Week Six - Review

This week has gone VERY quickly!  We studied the USA.  The children learned about the flag (it's red and white striped with a blue rectangle and there are white stars on the rectangle). They each had the opportunity to colour the flag and most of them attempted this.  We listened to an instrumental version of the anthem as well and we could hear the music become forte (loud & strong) as well as pianissimo (soft and quiet).

I introduced the concept of "silent e" when reading words.  The idea that when there is a vowel, then a consonant followed by an e..."the e jumps over the consonant and makes the vowel say its name". When we read United States of America...we can see this in the word "united" and "states". We practised reading words like cake, rake, vase, slide, kite, mine. The letters are highlighted in red so it is visually easy to recognize. We also reviewed the idea of blends...putting 2 letters together to make 1 sound...like united states, stripes, stars.
The gesture that I'm using is linking your fingers together and trying to pull them apart but they are "stuck".   We thought of many words with the "st" sound at both the beginning and ending of words and we spelled them out using the moveable alphabet.

I introduced the idea of upper case (capitals) and lower case letters. That we should only use upper case letters when it is the beginning of a sentence or a proper noun, the name of a person or place or the brand of a thing. We worked on matching upper case letters to lower case letters. And the fact that some letters look exactly the same as an upper case as they do a lower case - just the size differs - like Cc Kk Oo Pp Ss Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz while others look completely different like Aa Bb Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Ll Mm Nn Qq Rr Tt, yet each makes the same sound. I am beginning to correct the 2nd & 3rd year students with their letter formation as well...only using capital letters for proper nouns or beginning of sentences.  It will help instil good writing habits prior to grade 1.

I think our most fun was had making the apple pies!  It is a sticky job but also full of fragrant aromas. Cinnamon always smells so good!  Here are a few pictures...

Begin with a crust...

Peel and core eight apples...

Coat the chopped apples with 4 TBSP of flour, 1/4 cup of sugar (maple syrup), 1 tsp of cinnamon

Spoon all the apple mixture into the pie crust and bake @ 350 F for 1 hour and ENJOY!!!

We will be very busy next week.  Monday & Tuesday we will be studying Mexico and the migration of the Monarch butterfly.  Wednesday & Thursday, we will be in BLYTH to enjoy "A Bunch of Munsch" play at the Blyth Festival Theatre, lunch at Part II Bistro part2bistro.ca a visit to Pianovations pianovations.ca and a lovely walk on the Greenway Trail stopping by the "Peace Garden" that one of my classes created and we continue to maintain in the Memorial Garden.

On Friday, we will be attending a performance at Huron Christian School beginning at 10:30AM featuring the En-Kata Choir.  A group of adults from the Maasai tribe in Tanzania, raising money to help build a school room for children in grade 1.  Children from the Tuesday/Thursday group are invited to attend with us as well as parents if you wish.  I will try and video part of the performance so you are able to "see and hear" as well and I will post on the blog here next week.

Enjoy your weekend - and I will see you all next week!