O Come Let Us Adore Him

Christmas break is upon us! During Advent, our students were 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

Colour!

This past week in Science we began a unit on colour! Much of our learning begins with a book, and this was no different. We started with an oldie, but a goodie! This gem was published in 1959!

 

We made viewfinders using three transparent circles in red, yellow and blue, and experimented with these colours. The viewfinder helped us discover how the colour wheel works. 

We enjoyed a super catchy song about the primary colours!

We will continue to explore colour by adding white, black, and water to a colour . Stay tuned!

Rhyme Time!

We are working hard to develop the necessary skills for reading, and rhyming is an important part of the reading process. Rhyming allows children to play with words and makes language fun and engaging. It encourages children to listen to language and notice its sounds. 

Take a peek at few activities we have enjoyed this week!

Nothing Rhymes With Orange

After reading Nothing Rhymes with orange, we brainstormed rhyming words ... 

... and created our own rhyming posters! 

Rhyming BINGO

Rhyming BINGO is so fun it hardly feels like work, but boy, are the children refining their rhyming skills! Students listen to clues I read aloud that rhyme and then they find the picture/word on their card. 

It's been a wonderful week!

Numeracy Games

We're building our numeracy skills with numbers up to 20, and have two awesome games that we've learned that can also be played at home!

Friends of 10

Friends of 10 is a game that builds understanding of 10. Using a paper clip, spin a number. Work out how many more you would need to make 10 (you can use the 10 frame to do this). Cover your answer with a counter. The aim is to cover all of the numbers. 

For example, if you spin 3, figure out how many more it takes to get to 10. We know it takes 7 more, as 3 and 7 are friends of 10. Cover the 7 and spin again. 

A copy of the game board will be coming home with your child. 

Junk It

Junk It is a fast-paced card game that 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 picks up a card from the center pile, and places it in its numerical spot. She picked up a 3 ... 

... so she put it down where the 3 goes. 

When she placed her card in the 3 spot, she picked up a 4 (formerly face down in the 3rd place). Off the 4 goes to spot 4!

Notice how when she put her 4 down, she picked up the card in that spot? It is a 3! She already has a 3, so she gets to call JUNK IT and discard it in the middle. 

Her opponent can either pick up the card that was just discarded, or select a new card from the pile. He needed a 3, so he chose to pick it up. 

The goal is to get all 10 of your cards in order, before your opponent!

We loved this numeracy challenge!

It is a little confusing to explain, but the kids are definitely the experts! Will you challenge your child to a game of Junk It?!?

Friends of 10 is from Rainbow Sky Creations. 

Wiggle Monsters

We are the wiggle experts of St. Nicholas, so it only made sense that we read Lines that Wiggle!

Here is a reading of our wonderful, wiggly story:

In this book, silly monsters show many different lines. Throughout this story is a raised, sparkly blue line that we all loved to touch! 

We got to work practicing our lines and drew 5 or 6 across a white page. 

Then we painted ....

... and added details, like eyeballs and a mouth!

Here are our fantastic, colourful, wiggly, squiggly masterpieces! Our hallway is Halloween ready!

UnScary Work!

We began our week enjoying The UnScary Book, a story about a little boy who wants to write a very scary, spooky, terrifying book. It all goes sideways when lovely, nice things show up to be in the book instead! 

We decided to create our own unscary posters! Students were introduced to a Colouring Rubric. They were challenged to follow the rubric when creating their illustration on their poster. 

We had a blast being creative and writing our own "unscary" pages, and enjoyed reading one another's work! 

Our colouring rubric is now an expectation whenever we tackle a project with any colouring. It will help us to our best!

Senses with Scuba Charlotte

This week we kicked off our newest Science Unit, Senses! We built our Senses knowledge as we went on an underwater journey with Scuba Charlotte!

Hearing

We used our sense of hearing and had to identify sounds from several sea animals, including dolphins and whales. The next challenge was to wear blackout goggles and follow a specific sound (e.g. bells, castanets) as we crab-walked around the room, following our sound! Then we took a minute and reflected on what could hurt/help our senses: 

Sight

Our eyes played tricks on us! On one side of a stick we glued a fish, and on the other a tank. When we spun the stick back a forth, it looked like the fish was in the tank! We also really enjoyed a What is it? game and a few other optical illusions. 

Taste and Smell

We learned that our sense of taste and smell work together!

We challenged our sense of smell with little scented vials. Rose stumped most of us!

We tried a few different mystery tastes, but were encouraged to smell the samples first. We tried salt water, lemon juice, and sugar water. 

Touch

We were able to touch many textures from the ocean, including real coral that was once alive! We identified bumpy, sharp, squishy, smooth and rough textures. 

We had so much fun wearing black out shades and exploring sand and water pails, identifying different items!

Sea Lions and Their Senses

We learned that when a baby sea lion is born, the mama and baby sea lions bark back and forth! If a mama is ever confused about who her baby is, she uses her sense of smell to identify it. 

Sea lions rely on their whiskers as their sense of touch! Their whiskers tell them how the water is moving and can signal to them if food swims by. 

We learned loads about our senses with Scuba Charlotte! Thank you to the parent volunteers who were so patient, energetic and willing to participate!

Senses presentation was made through Teacher's Pet

Praying the Rosary

October is the month of the rosary and we took the opportunity to learn to pray the rosary. To make this form of meditative prayer accessible for our littles, we prayed one decade each day this week.

We made single-decade beaded rosaries on pipe cleaners. 

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 (decade) we prayed each day. 

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

If you are interested in learning more about how to pray the rosary, this How to Pray the Rosary infographic is spectacular as well as the free app Laudate. 

Read In Week

Welcome to Read In Week! While we read each and every day in our class, our goal this past week was to make reading EVEN MORE exciting, enjoyable, and engaging! 

MONDAY

We kicked off the week reading eachother! Look at the shirts we chose:

What better way to build a love of reading than to devour some picture books with our Grade 3/4 buddies?

TUESDAY

We enjoyed a "teacher swap". Mrs. Beliveau waved goodbye and read to the Grade 3's. Our class headed to the Grade 3 room where Mrs. Spooner read her favourites to us! 

WEDNESDAY

We warmed up our brains reading the room! Hidden all over our classroom (and into the hall) were picture cards! We used our knowledge of letters and sounds to stretch our reading brains!

"All in the Hall" was fantastic! For 20 minutes, each and every kiddo in St. Nicholas piled into the halls with books to enjoy! It was so relaxing. 

We read some HILARIOUS sleepy-themed book to celebrate PJ day ... but everyone fell asleep! Zzzzzzzzz ...

THURSDAY

We rounded out an amazing week hearing Mr. Rachmistruk's favourite books all together in the gym!

Next week we'll get our daily home reading program rolling! Stay tuned!

Every Child Matters: Truth & Reconciliation

Learning about the truth of our history from First Nations, Métis, and Inuit knowledge keepers is an important part of the path to Reconciliation. This week we took time each day to learn and grow with an open heart and open mind. 

The tradition of storytelling is vital in Indigenous culture, and our week of learning is reflected in the many stories we read. 

We read a beautiful Anishinaabe story called Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox. Being connected to the land and nature is woven through Indigenous culture. We reflected on the qualities portrayed by various animals in this book and shared which animal meant the most to us. 

We shared Awasis and the World Famous Bannock! Did you try the bannock recipe together at home? 

Out on the land, we read the Cree story When the Trees Crackle with Cold, a book exploring seasonal changes. Then we got our "nature trappers" and hunted for beauty in our forest!

Inspired by beautiful Metis beading and the four colours in the medicine wheel, we made dot art celebrating our own uniqueness! These handprint pieces reinforce the message that "every child matters". 

We discussed the value of each person. We are made with love and intention, and are all children of God. We had some challenging and insightful conversations as we shared Phyllis Webstad's new book With our Orange Hearts. We discussed residential schools and reflected on how students should feel in school. We put these special words on an orange heart to post in our chapel. 

While the week concluded in our classroom family wearing orange, learning the truth about Canada's history and deepening our understanding of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit cultures has only just begun.