April 27-30

What a wonderful week to take our learning outdoors once again. As we wrap up April, it is finally starting to feel more like spring. Here is what we have been up to this week:

We had a wonderful trip to Twelve Mile Coulee on Wednesday afternoon.  Students were focussing on observing closely and documenting their observations in detail through drawing, shading and labeling.  We also did an activity where we wrote what we "See, Think, Wonder".  This allows students to look carefully at their surrounding and to think deeply and engage their curiosity about the environment.  We were disappointed that, due to Covid, we could not spend some of our time on the land with Saa'Kokoto, but we had him in our hearts and in our ears.  We took a speaker along with us and listened to a recording of Thunder, one of his amazing stories as we sat in the grass in a clearing amidst the trees.




For our reading, our focus is on learning about long vowels sounds and what different ways we might see a long vowel show up.  We have a key sentence to remind us of the different spellings of each vowel sound.

Long O: Go home to show the boat to Joe.
Long E: He sees many of these each year.
Long A: They came to play with the train on the table.

Students are learning about the patterns of long vowels and are learning to try both long and short sounds in an unfamiliar word to see if they can tell which one sound right.

We enjoyed focusing on soccer outside this past week, while we wait for our last two dance sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week. Students focused on playing small games with 2 on 2, or 3 on 3 games to both focus on learning to look while moving around with the ball and passing to another person on their team. We look forward to continuing our soccer game skill building in the coming week.



The big concept that we began exploring this week is "Mood".  To begin with, we brainstormed words that we know that to describe our feelings and emotions. The class came up with all these words independently.  We then worked to use these words when we wrote about being in the coulee.

On Friday, we looked at some pieces of art that used bold colours.  We discussed how the bright, colourful paintings made us feel.  We then painted a flower with bold colours and described our feelings and what experiences these colours brought to mind.  Next we looked at pieces of art that used pastel colours and noticed how those colours had a different feel to us.  We added white to our bold colours to make pastel coloured paints and used them to paint a second flower.  Our next step was to write about the emotions and memories that those colours evoked. Finally we added black to our bold colours to make dark colours and what what these colours reminded of.

Upcoming

Monday May 3 - Home Reading Exchange

Tuesday May 4 - Sound Kreations

Wednesday May 5 - Hats on For Mental Health & Sound Kreations

Thursday May 6 - Home Reading Exchange

Friday May 7 - Library Exchange

Sunday May 9 - Happy Mother's Day!

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