Polar Bears, Seals, Killer Whales, Oh My!

We have started 2019 learning about the Arctic and its animals. What a perfect unit for us while we have been stuck inside with very cold temperatures! We read books and watched videos to see what the arctic looks like. Wow there was a lot of snow and ice! We also noticed there weren’t a lot of trees or plants growing there. 

Next, we looked at the different animals that live in the arctic. Polar bears, arctic fox, walruses, narwhals and arctic wolves all live in the arctic. We spent some time reading the book “Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?” and we sorted the animals into arctic animals and non-arctic animals. We even learned some new words, like camouflage and blubber!

To end our inquiry we made Borax crystal snowflakes to take home.

Each week, we focus on learning specific letters and so many of us can recognize the entire alphabet now! Every week we learn about a letter, including the letter’s sound, how to write the letter, and words that start with the letter. We even learn how to cut the letter out. Our favourite part is guessing words throughout the week that start with the letter based on its sound. Our teachers are always having to add new words to our letter posters because we keep thinking up new words! The letters we have focused on so far are p, g, d, v, z and n. 

 Another topic we have been focusing on is patterns. Specifically, we have been practicing body percussion patterns, such as clapping, tapping, spinning and jumping. Our teachers will ask us to think of a ABCABC pattern and we are all so eager to share our pattern idea with the class!  We are excited about the colour pattern in the rainbow (and have collected 56 rainbow patterns on our shelf - thank you to the students who counted them twice to make sure) and we are learning to check our own patterns.  It's ok to get tricked, we can always move things around if we notice a mistake.  Catching a mistake means you are learning and growing your brain!

 

We have now begun learning all about friendship. The question we are thinking of as a class is “What makes a good friend?”. Today we started to learn about and practice sharing. What can we do if two of us want the same toy at the same time? Part of our learning about friendship includes a new centre – the post office! We have been decorating post cards for our friends and delivering them.