Winter Crafts

It's been so busy that I haven't had time to take many photos of the activities we've been doing in order to update our blog. Almost every afternoon we do a winter craft. Not only does it decorate our classroom for the season but it is a great way to learn new vocabulary and develop fine motor skills.

A big thank you to Yuko, Nathan and Celeste who helped the students make salt-dough decorations this morning. We will paint them later this week and they will bring them home on Friday.




les cannes-à-sucres =candy canes
les bougies = candles



les pingouins = penguins



les bas de Noël = stockings



les flocons de neige = snowflakes

Letter Ff

One of the letters we are learning this week is 'f'. Ask your child to teach you the action and the sound it makes. The students did a great job printing this letter. Ask them to show you how to write it from top to bottom. They were also able to brainstorm a ton of words with the sound 'ffff' in both English and French. Their French vocabulary is growing so much!!




'f' dit fffff
'f' dit fffff
froid, froid
fff, fff, fff

Letter Uu

The second letter we learned this week is 'u'. The students thought the action and song was funny! Ask them to teach it to you.




'u' dit u
'u' dit u
pue, pue
u, u, u

Letter Pp

Today we learned about the letter ‘p’. Ask your child to teach you how to say it in French, and the sound it makes.

‘p’ dit p

‘p’ dit p

pluie, pluie 

p, p, p

Letter Dd

The second letter we are learning this week is 'd'. We are focusing on printing lower case letters and this is another hard one to write. Practice at home as often as you can.




'd' dit d
'd' dit d
descendre, descendre
d, d, d

Song - Je suis pret pour les montagnes

Below is the link to a song we are learning. It has a lot of actions and the students love it. We will probably sing this one for the Winter Concert on December 18.

Charlotte Diamond - Je suis pret pour les montagnes

Les mitaines

We painted mittens and the students had to put a sentence together. Ask your child to read you what it says!





Voici mes mitaines

Letter Oo

One of the letters we are learning this week is 'o'. Ask your child to teach you the action and the sound it makes.



'o' dit oh
'o' dit oh
océan, océan
oh, oh, oh

Patterns

We have been working on recognizing, creating and extending patterns since the beginning of kindergarten. When you notice a pattern, point it out and ask your child to explain the pattern to you. Patterns can be found in music, books, clothing, nature, decorations, etc. They really are all around us!

Letter Rr

When we have time, we will now start learning two letters a week. Today, we learned all about the letter 'r'. Ask your child to teach you the action and the sound it makes. When you practice writing the lower case 'r', remind them to start from the start and not to take their pencil off the paper when they write it!



'r' dit rrrrr
'r' dit rrrrr
rugir, rugir
rrr, rrr, rrr

Letter Nn

This week, we are learning all about the letter 'n'. The students were able to come up with a lot of words that had the sound 'nnnn' in it in both English and French. I was impressed! When you practice at home, don't forget to start printing from the top!




'n' dit nnnn
'n' dit nnnn
non, non
nnn, nnn, nnn

Soapstone Carving

Our soapstone carving workshop was so much fun! The students learned how to correctly use the sculpting tools, sandpaper, and water. They were amazed at how fragile the stone was (we broke quite a few!) and how the stone changed color once water and wax was applied. 

 soapstone = pierre a savon 

Letters Cc and Kk

Today we learned the letters ‘c’ and ‘k’. We talked about how the ‘c’ can make an ‘ssss’ sound or a ‘ck’ sound. The ‘k’ is another one of those tricky letters to print. We will practice throughout the week and it will hopefully become easier as the weeks go by..

c dit ‘ck’

c dit ‘ck’

castagnettes, castagnettes

‘ck’, ‘ck’, ‘ck’

k dit ‘k’

k dit ‘k’

castagnettes, castagnettes,

‘ck’, ‘ck’, ‘ck’

Dump trucks and Tractors at the Annex

The school board came by today to pick up all the leaves in the school yard and the students really wanted to go outside and watch. They were in awe that such big machines were able to get onto the school grounds!

La Belle Pieuvre

My 'Songs and Poems' section of the blog seems to have disappeared and I cannot figure out how to get it back. For now, I will post links to the songs we are learning in a post.

Below is the link to a Charlotte Diamond song we have been learning called La Belle Pieuvre. Ask your child to teach it to you :)

La belle pieuvre - link

Coloring Progression

We have been focusing a lot on our coloring and drawing and talking about what constitutes good work. Coloring is something we do everyday in kindergarten and we did an activity to better understand the different stages of learning. When we learn something new, we start off rusty and then get better with practice. We created this visual together to illustrate what these steps might look like at each stage of our learning.


beginning                         developing

applying                          extending

Letter Ee

The letter of the week is ‘e’. Ask your child to teach you the sound it makes and the action that goes with it. The lower case ‘e’ is a tricky letter to print. Practice as often as you can!

‘e’ dit e

‘e’ dit e

je, je

e, e, e

Voici Pipo

I would like to introduce Pipo and his journal. Pipo is our class mascot, and he will be the one going home with a different student each week. Pipo will join in our class activities this week and next week, will be ready to move on to new adventures with you! The students are very excited to start this process. I sent home the schedule for the year yesterday, but if you have any questions, or forget the week when your child will be bringing him home, please do not hesitate to ask.

Symbol Scotch

We added a new activity in our classroom! We have been doing a lot of activities to get our bodies ready to learn, and this is a new one we added this week. It’s called Symbol Scotch. The students jump from square to square with their toes and bodies pointing in the direction of the tape. This activity helps to:

1. Develop motor control and problem solving skills
2. Improve equilibrium and barbaric and dynamic balance
3. Stimulate linear vestibular responses
4. Increase kinesthetic understanding of the body in a space
5. Increases brain stimuli through the ‘heavy work’ of jumping 

Les coquelicots

The students did a great job singing our song at the Remembrance Day assembly. I was very proud at how well they sang a song they learned in four short days. To decorate the school, each class did an art project. We painted poppies and put them up on our bulletin board. 

Remembrance Day Song

We have a Remembrance Day assembly on Thursday after recess and we will be singing this song (we have four days to learn it but they can do it!).

Here is the link to the video. They can listen to it at home and practice if you have time.

Je me souviens -link to the video

Letter Ll

This week, we are learning all about the letter ‘l’. Ask you child to teach you the sound it makes. Since we just learned it today, it may take a day or two of practice before they get it on their own. We practice every morning as part of our morning routine. 

‘l’ dit l

‘l’ dit l

enveloppe, enveloppe

l, l, l

Counting

We’ve been counting the days we’ve been at school. Time is flying by! Ask your child to count to 10 for you en francais. If they can count higher, even better!

Les Saisons

We’ve been talking a lot about seasons (les saisons) and the differences between each one. We will learn about this throughout the year as each season changes. We’ve been focusing on fall (l’automne) and Friday, we went for a walk around the school yard to study the trees and then painted them when we got back to class. We traced our hand for the tree and used sponges to paint the leaves. 

Letter ‘i’

The letter we are learning this week is ‘i’. Ask your child to teach you the name in French and the sound it makes. When you practice writing it, start from the top and make sure the dot isn’t too big. 

‘i’ dit eeeee

‘i’ dit eeeee

souris, souris

eee, eee, eee

Les sorcieres

This morning we made witches (les sorcières) and decorated the bulletin board outside the classroom. Come in and take a look!

Walk-a-thon

Getting our costumes ready for our walk-a-thon. Can you guess what we are going to be?

Les chauve-souris

We painted bats (les chauve-souris) in a pattern and decorated our windows for Halloween. 

Art can be messy :)