SIS Blog: February 2020

Week 8 Term 2 Upper PE

In PE, some of us played the mosquito game. We wore mosquito hats and tagged people with our pool noodles.

We also did some uplifting activities in calisthenics.

It has been said that calisthenics are better for muscle mass as compared to weight lifting.

Term 2 Week 8 Inquiry

During our morning meeting, everyone inquired into nail polish and healthy practices. We talked about the fact that some of our girls have been wearing fingernail polish to school.

We have a handbook and this product is against our school rules.

We found out that most polishes contain formaldehyde which preserves frogs like a mummy. Formaldehyde is a poison and can cause cancer. We decided that it is best to leave the polish at home.

Term 2 Week 8 Library

A special "thank you" is extended to the Fukase family who recently donated these books to the SIS library.

We now have special dedication tags on the books with the names of the people who donated them.

We will stamp the books inside also to remind our readers where these books came from.

Here is a good quote from our book nook by Frederick Douglas..."Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

What we are learning about in Grade 1

Inquiry: People develop simple machines for different purposes

Learner Profile: Inquirer, Thinker
Transdisciplinary Skill:
1. Research Skills - Using different tools to aid us in our learning and exploration of the world around us
2. Thinking skills - Making connections between what we're learning in our inquiry to our surroundings, exploring with different materials and inquiring into why certain materials change the results of our experiment

Mathematics: Using our fact family knowledge and applying it to numbers from 10, 20, 50, 100

Reading: Practiced activating our prior knowledge about a topic and adding new knowledge to the topic through reading, started reading non-fiction procedural texts (books, digital books and videos)
Writing: Non-fiction procedural writing for their scientific experiments - paper helicopter, and topics of interest, story cube writing

Highlights of the week:

Collaboration with Grade 2 STEM project -

Paper helicopters

(exploring with air resistance, and how the size, weight and different materials affect the helicopter)

Playing a math game on the computer to find the pattern in fact families, some of us were able to do addition and subtraction number sentences to make 100!

Exploring with static electricity after reading a book about electricity

Kindergarten - Term 1 Week 8

In Language, we learnt words with the 'ch' sound in them.

In Math this week, we continued learning about picture graphs. The children made their own picture graphs for their friends to record information about their favourite things.

This week in Inquiry, we have been open-minded and inquirers as we looked at life cycles of different animals, particularly chickens, frogs and butterflies. We have also been observing the changes happening to the real flowers in the classroom. The students have compared them to the human life cycle and noted that we, like animals, are born, grow up, and then die. We are discussed the things that we need to survive, and that like animals, we need food and water. However, unlike plants, we don't need sunlight.

The children were creative and used craft materials and practiced cutting and sticking to show the life cycle of a chicken.

They enjoyed reading an online book about butterflies' and frogs' life cycles and answering questions about it.

The children were creative again and made butterflies! We linked this activity to Math, and the students needed to follow instructions on a picture graph to know what to do. The picture graph showed that they needed to use three colours and at least three circles. We painted on one half of the butterfly, then folded and pressed so that the butterfly becomes symmetrical.