May 17 - Day 18 of 21 of our Chick's incubation. Students were able to see the growth inside the egg throughout the whole cycle. This was our final candling, where students really got to see some movement, and growth from the previous candling. Healthy veins, and a dark mass at the top of the egg signified a growing chick! May 23rd - Just on time! Students came to school with 3 baby chicks in our incubator! 2 more than expected, and oh so proud! Students wrote in their Science Observation Books throughout the 21 day incubation period, until hatch day. Students observed the incubator, and discussed the importance of a turner. They then observed the growing chick inside the egg (with the help of a candler - a bright light). And finally, the hatching of our chicks. Unfortunately, all our chicks hatched overnight, but we were lucky enough to witness the hatching of 2 of Mrs. Yate's eggs the previous day. So we can imaging what it would have looked like in our room! The proud Mama's and Papa's of 3 baby chicks! We incorporate quiet time into our day (every single day). It is important for us to reset, and transition our bodies into the afternoon. On May 23rd, after much excitement from our chick arrival, we decided to have our quiet time outside! It was a beautiful day (as you can tell from all the sneezing!), and we recognized and appreciated the sounds of nature heard during this time. Some students began positioning their hands on their knees during their deep breaths. The rest seemed to follow suit! I looked further into this position, and it is said to generate knowledge, wisdom, receptivity and calmness. Perfect! May 25 - Jump Rope for Heart Final Assembly In celebration of Jump Rope for Heart, and the incredible amount of money our school raised, we had a celebration assembly on Friday morning. If a class surpassed their $100 goal, students were invited to dress their teacher up! Well, our class raised well over that with $1000+ raised towards the Heart and Stroke foundation. I am so proud of my students for all the efforts they put forth to raise money for such a great cause. We got an extra little surprise during the assembly, with our very own Liam being within the top 3 fundraisers of our school. To celebrate his efforts, he got to throw a pie in Mr. Massey's face, along with the other 2 top fundraisers! Way to go Liam, and all the amazing fundraisers from our class! Poor Mr. Massey! But just look at the reaction of the kids in our class! Priceless! Students worked in small groups to create a poster to announce the arrival of our chicks. They worked together to draw pictures, and decide on the words they would add to their poster. Great team work everyone! Ben trying out a new literacy center. He had to sound out and read each of these orange cards in order to correctly match it to the picture below. Great reading, Ben! Baby Everly's final visit! Showing off her crawling skills! Bringing our chicks out for a field trip to the field! Bike to School Week AND Bike School. What a great turn out for kids riding to school. Our numbers went up each day! Saying goodbye to our baby chicks. Off to the farm they go!
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Wednesday, April 25 Dancers of Damelahamid. Watch the videos below and enjoy! Tuesday, May 1 RCMP Visit as part of our community project. Students learned more about the role RCMP play, and were able to ask questions like "what can we do to help you". A take away I took from this visit, was the Constable's point of saying that they catch people who have made mistakes, not "bad" people. Ask your child what the Constable had as an answer. Hint: do the right thing, if you see someone doing something they're not supposed to, tell an adult. Wednesday, May 2 Baby Everly's visit. We got to see so much growth from Everly! She crawled for us! This is the second to last visit with Everly - our final goodbye will be on May 28th. Fun in the gym! Gardening Fun! We have a class plot, ask your child to show it to you! Math Rotations. Students have been working on developing their addition skills. We have been focused on knowing our doubles, adding and taking away 1, and counting on. Great example of team work seen on the playground! Beckham read his favourite story to the class! Elynn also chose a story to read to us! Learning the game of War. Many students knew the rules better than I did! Tuesday, May 8th Bike Rodeo! A first for all these guys, and they loved it! A biking 'test' was sent home in your child's folder. After getting their bike mechanics checked out, students had to complete a series of obstacles on their bikes - they did great! Wednesday, May 9th Squamish Community Building Project. Classes placed their building in the gym (where it belonged) amongst many other businesses. It was great for students to recognize the different areas in Squamish, and to admire the hard work done by our Kindergarten/K/1 classes! Way to go everyone! Mother's Day Prep - Painting pots for Mom. Thursday, May 10 Mother's Day High Tea. What a lovely event your child prepared for you (with a little help from their teacher ;) ) The kids were so excited to have you all to themselves, and celebrate YOU! I hope you felt the love, and enjoyed yourself as much as they did! Monday and Wednesday May 14 & 16 Soccer Lessons This week, students are participating in soccer lessons provided to our school PAC! The kids are loving the skills their learning, and many are interested in taking lessons - ask your child! We've got some great soccer players in our class! Wednesday, May 16 Abby and April volunteered their time to do a directed draw with the kids. Students had their choice of drawing a cat or a fox. They were quite intricate drawings, and I was super proud of the kids for persevering and trying their best! They were quite proud of themselves in the end! Pictures have gone home in their back packs. Rees and Kayla showing off their beautiful drawing and labeling skills!! Recess time fun. Monday started off with an Earth Day Assembly. The kids did a fabulous job singing two songs that promote recycling and caring for our Earth. We then picked up garbage on our playground - a space we love to enjoy, and would prefer to see clean! On Tuesday we started a project which used recycled papers to make a picture of our Earth. We continued working on this project throughout the week, carefully adding more detail. We completed the artwork on Friday by cutting out our Earth and completing a writing piece which shares one thing we do to help the Earth. Stay tuned for their display next week. We spent a lot of time enjoying this lovely weather. Bubbles were brought out of my June bin, and chalk has been requested!! Center time have the students the opportunity to play with centres in the class, or enjoy the nice weather outside. This week we also:
- had Roots of Empathy - enjoyed both talent shows - voted on our favourite story from the Chocolate Lily book contest (our class chose a beautiful Christmas story which told the tale of 5 forest animals who found a gift which had fallen from Santa’s sleigh, and worked to return it to the recipient). - worked with addition, and writing addition equations. We used dominos to help us with numbers on Friday, and wrote and solved many equations. Students are encouraged to label their pictures. I love how Kayla has labelled each person in her picture here! We did a fun Math game (adding 0). We used Fruit Loops as the zero to make it even more fun! Students had to write 5 equations (which was a new concept for them), which added 0. They recognized that adding zero doesn't change the number at all - adding zero doesn't add or take away anything from the original number. Many students are still eager to focus on eating, and finish their entire lunch. We watched an amazing performance last week about Robin Hood. The coolest thing was, the main characters were randomly chosen from the audience! Way to go to our Mamquam Elementary actors! We made daffodil flowers to decorate the "Creativitree" that's in our hallway across from the library. After learning that adding zero doesn't change the number, we explored adding 1, and recognized that it was just counting on one more number! I later introduced take away one, which is counting backwards once. Students used a dice to roll a random number, and had to count on. Navy reading a story to the class. On Wednesday, we finished redecorating the two planters that stood outside our front entrance. We noticed they had sat empty over the winter and needed some attention. We recognize and hope our contribution brings joy to everyone who enters our school! On Thursday, we visited Independent Grocer. While there, we explored the food groups required for a healthy body. Students went "shopping" in the aisles, looking for healthy produce of certain colours. We learned that different colours of produce help different areas in our body. We also learned that at Independent Grocer, they have special labels that display 0, 1, 2, or 3 stars. Students were encouraged to search for foods with 3 stars, as those are the healthiest for our growing bodies. Special thanks to our volunteers, Lindsay, Kirstin, Sarah, and Melinda for coming along with us and keeping our kiddlets safe. Thursday - Ethan reading a story to the class! Reminder, Mrs. Shea will be away tomorrow (Friday). I hope the kids have a wonderful day with Mrs. Johnson, and a great weekend! See you Monday!
Patterns with lunch! Makes my heart sing. Gardening!! We got to help prepare the Greenhouse, and plant sweet peas! We’ll be looking for them in the school gardens. Finishing our whole lunch is a goal many student continue to work towards. Who knew that writing your name on the board would be enough motivation for them to fill their bellies!! Ben and Aliyah reading to the class! I’ve caught many students working independently during book time to sound out words. They are then given the opportunity to share their new skills with the class. Many more to come!! Daily morning messages being filled in by the students now! It’s nice to sit back and watch their learning shine! Special helper chooses students to provide the missing letter, while they write that letter into the missing space. Thank you to Emma Moses for coming in and teaching us about Autism! April is Autism Awareness month. We recognize that we are all special in our own ways, and all learn in different ways. Check out our hallway bulletin board as we add important facts about autism throughout the month. Brazil Carnival presentation in the Studio! In math, we are learning about Canadian coins. We’ve learned about the symbols used on each coin, and their significance to Canada. We’re also working on identifying the value of each coin. Next, we will explore adding these values together by skip counting, and using coins to make “purchases” in the classroom. Practice skip counting at home (we have been doing this each morning during calendar). Practice skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s (get them to show off their skills!!) Also, my students are so generous with their compliments on my many classroom attempts at drawing. They make me feel like I’m quite the artist! Haha April 11th. Baby Everly came for a visit today - which we are always so grateful for! We are so lucky to have witnessed so much growth in our last 6 months since meeting Everly. School snack that spell our name!? How cool! We’ve been exploring 2D and 3D shapes. We are able to sort shapes based on their attributes. We look to see if shapes are flat (2D) or if they stick out (3D). We made 2D and 3D shapes out of marshmallows and toothpicks. We are so lucky to have had Greg the paramedic visit our school and generously give us a tour of his ambulance! Students even got to sound the sirens!! Greg asked each student to do him a favour, and make sure their house address is clearly visible from the street - in the event of an emergency! Friday February 23 Sam's super creative magnet creation. The kids get so creative with their building - I love it! Our visit to Carney's was very informative and inspiring! We learned about contamination, and the importance of recycling instead of throwing recyclables in the garbage. We recycle hard plastic and paper in our classroom already (as well as juice boxes), but there is so much more that we could do to help save our earth! What are you doing at home to recycle? Each one of these bundles weighs 1 tonne! We made sure we stood back.. Wednesday February 21 - 100's Day! Here are some of the things we did on 100's day! -We worked together to build a cup castle made out of exactly 100 plastic cups (we counted to be sure). -Here's a picture of our gang that dressed up! Love their sad faces - old people aren't sad! -Our 100 snack bags were a big hit! Students had to count out their items on a counting place mat that we made the day before, to ensure they had 100 tasty snacks in their bag. Great counting skills at work! And good double checks! Tuesday February 20 Our 99th day morning message. Letters filled in by Kayla. Answers provided by the students on the carpet. They're getting so good at listening for the missing sound and filling in missing letters. We began our preparations for the 100th Day of school. Lunch box inspiration is back!!
Heres a snapshot of what we've been up to the last few weeks: -goodbye huge for Miss. Cass -number printing practice -cool magnet creations -calendar writing -animal hospital -drop everything and read -gym with Mrs. Lyle's class -magic brix creations The students are getting very good at filling in the blanks; beginning, middle, and end sounds! Practice these skills at home! We are almost all the way through our ABC Book! Here they are gluing Beans onto the letter Bb. Visits with Baby Everly! She is growing with every visit. It is so interesting to hear the changes the kids notice with each visit. Wednesday, February 14 - Valentine's Day!! Here's some pictures from our morning. Students were very good at independently handing out their Valentine's; reading the name on their card and matching it to the envelope. Each student delivered an envelope to its owner. Here they are so excited to receive their full envelope! Tea party in room 7! Students had the choice of 4 herbal teas and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I was happy to see them all try it out, even if it was something new! Even Mr. Massey joined! some more pictures from our Valentine's filled morning!
Tuesday - We glued mini-umbrella's into our ABC Book for the letter Uu. - Practice printing of all the numbers to 9. Students independently wrote numbers (see below for your child's white board). Wednesday - Big equipment in the gym (see action shots below) Visit from Baby Evelyn! Wow, has she grown! Some cool shape creations. Isla started a trend that other's couldn't resist! Friday
- We played letter BINGO on the carpet - a big hit with the kids! - In the afternoon, we went to the gym and learned a new game that used some thinking skills to decode a secret colour order. Many students said it was the highlight of their day! |
About Mrs. SheaThis is my second year teaching at Mamquam Elementary, and I absolutely love the school! I am a born and raised Squamish local. This is my 4th year teaching. My husband and I moved to Fort St. John for our first year of teaching, where I had my first Kindergarten class. I am married, and have a dog named Poppy! Archives
February 2018
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