Week Five: Rooftop Weddings and Beautiful Patterns

A works on the October calendar that will be displayed in our classroom all month. Letter-by-letter, A writes the name of the month, and then she fills in the numbers of the days. For numbers that she doesn’t feel comfortable writing independently, A traces the numerals on the printed calendar, then attempts them herself on the big version.

N is working in the mayor’s office this morning and is serving up fruit filled with jelly. We have a quick conversation about the work she is doing to make sure that everyone in the city has food before she invites A over to try her specialty.

Soteira is back for another visit with baby E, and A is thrilled to spend some more time with E. A asks if she’s able to give E little tickles and is very gentle as she does.

This afternoon’s Outdoor Education class begins with “sit spots”, a moment for each student to observe her surroundings, listen for sounds, touch the space around her, and appreciate the outdoor space that we are fortunate to have the use of. O sketches some of her observations in her notebook.

A is very proud of the practice-board art that she made during some free time today. She explains that it’s not really anything, just a design. It is evident that a lot of careful planning and effort went into this work.

O asks for my help this morning in building a house. First she adds the flooring (recycled tissue paper from a birthday gift I received on the weekend), and then instructs me to build walls to go around the floor. In this picture, O is working on adding a table to the kitchen to go beside the fridge.

AB puts a spell on AK, who is pretending to be a baby, to start crying really loudly. Her second spell causes AK to get up and start dancing.

There is a big wedding happening on the roof at morning recess. AK is officiating the marriage of K (grade 2) and AB, and exclaims "I now pronounce you lovely wedding wives" after they walk down the aisle to music sung by their peers. There is even a fun dance party following the ceremony.

O balances her umbrella on the tables to create a house for herself.

The Early Learners are practicing the sounds /k/ and /e/ this morning and are working on printing the lowercase letters for each of these sounds. They were able to come up with tons of words that start with /k/, but realized that there were not as many words they could think of that start with /e/.

Today we are working with patterns and learning that patterns repeat and have a core, which tells you the “plan” for the rest of the pattern.  A practices making different repeating patterns using the beautiful materials found around the classroom. She is able to confidently identify the core in both of her patterns.

In CERES, N is learning about how shapes tesselate (or fit together neatly like puzzle pieces). She works with the square pattern blocks to practice tessellations. 

O is off on an adventure this morning with some favourite materials from the Drama centre. She sets down her blanket and then arranges her materials out neatly. She has been enjoying being a photographer and capturing special moments in the classroom.

N is working on staging a different space at Linden this morning – the grade 7 classroom. While on the third floor she observed that the desks were arranged in a circle, so is working to replicate that using math manipulatives. After setting up the desks, N practices her one-to-one correspondence by placing a bear at each desk.

Inspired by O’s structure from yesterday, A sets out to build something similar. She tells the class that hers is more of a castle with special protectors at the front of it.

After learning about repeating patterns yesterday, the girls have been challenged to create two to four different patterns using stickers. A's first pattern goes "bug, plant, bug, plant..." whereas N's goes "smiley, circle, star, smiley, circle, star...". It is always interesting seeing how the girls' creativity comes out as they demonstrate their understandings of patterning.

A wanted to attempt the 100-piece puzzle again at the Math centre this morning, and she asked for a bit of help completing some continents. She was incredibly proud that she completed the full puzzle and was excited to share her accomplishment with her classmates. 

There has not been a recess this week that there has not been a wedding. Look at the looks of pure joy on AB and AK's faces after they tied the knot. 

N works on completing her "sort and glue" task this morning to wrap up the week of word study. She is confident sorting the pictures by starting sound and glueing them into the correct columns.