The first two weeks in grade 1!

Well this past week was a complete blur! I'm finally sitting down to share a bit more about our first two weeks - for more frequent photo updates, check out my instagram!! 

We've been practicing our calendar routine and learning some basic school vocabulary:

We practice the days of the week, months of the year, counting to 30, the vocabulary on the calendar squares (bus, school, backpack, books, girl, boy), weather, and our preposition song once a day. 

I've been reading "Mon ecole" to them every day, and they repeat each page after me. I have also recorded the book so my kids can practice at home! We then review the vocabulary playing "SMACK". I choose two students to stand in front of the board with fly swatters. Then I say a word, and whoever smacks it first gets another turn. The other student passes their swatter on to another classmate. Now that they're familiar with the words, I let a third student call out the word (instead of doing it myself). Next week they'll be making their own copy of the book and taking it home to start building their own French library!

We learned how to say "je m'appelle" and labelled our self portraits with colour words! They used the colour posters in the classroom to help label their clothes. 

We're also working our way through making our own colour books! We are doing one colour a day. 

We started our first social studies unit and have been talking about rules at school and rules at the park. 

We also talked about what happens when we don't follow rules. We brainstormed different consequences to breaking different rules around the school and at recess. 

Our song this week was "Bonjour, comment ca va?" We practiced it all week and then it went home in our French duotangs to practice over the weekend. We practiced saying "Comment ca va?" to a partner, and the possible answers they could give. We took turns sharing our mini conversations with the class! As we filled out the lyrics page, we talked about things that make us feel each of the possible answers from the song. Mlle Lawson replies "ca va bien!" when she has a starbucks in her hand ;) 

Each week I type up a page to go on the back of the song/poem page that gives parents a few QUICK activities to complete with their child at home. The entire thing could be done in less than 10 minutes, so hopefully it doesn't add stress over the weekend. Here's the one that went home this weekend:

This week we also started very simple colour centres. I showed them our word wall cards for colours. I attach them with shower curtain hooks from Dollarama and then hang them on 3M hooks by the carpet. 

They used whiteboards to write the colour words. We use black mittens from Dollarama as our erasers! 

We also practiced matching our colours to the words! I gave them a visual dictionary page with the colours to help them check their work when they were done! 

TIP for your centres - use numbers or letters on the back of each set so you can quickly sort them! I have 3 sets of colour bang cards in different containers, and they somehow end up mixed up. You can quickly flip them over and sort them! It took me wayyyy too many years to figure this trick out!! 

After years of fighting to erase my whiteboard, I've now got it completely figured out. I used expensive expo whiteboard spray for a while, but once you start using that you can't go back to a regular whiteboard eraser because it leaves a film on your board. SO we have spray bottles of water and microfiber cloths from Dollarama. Once you've removed all the build up and residue from your board with the cloth and water, you probably won't need to wet the cloth at all. Life changing!! 

Next week we are focusing on classroom objects and continuing on with colours, calendar, weather, and our rules unit for social studies. We will be starting to talk about fall changes soon, too! 

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!