What We've Been Up To This Week

I hope that you are having a lovely weekend enjoying the autumn weather. This week we wrapped up our exploration of owls. On Friday, students 'showed what they know' about what owls eat, their appearance, where they live, and how they protect themselves using various materials to demonstrate all that they have learned. 

Beginning this week, we will be focusing on Fall, discussing harvest time, and investigating apples and pumpkins.

After focusing on alphabetical order, matching upper-case and lower-case letters, and names in September, we plunged into letter sounds this week. So far we have explored letters C, D, A, and G. Each day, students complete a 'Say it, Find it, Read it, Write it' activity as a whole class and independently. When they are done, they may go on a 'letter hunt' around the classroom in search of words that have the letter of the day at the beginning, middle, and end. Once everyone is complete, we begin Word Work stations, where students continue working with various manipulatives to build their own names, names of classmates, and words that start with the letter of the day. 

We played a beginning sounds game as a class called The Quiet Machine. I've included the link, as well as in the Links & Resources section. The Quiet Machine (http://pbskids.org/lions/games/) will help your child listen for and identify the beginning sound and match it to the corresponding letter. This is an excellent activity to practice together at home.

Students are working on using their Reading Buddies to help them slow down and track top to bottom and left to right when reading a book. Ask your child to show you their reading buddy, and be sure to model how you read the story top to bottom/left to right/starting at the beginning of the book and stopping at the end. This will help your child properly handle books independently with confidence.

Reminders for the upcoming week:

• Picture Day is tomorrow: Monday, September 27th
• October calendars & newsletters will be sent home on Wednesday
• There is still a need for one more volunteer at the PAWS Casino this weekend. Please contact parentswps@gmail.com if you are able to help or interested in more information about this event.

Popcorn Orders and Terry Fox

Thank you for remembering to send Library books today! 

Popcorn orders are due tomorrow, Thursday, September 24th.

Terry Fox Run is Friday, September 25th in the afternoon. I am sending home "Terry Ran for me, I am running for______" stickers. Please discuss with your child who they might want to run for, so that this part is meaningful to them, and send the sticker back in their Home/School books on Friday. We will not put the sticker on them until just before the run.

I'm running for my good friend Tim Harriman, who passed away from Leukemia
after raising money for cancer research by biking across Canada.

We practiced the route today during Workout Wednesday. Please send your child in appropriate running attire on Friday. We will continue collecting Toonies for Terry donations until September 30th.

Picture Day: Monday, September 28th

Picture day will be next Monday, September 28th

International Dot Day

International Dot Day was a success! We kicked off the celebration by inviting the other Grade One classes to our room to watch the animated video version of The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds in our class. Then we listened to the song. We are working on learning the actions to the song 'Make Your Mark'. I told the students that I would post it on the blog!

Links: 

The Dot Animated Video: https://youtu.be/t5mGeR4AQdM

The Dot Song: https://youtu.be/-ZQMhdYJhsA

The Dot Song with Actions: https://youtu.be/r_I43cxDQ-o

Collaborative Dot Painting 

Mixing Colours Dot Craft

Dot Craft

Dot Snack! We spread icing on a graham
cracker and decorated them with Smartie dots!

• Just a reminder that there is no school tomorrow: Friday, September 18th, as it is a Staff Planning and Development Day. 
• Library is every Wednesday. Please return library books every Wednesday morning. 

Volunteers Needed: Fundraising Casino

10 volunteers are still needed for WPS Fundraising Casino October 2 & 3rd. Please contact parentswps@gmail.com if you are interested in volunteering and the PAWS Executive will pass on more information. 

Weekly Update

We are beginning to talk about seasons in Grade 1, and trying to gather as much evidence of summer before it starts to disappear! During recess time, students may gather items for our nature bin, and every Friday while we get ready for assembly students have a chance to explore what they've gathered with magnifying glasses. 

Some of the treasures we found this week.
I brought the sunflowers from my garden.

It was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom week in 1H. Our focus was naming letters and matching upper-case and lower-case letters. An excellent resource to practice this at home is Between the Lions Monkey Match: http://pbskids.org/lions/games/monkeymatch.html It was a great way to review this skill, and the students loved it! 

Today we explored coconuts using our five senses: we used our eyes to see, our hands to touch, and our ears to hear the 'swishing' sound the milk inside made. We wrote these descriptions on a poster. Then, we opened up the coconut to smell the milk. We touched the coconut meat, and then tasted shredded coconut. When we were all done, students graphed whether they liked the way coconut tasted or not.

Finally, students were able to create their own coconut trees from various materials. The only guideline was that they had to be able to tell me the main parts of the coconut tree: leaves, trunk, and coconuts. 

Some of our palm tree creations. We listened to
Caribbean music and pretended we were on
 the beach while we created!

For next week:

• Please make sure to send water bottles on Monday. I'm noticing some were left behind today during Stack and Pack time. I'll make sure they get sent home Monday to be washed. 
• Terry Fox Run 
• If you would like to order a pledge form, please send Terry Fox Information Form back by Wednesday, September 16th
• Toonies will be collected until September 30th
• On Tuesday, September 15th, the Grade One classes at Willow Park School are participating in International Dot Day, celebrating creativity, courage, and collaboration. The focus of the day is the book 'The Dot' by Peter H Reynolds, and the message is to 'make your mark'. Students are encouraged to wear polka dots on Tuesday.

As always, please contact me if you have further questions or require additional information.

Have an excellent weekend!

Mrs. Jenna Haugan

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Workout Wednesday (W.O.W), and Library

I hope that you had an excellent long weekend. The week is off to a great start in 1H. It is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom week!  Here is the link to a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video we watched today after reading the story and participating in some uppercase and lowercase matching activities: https://youtu.be/ZH4bBMW8eus?list=PLFhSih872JnUtPeLhpavqkcrau-uA_GMH . 

Every Wednesday is Workout Wednesday at Willow Park School. Students are encouraged to wear Willow Park School gear and/or 'workout wear' so that they can participate in class workouts comfortably. If the weather is nice, 1P and 1H will be doing some cross country running during Phys. Ed tomorrow to prepare for the Terry Fox Run later this month. If it is too cool or rainy, we will be doing workout stations in the gym. 

Tomorrow is also our first library class with our school librarian, Mrs. Hemery. Students will not be checking out books, but will have a chance to explore the library and learn about library rules and expectations. We will have library every Wednesday afternoon at the end of the day. 

You might be noticing that your child is coming home with marker spots on their hands and arms. No, they aren't colouring on themselves. I use washable crayola stampers as positive reinforcement when I catch your child being good. We call them 'stamp kisses'. If you see your child with some stamps, be sure to tell them good job and ask them what they got their stamp kiss for!

Week One in Grade One

What a great first week of school! I am so impressed with how quickly the students have begun to adapt to our classroom routines, procedures, and expectations. It is going to be a great year. 

This week, we focused on names. Printing our names, counting the letters in our names, making name crafts, and most importantly, learning our classmates' names!

On the first day of grade one, we celebrated the number one, and looked at the different ways to show one. Students practiced printing the numeral one, and learned the rhyme 'Straight line down, and then you're done. That's the way to make a one!'. We read the story Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School, as well as Hello First Grade to learn that 'first' means number one in line, grade, or day of school. On the second day of school we explored the number two and how to show two. 'Half a heart, then back to you, that's the way to make a two!' On the third day of school, we learned all about the number three, and different ways to show three. 'Around the tree, around the tree, that's the way to make a three!' We will continue these activities until numbers 1-10 are reviewed. 

We made a craft for each number as well. These crafts were not only to learn the numbers, but to reinforce proper scissor and pencil grip, and how to roll a glue stick up and down properly. Students are unpacking and getting used to managing their own personal school supplies a little bit at a time. After number review time, we played 'Chester Number Bingo', with Chester from the story 'The Kissing Hand'. We also made Chester faces to put on our 'What We're Reading' board. 

Today we had our first assembly of the school year. Whole school assemblies are on Friday mornings right after attendance, and Division 1 assemblies are on Tuesday mornings right after attendance. 

On Fridays, we do art after assembly. I like to connect art to what we are learning about in class. Because part of Grade One is learning about the needs of animals, we will be focusing on a new animal every week or two. This is a short week, so we will spend this week and next week learning about owls. Today, we watched some videos about owls, and created owls out of cardboard rolls, paint, fabric, glue, and of course, googly eyes! We also painted some branches to hang them on. We sang a song about 10 Little Owls.Here is the link: https://youtu.be/Ke6xc1bnC_0 I have also included it on the Links & Resources page.

While I always add soap to the paint we use, you may also send a paint shirt that we will store in the classroom. Many of the students do already have a paint shirt in the classroom.

Just a few reminders:

• Please send water bottles back on Monday
• Our line-up zone is at the main entrance of the school. I will greet students at the doors in the morning, and lead them out after school.
• There is no school on Monday, September 7th. Enjoy your long weekend!

As always, if you have any further questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Have a safe and happy long weekend!

Mrs. Jenna Haugan

Grade One Teacher

Willow Park Elementary School

Phone: 780-986-8456

Email: jenna.haugan@gshare.blackgold.ca

Classroom Blog: http://mrsjennahaugan.blogspot.ca/

September Calendar