Books for ME

Once a month, we're fortunate to have Books for Me visit CHA!  The children can choose any book they'd like to take home with them to add to their very own library collections.

Visit http://www.booksformevancouver.org/index.html for more information!

NOISY Reading

Each morning we begin our school day with NOISY reading.  Children choose whatever books they want to read, with who they want, where they want (within reason of course).  BIG books have quickly become a favourite to gather around.  Choral reading (group reading) is a wonderful way for emergent readers to build confidence as they take risks rereading familiar texts, which often include repeating patterns and lots of rhythm and rhyme.  This is a favourite time of the day for me, seeing the children so engaged and immersed in books.  Here's a peek...

Pumpkins!

We have been looking closely at the pumpkins in our classroom at our exploring table and we've been reading about pumpkins too.  We enjoyed the book, Pumpkin Circle:  The Story of a Garden, by George Levenson.  We also read some great books on colour including, Full Colour, by Etienne Delessert.  Using only primary colours (red, blue and yellow) the kids made magic happen right on their pages.  After sketching pumpkins and leaves, they mixed red and yellow to make orange for the pumpkins and yellow and blue to make shades of green for leaves.  Once dry, they were cut out and assembled on black paper.

 

The kids used chalk pastels, in white and yellow, to add moonlight and stars to their nighttime pumpkins.  Strips of green paper and curled ribbon were added to embellish the green vines.  Didn't we create a beautiful pumpkin patch?  Love how they're all different!

Colour Wall

In an effort to create a learning environment the children feel is a reflection of them, their learning will continually fill the walls of our classroom this year.  Instead of hanging my usual 'colour word posters' we embarked on a colour challenge to make our very own.  This involved collecting, gathering, sorting and representing a large collection of colourful stuff.  We completed our colour boards and hung them on the wall.  It's beautiful!  Best I've ever seen, why?  Hand made with love. Thank you for helping make this project a success.  The colourful treasures from home were perfect!

Here are our sorted treasures before we assembled the colour boards.  These photos could make for a great eye spy game!

Let the gluing begin....

Introducing....the colour wall!  Pop by to have a peek.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Inspired by the sunflowers growing in our gardens this fall and Van Gogh's famous sunflowers painting we created our own collaborative rendition.   We spent time reading about Van Gogh and looked closely at his most popular pieces.  In his sunflowers, we saw short brushstrokes and a lot of yellow.   We think yellow might have been his favourite colour.

Thankful

The children were very excited to invite their families to join us for friendship fruit salad on the Friday before the Thanksgiving weekend.  In preparation we read some beautiful books on thankfulness and gratitude.  We spent time sharing and talking about the things in our lives that we are most thankful for.  Students recorded one of their ideas on a blank square piece of paper and drew a picture.  Then, they added their finished squares to a bigger piece of paper creating a thankful quilt.

The boys and girls each brought in a piece of fruit to share and contribute to the friendship fruit salad.  We created a poem about the fruit and the class made fruit salad books to take home.  There was a colourful variety of fruit!  The salad was delicious.  Thanks to everyone for sending fruit and for joining us that afternoon.  

They also made these adorable turkey cards by tracing their hands.  Gobble gobble.

Terry Fox Run

It was a gorgeous Friday morning for the 34th Annual Terry Fox Run at CHA.  This children brought their coins in all week long to add to our jar.  Everyone wore a tattoo of Terry which said courage on it.  We talked about what courage means and why Terry was courageous.  This was a reminder during our run to do our best!  We watched a short clip about Terry Fox in the gym before a lively warm up to "Roar" led by some of our active Grade 3's.  Then it was go time!  I don't think I've ever seen a stronger group of first grade runners.  They ran their hearts out.  I was so proud.  Well done CHA!

Friday donations