Sunflower

Today Mrs. Sarchet brought three large sunflowers to school. She gave one to our class. When we arrived into the classroom it was lying on pink paper of the floor. We talked about the parts of the plant and labelled them. We examined the sunflower using magnifying glasses and wrote our observations on the paper. We saw tiny little hairs on the stem. We felt the leaves and found out that they were really rough.  We found insects on our sunflower. We also found the sunflower seeds and some of us decided to plant seeds. We wonder if the seeds will grow in water or if the seeds need soil to grow. Some of us brought seeds home.  We spent the day observing, recording and measuring our sunflower. We found out that our sunflower was the same size as two and a half students. We used cubes and found out that the sunflower measured 118 cubes. 

Have you ever seen an enormous sunflower up close? Have you ever pulled the seeds out of the giant sunflower head?

Word Work

In the morning we have been working on Word Work. We practise printing, spelling and reading familiar and unfamiliar words using magnifying glasses, books, SmartBoard, stamps, bingo dabbers, magnetic letters, markers, cardboard letters, wikki stix, white boards, iPads, and laptops.

Growing Patterns

Today we created growing patterns.

Dot Day

Today we read the book The Dot by Peter H Reynolds and then we created our own dot art. We invited Mrs. Bailey's class to join us in our dot fun. We had a great time making dot art.  Some of us even saved our dot pictures on our blogs.

Using the app Draw and Tell to make dots.

We are using iPads to make our dot pictures.

Coffee filters, water and washable markers

We are cutting out different sizes of circles.

Bingo dabbers and q-tips

Morning Math

This year we are trying math activities in the morning.  Each table group is given a different math task. Ms. Leech got the ideas for these wonderful activities from Carole Fullerton and Sandra Ball. We like exploring and learning different ways to do math.

Read to Self

This week we have been working on one part of the Daily Five called Read to Self. We have been building our reading stamina. When we read to self we need to stay in one spot and read the whole time. We have learned that there are three ways to read a book. We can read the words, read the pictures or re tell the story. Today we read for 10 minutes. We really enjoyed reading our books. 

Patterns

Today we started a math unit on patterning. We reviewed the terms core and repeat. We looked at different pattern cores.  We then spent time creating our own patterns.