Fantastic Firsties

This week we dove into a really cool project about winter. Our focus was on learning what animals do in winter, specifically, what is happening over and under the snow. We read the beautiful story Over and Under the Snow, which details many different animals and what they do during winter. After reading and discussing the story in depth, we came up with a list of what the animals do over and under the snow. We learned that there is a lot of life under the snow, even though from on top it looks like nothing is going on.

Students then wrote about what happens over and under the snow.

Then they got to work creating a mural about their writing. They just loved this interactive activity!

We added the writing to the mural and it all came together beautifully!

We have started addition in Math. These stories were used as a great introduction to addition and helped generate discussions about what it means to add. We created an anchor chart and met "Gus the Plus" to help us remember what addition is all about.

We learned that we can use many strategies to help us add. Two strategies that we focused on this week were: using our fingers and using cubes. We practiced

both of the strategies many times. We will learn and practice all the addition strategies over the next few weeks.

In partners, we worked to write an equation and then showed the answer using our fingers.

We built cube trains with two different colours to demonstrate an addition equation.

The Grade One students are gardeners! As part of our Science exploration of the Needs of Plants, each class planted one planter. We will collectively water and take care of the plants over the next few months, and observe what happens. We will keep a plant journal of our observations.