Hi Parents,
It was soooo beautiful out today that I didn't have the energy to come inside to write my blog, but look at Mrs. Montagano.....she worked all day and she has done her blog already!
This will be a brief blog to update you on a few things that will be happening.
First off:
The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup will be this Thursday.
If you have said that you were going to volunteer then of course we would love to have you. Even if you didn't say you were going to volunteer and you would like to come, we would love to have you.
Everyone should be in the classroom by 9:00 am and then we will be going down to the lunchroom to hear a little talk by another grade one mom who has organized this with the help of Ms. Lee. We will then all walk down to Jericho BEach and begin to clean. Please send a snack that your child can put in their pocket as we will not be bringing their back packs. We will be walking rain or shine, so be prepared for any kind of weather. REmember that it is muddy at the beach, perhaps old shoes, or rain boots would be the best bet.

Secondly:
Mini hatch is coming to our classroom Next Tuesday ( I will be working that day) we will have a Mini Hatch representative coming in to tell us all about hatching our own chicks. He will be bringing in an incubator and our eggs and get us all set up. Then I think it is 22 days later, we should have our own little chicks. Needless to say we will be studying chicks and chicken for the entire month. We are soooo excited about this. We are paying for our incubator out of the funds raised by the PAC through danceathon etc. Thank you for that!

In class this week:
1. Celebrating Earth Week on Monday by doing some beautiful writing and creating our hand print pledge of being kind to the earth and loving it.

2. We planted bean seeds that are already sprouting.
3. We planted sunflower seeds that needed to be transplanted. The children learned why we need to transplant plants.
4. Last week we took a look at what a plant needs to survive and are carefully looking after our plants right now and watching that they receive sunlight, water, air and food! They are growing amazingly right now.
5. We are tracking the growth of our SPUDS. They are all getting so big! Once they are around 15cm tall and over the pot we will hill it and then take them out to our garden (which by the way is growing beautifully).

With that,
I will see everyone tomorrow.
Enjoy your evening!!
teri

Montaganews--Tuesday, April 23rd

Hello Parents! Here's what we were up to this Tuesday:

-MATH--Shapes--I'm trying to wrap up our learning in shapes.  The Grade 1s started the shapes section from the Jump Math program today. It reinforces the concepts and equally importantly, teaches them how to work through a wordy booklet. I am so proud of them for reading the lesson at the top of the page and then following the directions independently at their desk.  Back in January when I looked at the pages, I didn't think they would manage it but today, they did it and felt good doing it.  They've been seeing the Grade 2s work through their pages so our Grade 2s have set a fine example.  So, the Grade 2s are almost done their Jump Math section on Shapes. 
   **I sent booklets of a handful of students home today so they could finish up to the 'Symmetry' section.  I am really hoping it's not a struggle for them to do this homework.  If it is, send me a little note back and we'll get it done next Tuesday. But please please, do make sure they bring it back by next Tuesday because otherwise, they won't have anything to do or I'll have to waste paper photocopying it again.  They can pop it on my desk anytime.

-C.A.R.E. kit-today's message came home: Everyone has a body.

-Reader's Theater..."The Nightingale" group is almost ready to perform!

-Computer time with Mr. A

-birthday card for Julia--happy birthday Julia!! :)

-journal writing--who?what?when?where?why? are questions to ask to help us write more detail...

Have a great rest of the week...
Ebru Montagano

Montaganews--Tuesday, April 16, 2013

What a beautiful, gorgeous, sunny day!  It's the first time in months I was able to write, "It is sunny!" in the morning message this morning. 

Today we :
-started our C.A.R.E. kit.  Lesson #1 is Everybody has Feelings.  We brainstormed a ton of feelings on chart paper and played a game where I whispered a feeling for one person to act out and the class guessed. We discussed how you can tell how a person is feeling by looking at their face, body and even by their voice. They're bringing home their very own, "Today, I learned..." sheet---it's a half pager.

-Grade 2s plugged away on their shapes booklet from the Jump Math program.  Grade 1s sorted 3-D objects in the environment: sphere, cone, cylinder, cube, rectangular prism.

-had their long-awaited computer time with Mr. A.  (Computers were serviced over Spring Break.)

-wrote in journals. They are writing more and more.  I expect at least a page from Grade 2s and Grade 1s are now upto half a page or 4-5 sentences.

-made Ella's birthday card.  Happy Birthday Ella!
 Next is Julia, Macy, Cedar, Kaia and of course, we can't forget our summer babies, Lauren, Nils & Will.

-we even got to go outside!

Have a great rest of the week!
See you next Tuesday!
Ebru Montagano

Happy Sunday to all!
In between the snow drops, and rain drops, I hope that everyone happened to get outside and play. There was some sunshine on the north shore and even a beautiful double rainbow!! Did you see it? It was quite beautiful, the rain was falling and the sun was shining and there over top of it all was the hugest, most colourful rainbow I have seen this year!

So we have had a busy week.
We are writing a lot. In fact daily the children are writing either stories, sentences or poetry. This week we wrote about spring in general and are working on exploding a topic instead of simply writing a list of things that spring is about. The grade two's are getting very good at it and are becoming excellent role models for our grade ones. We practiced our beautiful printing. In the hallway i have our beautiful samples out for everyone to see. We also wrote some "rain, rain go away writing!" We did such a good job that the rain went away on Wednesday which allowed us to go and play in the sunshine for a few minutes. Awwww, it felt so wonderful!!

Have you seen our spuds in tubs? They have not popped up yet even though we have been watering and watching them...nothing yet. Maybe they need more sunshine streaming into the windows to get them sprouting. When they are 15 cm over the top of the pot, we will take them outside. A big thank you to Anja and Angela for taking on the job of watering our garden when the sun does start shining!!

A big thank you to Robin (Fletcher's mom) for coming in on Thursday afternoon to call all the kids to start planting our seeds that we will then be taking outside to watch grow and hopefully harvest before school ends. We planted sunflower seeds, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers and herbs (rosemary, basil and cilantro). So pretty soon we will be watching them grow, go through the process of transplanting into larger containers and then outdoors. Your littles will all become amazing gardeners by the end of this term. We will be talking about seeds, plants and what plants need to grow and survive.

Next week:
1. Catriona will be in to do a lesson on Trees. We will talk about the parts of the tree, what the rings on a tree symbolize, and how to differentiate between a coniferous and a deciduous tree. We always love when Catriona comes in. She will be here on Monday from recess to lunch.

2. Please send in your Shoreline clean up forms if you havent already. They are due!

3. Report card envelopes need to be signed and returned.

4. This Friday, April 19th is a professional day. No school!

With that, I hope everyone has a great Sunday and I will see you on Monday.
Teri

Montaganews--Tuesday, April 9, 2013

I feel so bad for not writing a blog last week....I totally wanted to but time ran away from me. I thought I'd write it at home but I should know better.  Anyways, I'm going to make up for it right now. :)

Healthy ME Booklets

Teaching your children Tuesday and Wednesday last week was an absolute joy. They are such an eager bunch of students who just love to learn. They really do come to class to work hard and are happy to do so, even after a 2 week holiday!  It was a treat to have them back well rested and ready for the final school term. If you haven't done so already, have a look at their Spring Break snapshot writing on the portable bulletin board (it's inside the classroom by the spuds now), it shows their hard work on the first day back.  Both Ms. Taylor and I were impressed with the content and the amount of their writing.   Last week we also wrapped up our Healthy Body unit.  Their booklets are in the library right now, waiting for our Super Librarian, Ms. Y, to find a spot to showcase them.  They learned so much about what healthy foods are, eating a variety of foods, what foods contain what vitamins, importance of rest & relaxation (their fave page I think), why exercising is important and their favourite ways to get some.  On Friday, April 26 a dentist will be coming in to class to talk to them about oral health. Thank you to Henry's mom for arranging this for us.   I meant to have a dentist guest speaker in during our unit but the schedules didn't work.  Oh well.  I'm certain they'll learn lots or have a good reminder from yet another person about the importance of brushing and how to brush in any case.

Last week, I also tried to bring HOPSCOTCH back into their lives.  Maybe you've noticed?  We managed to get 15 minutes outside last Wednesday in the sunshine and played on the 2 hopscotch boards painted under the black top.  It's such a great activity to get out the chalk and paint a board on the sidewalk outside your home.

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Today was another fabulous day in the land of Grade 1/2.  Again, they arrived this morning eager to work hard and learn.  We really focussed in on 3-d objects today in Math.  Their cubes are coming home today.  On each face is a fact about a cube, written in a sentence (that was the 'criteria').  It's not put together the best way...feel free to add more tape.  It's not as easy as it looks to put that net together!  We talked about edges, faces, vertices (corners).  We also talked about what exactly 3-D means.  Their 3-D art demonstrating what 3-D means is outside on the table in the hallway. 

Next week we will begin the C.A.R.E. program which is a sexual abuse prevention program for children aged 5-9.  I sent home a letter outlining the program's focus today. It's on purple paper.  C.A.R.E stands for Child Abuse Research & Education.

Have a fabulous week and see you next Tuesday! Please remember that library books are due back on Tuesdays.

Ebru Montagano

 Math period....working on their 3d Art...hands on way of understanding what 3 Dimensional means.

sorry...i notice i missed taking a photo of one table group!  My apologies!