Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Here are a few pictures from our very busy week here at Fairvale!

I had to get a picture of the three musketeers in their matching shirts on Concert Day!

Our "good" PJ picture.

The "better" PJ picture. What goofs!

 I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year! Have a great break!

 

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Gingerbread Men

Yesterday Mrs Veale came in and did some fun activities with gingerbread men with our class. We have been doing a lot of math and literacy activities with gingerbread men and this was a fun day to wrap it all up! Mrs. Veale read the kids a few stories, made a Gingerbread man glyph with the kids and decorated cookies with them! We love having volunteers in our classroom-especially when we get to make things we can eat! Below are a few pictures of the kids with the gingerbread men. Unfortunately I only snapped a few pictures before the kids had their cookies gobbled up!



Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Holiday Information Items

    We are working on many surprises this week for our parents and for our big buddies. We have mini hammers going,glue sticks ready and sparkly beads all shined up for the wonderful surprises for our families. The kids must feel like Santa's Little Helpers!
   Next week will be a very fun week here at school. On Monday, we have rehearsals for our Grades

1-5 Christmas Concert.On Tuesday we have our actual concert . I hope you can all make it-the kids have been working very hard! We have the pleasure of attending  the Kindergarten Concert on Wednesday. The Grade 1's think it is so silly that they just did that last year. They are getting to be big kids at school! On the 20th, just roll out of bed and show up to school because it is PJ Day!

     We will be sitting in the gym in our jammies watching all of the older kids perform in the lip sync. Mrs. McNeil always has a great line up for us. The last day (December 21st) is a FULL day. We have a very special visitor coming. HO HO HO! The kids will be eating a yummy turkey dinner and will be participating in their spirit squads. We are all geared up for an exciting week and a half. Let me know if you have any question, comments or concerns with any of our upcoming events.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Gingerbread Man

 This week, in Literacy, we have been reading many different versions of the story The Gingerbread Man. We have been writing about the stories, using the stories to look for text features and talking about the similarities and differences in each story we have read. The kids were very proud of their observations and asked to have their work posted. I think they just enjoyed feeling grown-up and using post-its to write down their observations while we read. I told them this is something big kids do when they are studying and they really got into it!

 

 

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Place Value and Skip Counting

 Here is a quick update about what we have been doing in Math class!

Our One's have been working on skip counting. We talked about different ways we can count (by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's). The One's were given baggies of objects to count. They needed to decide how they are going to count their objects (by 2, 5 or 10), put the objects into groups of 2's, 5's or 10's and then skip count the objects. They are getting very good at this!

 

 

Counting his group by 5's. 44 objects-the kids even know what to do when they can't put their objects into even groups of 5!

This little lady was counting by 2's. You can't see it, but she stacked her counters into stacks of 2.

They loved counting by 5's.



This little one finished counting by 2's so she decided to count her group of objects again but this time by 5's!



Another little one who finished counting by 2's and has started counting by 5's.


 

 

 

 



The Two's have been working on place value.The development of the concept of place value centres around grouping activities and the children's understanding of unitising (the concept of 10 ones equals 1 ten). We have been using ten frames and place value mats to help teach this concept.

 

 

 

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer


Zippy Writing

Well Zippy was up to his old tricks. At least he didn't make a mess of the classroom like Friday! This is how we found him today.

He must have liked the Gr.1's game they played Friday!

The kids are so excited about Zippy and, for the most part, we have been on our very best behavior. Last week, the kids had the chance to write about Zippy. Both grades are working on 5 Star Sentences and similes. We have been working with descriptive writing so we decided to write a little descriptive piece on Zippy. The kids worked hard and did a very good job.

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Santa Claus Parade-The Muppets Take F.E.S!

If you were unable to make it to the KV Santa Claus Parade you missed out on seeing the best float in the parade! Our parent volunteers did a WONDERFUL job with the float. I absolutely loved the theme-The Muppets Take F.E.S! It was all the kiddos could talk about today. Well done! I apologise for the blurry pictures-my cellphone camera and rain do not mix!

The kids dressed up as Gonzo's chicken.

You'd have to be a Grinch not to like this float!

Kind of blurry-the lights were awesome!

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Reindeer Live!

My little buddy Lil goes to school up in Norton and she was telling me about this cool site that her teacher had shown their class. It is a live feed of Santa's reindeer! You can even see the big guy in red feed the reindeer at certain times in the day. It is pretty cool!

www.reindeercam.com

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Zippy

     Thursday November 22nd we had a new addition to our class. Our Elf , that we named Zippy, arrived at our class with 2 jobs: 1-Zippy has to watch our kiddos while they are at school and report back to Santa about whether they have been naughty or nice and 2-Zippy is here to listen to our Christmas wishes.Zippy arrived on Quinn's birthday and caused quite a ruckus. He marked on my Happy Birthday sign I made for Quinn. He is quite a trickster. Friday morning we found him reading to a stuffy in our class library. I guess he likes reading to someone as much as we do!

An up close view of our little trickster-don't worry kids I didn't touch him!  I don't want him to loose his magic by  getting touched by a human!

Zippy reading to a stuffy.

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Santa Claus Parade

 My hubby and I were at Java Moose last night and we were talking to a lovely parent volunteer who was headed over to work on our F.E.S. float. It sounded like they were going to be very busy-hopefully it wasn't too long of a night! We are very lucky to have such great parent volunteers at F.E.S! Keep your eyes peeled for our float The Muppets Take F.E.S! I'll be sure to take some pictures. Parade starts at 6:00pm tonight!

Read to Someone

    I love the Daily 5. The Daily 5 is a series of literacy tasks that students complete daily while I work with small groups or individuals. It is a management system that helps our kiddos develop the daily habits of reading, writing, and working with their peers that will lead to independent literacy. Our kids can read to self, work on writing and do word work for quite a while now independently-they have built up a lot of stamina. Friday we started working on read to someone. With read to someone (and all of the Daily 5) I don't just send the kids off without direction. I teach a reading strategy/writing lesson, model it and then I send them off to work on it while I work/conference with groups or individuals. 

    

    This week our reading focus has been reading with fluency and expression. Fluency is the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately. Their reading is smooth and has expression. During read to self time, our kids were asked to pick a book or a chapter from a book to practise. If there was an exclamation point at the end of a sentence they had to read that sentence like they were excited, if there was a question mark we talked about how our voice goes up a little at the end when we are asking questions.  The kiddos practised during read to self time and then they had to read to someone fluently and with expression.

Everyone was on task-they love partner work like this!

Elephant and Piggie books were a popular choice for reading with expression. They are definitely a class favourite!

A perfect example on how we sit EEKK during read to someone. Elbow to elbow, knee to knee, I'll read to you, you read to me. Elbow to elbow, knee to knee, book in the middle, so we can both see!

Lots of expression from these two! A neighbouring teacher had to come out to see what  book they were reading as it sounded very exciting!

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Class Skating

 We have been skating twice already and the kids LOVE it! We have expert skaters, beginner skaters and everything in between. We love having parents out to skate with us-we go every Thursday from 10-11:15! We hope to see you there.

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Report Cards

Well the report cards went home Friday November 23rd. I hope you take the time to review the reports and  talk with our kiddos about what they are doing well. I am very proud of all of our kids accomplishments and the hard work they have put in this term. Great job everyone!

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Data, Data and more data

Hello everyone! We have been doing tons of awesome things in school this week. We have had careers on the move where we we able to go see all sorts of trucks used on the job (like firetrucks, mail truck, snowplows etc), we have had visitors come talk about their job, had a Remembrance Day assembly and we were the only primary class invited to go to the Millrats assembly. Whew! What a week. I have a few pictures to post about these activities and I promise I will eventually.

 Our kiddos have also had a busy week of conferencing with me about their writing, taking "reading tests", and  doing math "interviews. I have been collecting/reviewing a lot of data. Home report season is upon us! Bear with me as I may neglect our little blog for a few days. As always I will keep all of my lovely families informed of the goings on through phone calls, emails, notices and notes.

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer

Grade 1 Writing-Pumpkin Carving

 

   We had a busy day last Friday! We worked on the laptops, carved pumpkins and did a lot of writing. Both grades wrote about carving pumpkins. The Grade 2's started a procedural writing piece and the one's wrote 2-3 sentences about what we did.  I seem to always be posting the Grade 1 writing! The Grade 2's will have some of their writing posted shortly-they just write so much it is hard to put it all up! Stay tuned for Grade 2 writing and enjoy the Grade 1 writing below!

 

Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer