How Full is Your Bucket?

This is a great book that teaches kids how their actions affect others by using the metaphor of an invisible bucket. It suggests that we all have a bucket within us that needs to be filled with positive experiences, such as praise and kindness. When we are negative toward others, we empty someone's bucket which starts to take away that happy feeling. Division 9 has been working hard to fill up each others bucket, and when they show kindness towards one another, I encourage them to draw what they did and we glue it onto our bucket filling poster. Of course, it is impossible to document everything in an already busy day, but our poster is filling up quickly!


Here is a youtube link of someone reading the book

How Full is Your Bucket

Les haricots

We planted beans (les haricots)! Over the next 60 days, we will learn about the needs of living things, the characteristics of a plant, and we will journal our observations of our bean plant as it begins to grow. Every few days, we will take them outside in the morning and water it and to get some sun, then bring it back in at the end of the day.

'oi'

The complex sound we are learning this week is 'oi'. It makes the sound 'wa' (like the 'wa' in water).

Ask your child to read you some of the words we are learning.

Caterpillars

Division 9 is home to 16 caterpillars! As we learn about their life cycle, we will watch them turn into chrysalis' and then hatch into butterflies over the next few weeks. The yellow stuff in the containers is food. I'm not 100% sure what it is made of, some sugar mixture, but eat almost all of it and triple in size before they begin to cocoon in 10 days.

Le jour de la terre

Saturday is Earth Day. We read a book called "J'aime la terre" by Todd Parr and brainstormed things we could do to take better care of our planet. As a class, we decided we could be more conscious of how much paper we consume. We made an earth day promise that if we took a piece of paper for art or drawing, we would use both sides of it instead of just one.

Movie Premier in Division 9!

After Malin made a stop/motion video with Pipo, the students were asking if they could make one too. Skye, Malin's mom, spent a morning and afternoon working with the students in small groups to make their own movies. The students chose the characters, created a simple story board, and picked a song to hear in the background. Today we had our big movie debut, popcorn and all!

The app Skye used was 'stikbot'. I believe it is free and fairly user friendly.

You will probably have to log onto the blog's website in order for the videos to play.

Happy watching!

Walk-a-thon

Our walk-a-thon today was a huge success! The weather was perfect and the students were so cute walking in their Bon Dragon costumes. I didn't take many pictures but here are a few of some of our little dragons :)

Joyeuse Paques!

Happy Easter! I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend. We are so lucky for this beautiful weather. Thursday afternoon, the Easter Bunny came to our school and hid little chocolate eggs in all the classrooms. The students had so much fun finding (and eating!) them all.

you cannot see them, but there are chocolate Easter eggs hidden in there!

c'est

We are working on the sight word 'c'est' (pronounced 'say'). It means 'it's. The mini-book the students brought home in their book bag focuses on this word. Please don't worry if your child cannot read all the words in the book, it is not the expectation. They should be able to identify the word c'est, and read 'une' or 'un'. If they cannot read the last work, see if they know what the picture is. Then ask them how to say it in French.

'Clean Up Your Act'

We had a performance in the gym this morning. It was a play called 'Clean Up Your Act'. It was all about littering, graffiti  and the importance of keeping our community clean. It was told like the story of the "Three Little Pigs" but with different twist. The actors were hilarious and the students were laughing the entire time!

'ou'

This week, we are learning the sound 'ou'. Ask your child to teach you the sound it makes and read some of the words we are learning.

Class Photos

The students received our class photo today. After school, I found one on the floor in the coatroom which means someone went home without one! Please let me know if you did not get one.

Sur

In the students book bags today, there is a book called 'sur'. This means 'on', as in on top of something. When reading the book with your child, you can:
-spell the word together, s-u-r spells sur
-focus on differentiating between 'le' and 'la'
-ask them to find certain letters on the page
-read 'sur la _____' and have them teach you the vocabulary word based on the picture (it is not expected that they know all the words, but they should be able to get at least half!).

sur la bicyclette

sur la boite

sur la lune

sur la tortue

sur la table

sur la chaise

sur le gateau

sur le chapeau

'ch'

The complex sound we are learning this week is 'ch'. It makes the sounds 'shhhh'. Here are a few words we are learning to read.