Our Pumpkin Glyphs

We did pumpkin art and graphed the results. We are getting better at comparing our results and adding a "So what" sentence to show that our questions can be useful in planning our next steps! We enjoyed creating them!

Anti-Bullying Month

October is Anti-Bullying month.  We have spent a great deal of our time in September and October discussing what appropriate behaviour is at school, and what to do if someone bullies you.  We started the discussion by reading the story "One" by Kathryn Otoshi.  It is a wonderful book that talks about the importance of standing up to bullies, and that together we can all "count".  We created a chart promise to stand up for ourselves and for others, to not bully(only put ups, not put-downs), and to treat others the way we want to be treated.  We will say "No! I don't like it" to someone who tries to bully us first, and then if we have difficulty solving the problem ourselves, we will ask for help from an adult.

We also read "How Full Is My Bucket"  and discussed how we all have imaginary buckets that empty or fill depending on our interactions with others and our feelings.  We need to do kind things for others to make ourselves feel wonderful.  We wrote about ways to fill the "buckets" of others and therefore, our own.  1J students are bucketfillers!

The Pumpkin Patch

We had a wonderful experience at Pepe's Pumpkin Patch!  We give 19 thumbs up for this fieldtrip!
 We had studied the needs of living things and the lifecycles of apples and pumpkins at this school, but this trip really helped us to relate our learning to real-life.  Thank you so much to the staff at Pepe's for an interesting, informative, and action-packed fieldtrip.  We especially liked the witch who guided our corn maze/corn information session.  We have all had the wonderful Essex County sweet corn that is grown here, but what we didn't realize how many things are made from field corn!  We knew that cereal and other foods are made from corn, but car tires?  That is what I love about fieldtrips, all the incidental learning that occurs! 

We had our faces painted with pumpkins, spiders, ghosts, cats and tigers, oh my!  We went on a hay ride and learned more from Pepe about the pumpkin plants, and saw the vines and a few pumpkins and flowers up close.  We played a "hot potato" pumpkin-themed game where the winners received an apple to eat- and boy were we hungry from all that learning!  We had D.P.A. (Daily Physical Activity) to one of our favourite songs, the chicken dance.  We picked a pie pumpkin to take home as well.  We are thankful to all the parents who chaperoned and to Mrs. MacLeod who organized the fieldtrip.  We can't wait to see what we learn on our next fieldtrip!

Learning Through Sharing: A Quadblogging Journey

Our class is very lucky to have started quad blogging with three other classrooms in Canada and the United States. We each take a turn commenting on each other's blogs and learning about what excites and interests us about learning. We are very fortunate to have Mrs. Horst in Burlington, Ontario, Mrs. Sather from Montana, U.S.A. and Mrs. Simmons in Columbus, Ohio participating with us. We have already visited two of their classrooms as a class, and we have already learned so much!

We learned that despite how far away our classrooms may be, there are many things that we have in common! We are all "kind kids" and learning "experts" like Mrs. Sather's class, and "artists" and "heroes" like Mrs. Horst's class. We can't wait to visit Mrs. Simmon's class at the end of the month and to see what connections we can find with them as well.

This is a journey that will help us to become better readers, writers and communicators. This opportunity allows us to open our doors to become more comfortable learning from others from afar. We are widening our circle of friends and we all know that some of our best learning comes from our experiences with friends! 

Please read Mrs. Horst`s thought-provoking blog about the importance of learning through technology.

Visit the wonderful blogs of our new friends:
Mrs. Horst's Grade 1/2
http://www.chatt.hdsb.ca/~horstm
Mrs. Sather's Grade 1
http://room6kindkids.blogspot.ca
Mrs. Simmon's Grade 1
http://www.1dkids.blogspot.ca

Thanksgiving and Sharing

Thanksgiving is celebrated in Canada each year on the second Monday in October.  It coincides with the harvesting of crops.  We take time with friends and family to reflect on our lives and we give thanks for loved ones and all we have.  Thanksgiving is a perfect time to discuss sharing as well.  We are very proud of our work!  We shared apples and learned about their lifecycle.  We will also be learning about pumpkin lifecycles and we will visit a pumpkin patch on Friday!

http://smilebox.com/playBlog/4d7a4d314d4459344e44513d0d0a&blogview=true

Our Alphabet Book

We have been reviewing alphabet letters, sounds, and words that begin each letter.  We are becoming experts! Good writers write about what they know.  We searched our houses and brought in two objects which begin our assigned letter.  We recorded our voices on our Book Creator app, but the audio seems not to be working.  Please enjoy anyways!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzgASXsWaezrdFo0OEoyMEZDWms

We Know A Lot About Numbers!

Today we brainstormed everything we know about numbers. We worked in our small groups to present out thinking about the numbers 3, 6, 7, 5 and 8. I overheard great conversations. "If I have six circles and I cross one out, I have five." "An octopus has eight legs." "I can write my name three times." and "I read the story of the three bears."
What we know about numbers comes from our experience with the world. We hope to expand on what we know this month!