A Week of Mischief: Cookie Takes Over St. Nicholas!

This week, our classroom was full of laughter and nonsense! We read Cookie's Week about a cat who causes mischief all over his house! Inspired by this clumsy cat, we imagined a brand-new adventure: What if Cookie spent a week right here at St. Nicholas?

To get our creative juices flowing, we brainstormed the best spots for a sneaky kitty to cause some chaos. 

After brainstorming possible pranks, we got to work using sentence frames to craft our own original stories and illustrations.

Our young authors are working diligently to bring their stories to life. Quality takes time, so we’ll be spending the next few days perfecting our writing and adding careful detail to our drawings. 

We can’t wait to show you what this little trickster gets up to! 

Reading, Creating, Discovering and Hatching!

We've begun exploring the parts of a story and together we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle:

After enjoying the book, we closely examined Mr. Carle's illustrations. He has a unique method for making designed paper and then cutting it into the pieces for his pictures. 

We followed Mr. Carle's paper-making technique. First, we painted our paper. We added drips, drops, stripes and spots in every colour!

No shortage of creativity in our class!

Once our paint dried, we cut shapes to make butterflies!

Our week ended with tremendous joy and wonder as new life filled our incubator! We were thrilled to welcome several ducklings into the world. Once they’re fully dry, they’ll move into a cozy little “barn” right in our classroom. What a beautiful reminder of God’s goodness!

Cookie's Mischevious Week at St. Nicks!

This past week, we read the story Cookie's Week, all about a cat who causes mischief all over his house!

We jumped at the opportunity to write our own versions of this story! In our own stories about Cookie, we imagined this sneaky kitty spent a week at St. Nicholas. What kinds of mischief did this little trickster get into?

After a walk around the building, we brainstormed places he could make a little trouble. 

Then, using sentences frames, we wrote and illustrated our own stories!

These stories will take several days of diligent writing and creative, careful illustrating. 

We're having so much fun imagining the mischief Cookie would cause at our school! Watch for these stories to be shared with you next week!

Animal Research Projects

After spending a week at Zoo School, it was clear how much we all love animals! 

The children were challenged to learn more about an an animal of their choosing. We explored the San Diego Zoo Kids website to find an animal that piqued our interests. Then we worked with our Grade 4 buddies to read challenging text, gather information, and complete our animal research.

After completing the research part of the project, we wrote complete sentences about our animals and illustrated with detail. Wowzers!

We can't wait to share our reports with our Grade 4 buddies!

This writing and research project dovetails nicely with our forthcoming Science Unit, Living Systems of Plants and Animals. Watch for your child's animal report in our next package of Evidence of learning.

Identifying the Parts Of a Story

This week we were introduced to the parts of a story! 

We made our own beaded story retell bracelets to help cue us to each part of the story. Each colour reminds us of a different part of the story. 

Then we listened to The Gingerbread Boy, and used our anchor chart and bracelets to figure out the parts of the story together. 

We'll be using our bracelets as we read many books together. We'll be working hard to identify the beginning (characters, setting, and problem), middle, and end of each story. We're going to have so much fun!

Cookie the Cat's week at St. Nicholas!

This past week, we read the story Cookie's Week, all about a cat who causes mischief all over his house! 

To practice our ability to retell important parts of a story, we made our own "Cookie" puppets!

These puppets helped us practice retelling the main parts of this story. 

Then we jumped at the opportunity to write our own versions of this story! In our own stories about Cookie, we imagined this tricky kitty spent a week at St. Nicholas. What kinds of mischief did this little trickster get into?

After a walk around the building, we brainstormed places he could make a little trouble. 

Then, using sentences frames, we wrote and illustrated our own stories!

These stories will take several days of diligent writing and creative, careful illustrating. 

We're having so much fun imagining the mischief Cookie would cause at our school! 

Watch for these stories, as well as a rubric, coming home soon!

Sneaky Snowy Sentences

Before Christmas, we examined what a sentence is.

We learned three things every sentence has and Mrs. Beliveau revealed her hidden talent, rapping!

As a team, we sorted letters, words and sentences:

Now that we're back, we've set to work practicing our sentence writing skills. We tackled a project this past week, inspired by the 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! 

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 weekly words correctly. 

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's a peek at the final masterpiece:

Peek under the "snow" to see the animal! It's a bat!

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

Writing strong sentences is a skill we will work on consistently throughout the year. Support your child by finding sentences in the books you read, by identifying components of a sentence in our daily home reading books, 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. 

Cookie's Week at Our School!

This past week, we read the story Cookie's Week, all about a cat who causes mischief all over his house!

To practice our ability to retell important parts of a story, we made our own "Cookie" puppets! These puppets helped us practice retelling the main parts of this story. 

Then we jumped at the opportunity to write our own versions of this story! In our own stories about Cookie, we imagined this tricky kitty spent a week at St. Nicholas. What kinds of mischief did this little trickster get into?

After a walk around the building, we brainstormed places he could make a little trouble. 

Then, using sentences frames, we wrote and illustrated our own stories!

These stories will take several days of diligent writing and creative, careful illustrating. 

We're having so much fun imagining the mischief Cookie would cause at our school! 

Watch for these stories, as well as a rubric, coming home soon!

Making Connections When We Read

Reading becomes so much more meaningful when we are able to personally connect with the text. This past few days we have been focusing on making a personal connection with what we are reading. This means the children have been challenged to connect the story to their own life, own experiences, and own feelings. 

We enjoyed reading several books appropriate for the Halloween season! The boys and girls made meaningful text-to-self connections using these texts!

In "Creepy Carrots", we meet Jasper Rabbit, who loves carrots, until they turn on him and become scary! We connected with the story by sharing our favourite food to snack on!

Next we enjoyed the story "Where's My Mummy?"! Where is little mummy's mama? Little mummy felt scared without mama! Here are our personal connections:

"The Littlest Pumpkin" is about a teeny tiny pumpkin that nobody picks from the pumpkin patch.  The boys and girls thought of a time they felt disappointed. 

"Crankenstein" features an ordinary kid who can become very cranky! What makes us cranky?

Watch for these activities to come home soon and continue to reinforce those personal connections as your child reads. Connecting to the text is an excellent way to increase and develop your child's comprehension!

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. 

Cookie's Week at St. Nicholas!

This past week, we read the story Cookie's Week, all about a cat who causes mischief all over his house!

To practice our ability to retell important parts of a story, we made our own "Cookie" puppets! These puppets helped us practice retelling the main parts of this story. 

Then we jumped at the opportunity to write our own versions of this story! In our own stories about Cookie, we imagined this tricky kitty spent a week at St. Nicholas. What kinds of mischief did this little trickster get into?

After a walk around the building, we brainstormed places he could make a little trouble. 

Then, using sentences frames, we wrote and illustrated our own stories!

These stories will take several days of diligent writing and creative, careful illustrating. 

We're having so much fun imagining the mischief Cookie would cause at our school! 

Watch for these stories, as well as a rubric, coming home soon!