Make 10 Challenge!

We are working hard on addition and subtraction to 20, and our favourite game this week is Make 10!

Mrs. Beliveau modified the rules from the original game posted here. 

A game board will go home with each student, but more can be printed here. Have a deck of cards? Then you can play at home!

Take out the face cards. This game uses Ace through 10. We treat the Ace as a 1. Using the game board, put out four cards on the spaces 1, 2, 3, and 4. Turn the rest of the deck over on the space marked "deck". 

Here is the challenge! Can you make ten using up to 4 cards?

Look, he made 10! Set the group of 10 aside, and put out more cards from the deck. 

Replenish the empty spaces with cards from the deck. 

There are lots of ways they made 10!

Can't make 10?

Choose one card to put back on the bottom of the deck, and take the top card. 

The kids have played several times and should be able to explain the rules and play independently at home. Happy counting!

Snuggly Snow!

 

Experiment!

That word alone can get a room full of Grade One students absolutely, positively giddy! And that's how our day began, with excited kids ready to learn! Our current Science focus is on seasonal changes in Winter, and today we were exploring how some animals survive the cold. 

Do you think it is warmer under the snow or on top?

The experiment was simple: bury one thermometer in a snowbank, and leave the other sitting on top of the snow. To protect the thermometers, each was encased in a cracker box.  (Honorable mention to the Beliveau family for eating so many crackers for the sake of Science).

Off we went to set up the experiment! Students watched from indoors as Mrs. Beliveau tromped out to bury one box/thermometer UNDER and set the other ON the snow. 

We headed back to class and were very busy all day! 

Today we were introduced to the parts of a story! We made our own story retell bracelets to help cue us:

After last recess, we hustled back to check on our experiment:

Mrs. Beliveau checked the box sitting on top of the snow .....

The thermometer read -1 degrees C. 

Then Mrs. Beliveau dug out the buried box ...

The thermometer read 3 degrees C.

What?!?! 

It was warmer under the snow!

We hurried back to class, and working with a giant interactive thermometer, spent time exploring what this meant. 

Many animals have a better chance of surviving the cold winter when there is a lot of snow. This snow acts like a blanket. It traps heat from the earth, as well as an animal's body heat when an animal burrows deep. Turns out that winters with little snow are harder for plants and animals to survive!

Story retelling anchor chart and bracelets inspired by Kindergarten Chaos

Dream Snow Writing!

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! 

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 board near our classroom has curious students reading our clues and peeking under the snowbanks! Well done, Grade One!

Snowmen to Melt Your Heart

We had such fun this week creating our bird's eye view snowmen!

However, the project started in a boring manner. 

Very.

Very. 

Boring. 

Mrs. Beliveau asked everyone to draw white snowflakes on white paper. 

Ummm ... not exactly exciting, now is it?

However, soon the boys and girls were "ooooohhhh-ing" and "aaaahhhhh-ing"! Using water-based tempera paint, we were able to make our snowflakes appear, as if by magic! 

As our paint dried, we set to work on our snowmen. Using pastels, we traced the three balls of the snowman's body and used our fingers to smudge the pastels inward. 

After Mrs. Beliveau hot-glued the three snowballs together, including a little stack of cardboard in between to make each ball "pop" out, we were ready for the next step ... details!

Noses, arms, buttons, scarves, eyes, and even a few eyelashes were added to give our snowmen personality!

Look how charming!

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

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. 

Each Monday, we celebrate with a school-wide virtual assembly. At our daily Connection Time, we will always begin each day with a cozy little Advent celebration. 

This week, we reflected on the birth of Christ by making our own torn paper advent wreaths. 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!

Strong Sentences!

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

We began closely examining what a sentence was this past week. 

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 following the writing process, by brainstorming, drawing, labelling, writing and sharing.

Writing strong sentences is a skill we will work on throughout the whole 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.