Notices!

This next week is a busy week and a short week. We have lots of things going on this week. Here are the things that are happening at school.

SPIRIT WEEK SCHEDULE

Monday 28th- Day 6

• CRAZY DRESS DAY
• Grade 2 Bake Sale (please ensure your child brings in some money for treats they they can buy)

Tuesday 29th- Day 1

• Twin Day
• Swimming (if your child is not swimming please send in a note in their homework diary!)
• Ice Cream Day

Wednesday 30- Day 2

• Disco Day
• Rehearsal for Diwali Celebrations
• Doughnut Day

Thursday 31- Day 3

• Diwali Celebrations 1:00 Pm onwards(Please ensure your child comes wearing their Indian outfit or if you would like them to change in school, please send in their outfits with them) 

Halloween

Hello Everyone and happy Sunday!

We ended our week with our Halloween Celebrations and had a lot of fun! 

Thank you to the SCA for the wonderful decorations and candies... Mr. Boniface for the music and the dancing and all the kids for dressing up. Here are a few pictures. 

We love working on our door decorations-
Well Done Grade 1A!

Plants- Science Exhibition

We had a wonderful time visiting grade 5 during the week and learning about plants. We had a lot of fun looking at the different plants that were on display and loved the story about the Tomatoes and the different things coconut can be used for. Students were able to recollect some things we talked about in our own class and were able to make connections. It was wonderful to watch students make those connections.

Shapes! Shapes Everywhere

Although this past week was super crazy we had a lot of fun in Maths. We have been looking at the properties and attributes of 2D and 3D shapes. Students loved working with 3D shapes in class and had table competitions using all 16 shapes to build structures. Here are a few pictures. It amazed us that everything around us is made up of shapes.

Swimming! Swimming! Swimming!

A little reminder that tomorrow is Day 1 and we swim! if your child is not swimming please send us a note in their homework diaries so that we can inform the swim teacher. If you child is swimming please ensure your child brings their swim bag to school. 

Caring

We have been laerning how to be caring and compassionate over the last few weeks and we are very proud of two of our students who have been very caring and compassionate. They have shared their snack when someone has not had snack and have shared their stationary supplies. Well Done! I am sure everyone will continue to be caring and compassionate as the days go by in Grade 1A!

Social Studies- My Family and Ourselves

Over the last few weeks we have been alternating our lessons in social studies learning about maps as well as our families. How our families help us and how we help our families. We have made little books and we loved drawing and writing very proudly about how we hep our families.

Courtesy First Grade Wow

Langauge Arts

As we were discussing and writing our reflections, we decided to look at ideas and where authors get their ideas from. We read stories together and discussed why writers write. We then read our ORT books and wrote what we thought the main idea was about our book.

The Digestive System

Hello!

We have been having a lot of fun with learning about our digestive system. We talked about how we use out mouth to chew food so that it mixes with saliva, and when we swallow the food it travels down out esophagus and into our stomachs. Students have learned new words and love using them. Its been wonderful to listen to students practicing the pronunciation of words and saying to each other "science is very fun!" One way you could help at home could be to ask students what they learned at science as I am sure they want to share their learning and new words.

Math- Flat Shapes

Hello everyone!
The last week was a very short week but as always in Grade 1A we managed to pack a lot of fun learning. We have reviewed shapes and talked about flat shapes/2D shapes.
We were able to organize and talk about sides and corners.

HALLOWEEN...

Good Afternoon,
Halloween will come a little early this year so we are not celebrating Diwali and Halloween on the same day. This SCA has graciously put together a program for the days activities and it goes like this:

Costumes can be worn on FRIDAY October 25, 2013

There will be a door decorating contest for KG and Elementary

 1:00-1:30 the KG's Costume Parade
1:30-2:00 Trick or Treating for KG's and Elementary
2:00-2:30 Halloween Dance on the Lawn

We look forward to adding pictures of our door decorations as well as pictures of all our students in their costumes!

Have a wonderful Sunday
Sam

Diwali

Every year we love the months of October and November because of the many Indian festivals we have and learn about.

The one Grade 1 looks forward to most is Diwali, as we perform for all our friends, teachers and families. This year too we will be performing a dance that we have been practicing everyday.
We hope you will love it as much as we love practicing it and having fun with it.
Before the break we send home a letter about this performance and the clothes students need for it. Here is  the letter!

Diwali Letter that was sent home on October 9th 2013

2D and 3D Shapes- Geometry

Hello!
I hope everyone had a wonderful little break. I know I am definitely ready to get back to school and see all the kids. Before the holidays we began our new math unit on shapes. We discussed flat shapes and loved the song about shapes. We know so many many shapes and can see all shapes all around us every day. We continue to study this unit in more depth and integrate Data Management into this unit as we will be using tallies and making graphs!!
I will keep up loading pictures to this post on Shapes as we progress with our unit. Here is picture of some of the shapes we have been learning names of. More pictures to follow.

Courtesy of First Grade Wow!

Most of us can name the shapes and how many sides and
corners they have!

Class Pictures for October!

Hello everyone!
Last post for today - I think! I may add a few more before the day is done.. but for now this is it!
Every month we will take a class photograph so that we can see how much each child is grown. I take lots of pictures so instead of only one photograph in this post you will see lots with different expressions! Enjoy!
Have a great Dussera break and I am already looking forward to having the kids back in school with me.
Samanthea

Team Building

On Wednesday for our house activities we had a lot of fun working together with the Pre-k's. We had to make paper chains..we had the Pre-K's help us tear paper and students stuck the papers together to make paper chains. We were all winners because we worked together and helped each other.

Wonderful little helpers!

Langauge Arts- Reading and journaling/reflection writing!

Good Morning!
We had our very first journal/reflection writing activity this week. We read a story and then had to write a little reflection about our favorite part of the story and why that particular part was our most favorite part. All students did a wonderful job, they have pictures to finish drawing and coloring but they did an awesome job.
Before we started writing, we reviewed asking and telling sentences and their importance. We make connections to social studies as we use symbols when we write as we use symbols on map- with map keys. We talked about full stops/ periods and question marks!

The Human Body- OUR HEARTS

We had a lot of fun listening to our heart beating and the look of wonderment was priceless! Here are some pictures of all the students!

And this is what we used to hear our heart beats!
A Stethoscope!

The Human Body- The Digestive system!

Hello!

We have been having a lot of fun with learning about our digestive system. We talked about how we use out mouth to chew food so that it mixes with saliva, and when we swallow the food it travels down out esophagus and into our stomachs. Students have learned new words and love using them. Its been wonderful to listen to students practicing the pronunciation of words and saying to each other "science is very fun!" One way you could help at home could be to ask students what they learned at science as I am sure they want to share their learning and new words.

10-10-2013
Hello and Happy first day for the break!
We had a super busy 3 days of school and began our study of the human body- THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. We began working in our workbooks and talked about the function of the mouth (other than speaking). We had lots of fun and are very excited to get back to learning about the digestive system.

The Cover of our workbook!

Science- The Human Body

Good Evening,

We have begun our unit on the Human Body with focus on the DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. We will have lots of fun discovering the journey our food makes once it enters our mouth. Students will come home talking about the esophagus and intestines and their functions. We will see how the digestive system works, and will watch the magic school bus adventure into the digestive system. Lots of fun things coming up this month in science. Keep your eyes peeled as we will have pictures of all the things we are learning. 

Have a wonderful evening,

Classification

We have been exploring the need to classify and sort be it in numbers or science or even social studies. In science we had lots of fun watching a small video from brainpopjr about classification of animals. We learned that we can classify into 2 groups, vertebrates and invertebrates. We then discovered that we can classify animals into further groups- mammals, bird, fish, reptiles and amphibians. We were then asked to draw pictures, color, cut and then come and stick them under the right classification group. All students wanted this activity to continue for longer, and I am pleased that as we had fun we learned. Here is our classification chart!

We loved classify animals and drawing them! 

Langauge Arts

PROCEDURE WRITING!
Our first big genre we have been working on has been procedure writing. We are working on how to write a procedure about making different things. So far we have worked on Making Tang! Making Sandwiches with condense Milk and Sprinkles, and our most recent procedure was How to Make a paper Puppy! We have been having lots of fun discussing how to and the different things we need. While taking about procedures we introduce students to the idea of organization. We discuss how to organize our writing so that it is easy to follow and it will produce the required results.

Estimation and Rounding

Hello Everyone!
We have been working very hard at Estimating over the last few days which we found very interesting and most students grasped the concepts. We had to first figure out what the word means and many students remember what they had learned in Kindergarten- we finally came to the conclusion that to Estimate means to GUESS! however, the guess needs to be a realistic one. As a group we worked estimating how many shapes were in our shape jar. We have to group the numbers into 10s and then we begin to see who was the closet. While doing this, we also learnt how to round numbers to the nearest 10s and we take the same principles and work on rounding numbers to the nearest 100s. Here are a few pictures of the our estimation and rounding work that we have so far completed.

How many shapes are in the jar?
Let's Estimate!

Here are our Estimations! 

Here is one way we are rounding!
Lots of practice and lots of discussions
made math very fun today.

HOMEWORK!

As this is a short week with a long holiday coming up we will not be sending home homework this week! We will continue to send home reading books but NO MATH HOMEWORK!

If however, you feel you would like your child to have some homework, please send me an email and we will send home work for the little break coming up!

Thank you,
Ms. Sam

Swimming!

A little reminder that tomorrow is Day 1 and we swim! if your child is not swimming please send us a note in their homework diaries so that we can inform the swim teacher. If you child is swimming please ensure your child brings their swim bag to school. 

Busy Bees in 1A

Although a short week, we have been busy with lots of work. The big word we discussed this week was cooperation and what it means to work together as a team. We realized that sometimes working together is better than all by ourselves.

Newsletter!

Our newsletter for October has been posted on line and will be sent home with your child in their folders.