June Newsletter

Dear Parents,

Here's your June Newsletter.

While looking for ideas to inspire me about outdoor learning, I found this list which I quite liked as well:
http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2012/03/50-simple-outdoor-activities-for-kids.html

In June, you'll notice that we stop reading the book from home together about mid-month and that library books are all due back. We'll continue to provide books and opportunities to read together in class during the whole month, but want to ensure that materials are ready to be used for next year.

Another heads up is that the FDK picnic on the 23rd functions as our year end family gathering. We hope you'll be able to come and more details on how you can help us pull this off as smoothly as possible will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

More urgently, the IRC Fun Fair is next weekend on June 4th. If you haven't been before, please consider making it a family destination for Saturday, or volunteering. This Funfair is one of the major fundraising events for the school, plus there's a lot of fun games and activities for everyone to enjoy. I'll be there for a bit too, so come and say hi!

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Math and Groceries, with added flavour

Dear Parents, 

Now that the weather is nicer, we're spending a little more time outside of the classroom. One of the students' favourite things to do for outdoor play is to visit Baird Park around the corner. 

New things to try

 Our grocery in the drama centre continues to be a focal point in the classroom. We have 3 cash registers where students are ringing up purchases and monitoring change, as well as an active postering project where students are drawing their favourite foods and deciding how much we should charge for them.

Cash registers in action, with posters in the background

Lots of fruit on sale

Today was hot, so ice cream was definitely top of mind

In math, we've been looking at using dice to help us add numbers together. Students rolled two dice and added the results then marked off the recycling bins to show they'd gotten that result. The challenge and the learning of this activity happened most pointedly when students got frustrated at repeating results like 7, 8, and 9, but still hadn't gotten 2 or 12.  

On the back was a graphing activity, where students had to see which number "won", i.e. got the most rolls. This was definitely a preferred activity for many of the students.  And when that got too easy, I broke out the ten sided dice for novelty and challenge. 

You can see both sides of the activity here.

Students working together to add

Counting using fingers and using crayons as counters.

Working with students, I had the chance to model some great number sense techniques that may seem inuitive to adults, like moving counters from one group to another to show they've been counted. We also worked on counting up from the first number in the equation --i.e. starting at 7, then counting up another 5 to get the answer of 12.

Finally, here's a picture of Ms. Sawyer, who's with us this week while Ms. Moniz is away. She was hard at work this afternoon, preparing the nutritional paste for our new Monarch caterpillars. More on this to follow in coming days. 

In the meantime, I'm hard at work on the June calendar. It's hard to believe the year is almost over, especially with all the things we've still got packed in!

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

Field Trip Forms

Dear Parents,

A heads up that a form for our June field trip went home today.

Lunch is included in the cost of this trip and I have room for 4 parents to come along with us.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

Police Day

Dear Parents,

Yesterday, we went to Police Day at Lucy McCormick. Students were excited to explore a police car and motorcycle, as well as meet police dogs and horses.

Students also had the opportunity to ask police officers questions about anything they wanted.  Questions asked included:

How does the siren work?
Why is there a computer in the car?
What is this thing? (A walkie talkie)
Is the horse nice? Will it bite?
How does the dog help police?
Why is the other dog barking so much?

Back at school, we bridged this some more to see where interest was, but students are more engaged by the plan for turning our drama centre into a grocery store right now. They were hard at work making posters for different food prices this morning.

 But we managed to get some good photos during police day despite not being able to see my view finder in the sun (Still, too much sun is a nice problem to have).  These are the ones that turned out:

Investigating the back seat of a police car

Looking at the engine

Sitting in the driver's seat

Petting the horses

Trying out the motorbikes

Meeting a police dog

Many did not want to approach the dog directly. The one in the van sounded quite fierce, but the one with the officer was very sweet, though definitely a licker.

So, we took a class photo with the dog instead.

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. Due to watching the talent show, we missed our library period this week, but we'll try to get an extra period in there next week somewhere.