halloween approaching, boy has there been energy in Grade 1!

Rather than let that energy get out of control, the boys and girls got to work on several creative Halloween projects! Here is a peek at our week!

Making Connections

We were introduced to the reading comprehension strategy called "making text to self connections". Simply put, students are encouraged to connect a personal experience they have had with something in the story. This helps children better understand the story.

This past week, we practiced making personal connections using several Halloween books!

 

• The Littlest Pumpkin is about a teeny tiny pumpkin that nobody picks from a pumpkin patch. We thought of a time we felt disappointed. 

• Where's My Mummy is about a little mummy who is lost and can't find his mama. What a scary feeling! 

• Creepy Carrots is about a rabbit who fears his favourite snack, carrots!

• Crankenstein is about all the things that can make a kid cranky!

Here are some of the personal connections the children made:

It Didn't Frighten Me Pattern Stories

After hearing the story It Didn't Frighten Me, the boys and girls got to work creating their own spooky pattern stories! 

Here is the criteria they followed:

The boys and girls worked over several days to complete their stories. 

Here are a few pages from these amazing books!

These spooky stories will come home today! Have a safe and spooky Halloween weekend!

Where's My Mummy activity from Deanna Jump's unit. 
The Littlest Pumpkin activity from Cara Carroll. 
Crankenstein activity from Falling Into First. 
Creepy Carrots inspired by Anita Bremmer. 

Connections poster from the Comprehension Strategy Poster collection made by A Year of Many Firsts.  

Prayer & Gratitude

PRAYER

October is the month of the rosary. To make this form of meditative prayer accessible for us little ones in Grade 1, we prayed one decade each day for five days.

To prepare for our Decade-a-Day prayer journey, we made single-decade rosaries.  The decade of 10 beads can be moved around as each prayer is shared.

To connect our daily decade to the full rosary, we coloured in the 10 beads we prayed each day. 

Learning the Hail Mary prayer has been central to our exploration of the rosary. A "puzzle-piece" prayer came home this week. Consider praying this prayer as a family. 

THANKFUL THURSDAYS

We. Love. Thursdays. We really do!

We call this day "Thankful Thursday" and recently we have begun journaling about what we are thankful for. Gratitude breeds positivity and it is a wonderful lifelong practice that will help our students see the blessings God has sprinkled into our lives!

This year we are journaling in beautiful Grateful People journals. This is a year-long practice that will help us to see and appreciate all of the goodness around us!

Building Number Sense: JUNK IT!

In grade 1 we learn how our number system works by examining numbers up to 100. First, we went hunting for numbers! Where do we see numbers? When do we use numbers each day? Why are numbers so important?

Right now we are working very closely with numbers to 20. 

• How are numbers related? 
• What are some different ways to make a number? 
• How can we take a number apart? 
• How can we count carefully?

Keep hunting for numbers with your child! Road signs, recipes, flyers ... they're everywhere and so important!

Junk It Game

In case you haven't heard, we were introduced to a fast-paced card game, Junk It! It helps us recognize numerals and order them to 10. 

Junk It is a 2-player game. Remove face cards, but keep Aces. 

Put 10 cards in two rows of 5 face down in front of each player. Place the remaining cards in the centre. 

The first player flips a card over, and places it in its numerical spot. 

He picked up a 2 ... 

... so he put it down where the 2 goes. 

When he placed his card in the 2 spot, he picked up a 7 (formerly face down in the 2nd place). Off the 7 goes to spot 7!

When he put the 7 down, he picked up a 3, so off that card goes to the 3rd place. 

Notice how when he put his 3 down, he picked up the card in that spot? It is another 7! He already has a 7, so he gets to call JUNK IT and discard it in the middle. 

His opponent can either pick up the card that was just discarded, or select a new card from the pile. Keep playing!

The first player to get all 10 cards flipped over in order wins! 

It is a little confusing to explain on our blog, but the kids are definitely the experts! Will you challenge your child to a game of Junk It?!? Learning is so much more fun when it's a game!