Weeks Fifteen & Sixteen: Joy and Holiday Cheer
The weeks leading up to the winter holidays are an exciting time at school - the girls are filled with energy and holiday spirit. As a class, we spent lots of time outdoors playing in the snow, reading stories about the different holidays that people around the world celebrate in December, and having holiday-inspired play in the classroom. Take a look at all of the joy that was shared between the Early Learners, as well as with students in other grades at Linden. Happy holidays!
M, Z, and G use their reading wands to help count how many sight words we recognized in the Monday Memo. We do this activity each week, gradually recognizing more and more as we learn new sight words. The girls enjoy taking time to independently count the words and then count them as a group.
The Early Learners built a snow person on the roof with the grade 8s at recess. Everyone is excited about the snow outside!
Z and M pretend they are ballerinas in The Nutcracker Ballet. They enjoyed dancing around the classroom to classical music while they were in the Drama Centre.
G carefully adjusts the "trap" she has built to make sure her imaginary evil brother does not escape. After using the square-shaped magnates, G tries to close the gap with triangular ones.
G admires G's snowflake ornament. After decorating one side, the girls work on adding detail to the other side.
M and Z collaborate to create the North Pole and Santa's Workshop. Each girl first made her own section, but they wanted to work together to join them together to make a larger Workshop.
G wants to write a note to Santa and is using the "Pere Noel" picture to help her with the words. After realizing that the board is in French, G asks her classmates for help sounding "Santa" out.
Z and G pretend to be asleep as they role play a family on a trip in Drama. They chose to bring some of the pillows and other props from the Drama Centre over to the blue carpet to change where their play took place.
G is designing a city with homes for all of her friends. She delicately threads straws through a basket to create a new structure on the light table. It is amazing how different creations can come from a similar selection of materials.
M is proud to show off the fan she made. She was so excited that she ended up making fans to give to each of her classmates (and her teacher!).
G and Z work together to co-create something unique at the Light Table. This is as much about negotiating as it is about creative design, both important competencies that we are building at school.
G and M love wearing the purple dresses, and are pretending to be moms of a family going on a trip to see the ballet.
M ponders the challenges of the week as she waits on the phone for someone to answer the other line.
G eagerly re-reads "I'll Wait, Mr. Panda" during independent reading time. The girls love this series, as the books are simple, repetitive, and beautifully illustrated. We also learn great lessons about manners and patience from Mr. Panda.
M and G read a Robert Munsch story together. M lets G read her favourite, expressive lines from the story.
G and G work in the Communication Centre to sort letters into two groups - those that have holes and those that don't. This task was no problem for these girls.
G experiments using rulers to make a lot of different lines on a giant sheet of paper at the Math Centre. Line drawing led her to practice drawing 5-line stars.
Z and M are inspired by the new poinsettia, and work at the Nature Centre to sketch it with detail. The girls choose to represent it with different materials, Z using Sharpies, and M using pencil crayons.
After M left for Japan, we took a look at Google Maps to see how far she was travelling. The girls commented that she went across the ocean, and remarked that the blue on the map page means water. G is looking through the map book and noticing that it also has water (although maybe not the ocean) and TTC markings.
The girls use the measuring tapes to measure lengths of things around the classroom. Today they are especially interested in comparing the length of objects to the measuring tape, and seeing which is longer. They easily observed here that the board was much longer than the tape.
G builds a thin tower in the Math Centre. This task then inspires G to build a larger, more complex structure with G.
On our ravine walk, the girls choose to try to toboggan down the pathways and loved every minute of it.
It was puppy day in the Early Learning class today because Brie brought in her dog Roxy to school. We watched Youtube videos from Dogs 101 to learn about this breed of dog, asked questions about how Brie takes care of her dog(s), and spent a lot of time playing with Roxy. Here, the girls are measuring how long they are in comparison to Roxy after noticing how long she was when she stretched out.
Z creates different holiday-inspired creations using only manipulatives from the Math Centre. She is proud to share her creativity with her classmates at the end of centre time.
G uses her finger to stamp lights for our holiday cards that we are making to give out to the staff at Linden.
Z chooses to use the bingo stampers to create lights on the holiday cards.
For a special reading buddies during the last week of school, the Early Learners got to perform their song for Festival of Lights to their reading buddies, and also got to watch the short holiday-themed skits put on by the grade 6s. All performances were excellent!
Z spends time writing different staff members' names on the cards that we made together. Each girl wrote some names, and together we delivered them to all of the adults who work at Linden. We love expressing our appreciation for all of the people who work hard to make sure that we are well cared for and well supported everyday.