A message from Mme Forbes

Monday (June 22) during second block (11:20) is Water Day. Please send sunscreen and an extra set of clothes and/or bathing suit for your child. This event is weather permitting!

Bienvenue Mme Forbes!

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Mme DaSilva and I would like to welcome Mme Forbes back to Cathcart. She will be teaching our class starting Wed. June 10th. 

It has been such a pleasure working with your children and getting to know them so well. I couldn't have asked for a better year at Cathcart.

Have a great summer and I hope to see you all again!

Mme Kirkland 

On danse avec les rubans!

As a dance activity we watched some videos of dancers with streamers. After discussing what we noticed about their dance styles and techniques we went outside with our own streamers. Our students loved this activity! Many were keeping the beat with their feet or by waving their arms up and down or left and right. Such a fun, outdoor, gros motor activity!!

Le camping

Many of our students have shared that they went camping for the May long weekend or will be going soon. We've decided to turn our dramatic play centre into a campsite! Our students are packing their bags for their camping trips, roasting marshmallows and star gazing!

Great in the moment discovery!

During some outdoor play on the climber, we were able to catch and hold this painted lady butterfly! We watched her drink from the dandilion and we all took turns holding her. This sparked an interest and discussions. We have since adopted some caterpillars into our class and hope to watch them transform in the weeks to come.

Chef Suzanne

Last week we had a very exciting cooking lesson with Chef Suzanne! We made chocolate cupcakes and learned some new french words for cooking utensils and ingredients. Thank you to parents who came to help out!

La pluie

Here's a song we've been singing on rainy days. It goes to the tune of Frère Jacques.

Tombe la plue (x2)
Du ciel gris (x2)
Sur mon petit parapluie (x2)
Flic, Flac, Floc (x2)

C'est la pluie (x2)
Dans nos rues (x2)
Qui tombe sans cesse (x2)
Sur nos têtes (x2)

Aurevoir Mme Skye!

During the last few months, we have been lucky to work with Mme Skye, a CYW student from Lambton College. Tomorrow is her last day in our classroom. We will certainly miss her! Merci Mme Skye!

Multiculturalisme

We have been discussing multiculturalism and how we are different. Here are some ideas that our students came up with!

L'animalerie

We currently have a pet shop (animalerie) in our class. Our students are enjoying learning about animals, some responsibilities of taking care of them and shopping for pets. We even have our own poisson!

On measure l'aire!

We are learning to measure surface area. Here was today's problem to solve!

After comparing the three note pads, discussing their size and how they differ, we measured l'aire using small square tiles. Our conclusion was that Mme DaSilva should use note #3 for her message to Mme Skye! Bravo!

La périmètre

We are learning about measuring the perimeter of objects inside and outside the classroom. Here are some of our recent activities:

Measuring table top shapes inside

Measuring our own chalk shapes outside

Notre jardin d'hauteur

We measured our height using yarn and put the flowers we made on top as a measurement activity. It is fun to compare our heights!

Les mantes

We are currently investigating praying mantises! We have a nest in our class and are hoping some will hatch in the next few weeks. This investigation has lead to discussions on camouflage, predators and other insects! 

Le chef à l'école

Cher parents,

On May 6th at 11:20 we will be participating in a hands on culinary experience at Cathcart. We have sent a news letter home with more information. Please return the permission form as soon as possible.

Merci beaucoup!

Course des poussins!

As a measurement activity, we have been racing wind-up chicks and using links to measure the distance they've gone. Our students are measuring and counting en français!

Nos arbres eucalyptus

Some of our students have taken an interest in rainbow eucalyptus trees (les arbres eucalyptus). We've built our own miniature version of them for our classroom!

Les plantes

We are beginning an inquiry on living things versus non-living things (vivant, non vivant). As an introduction, we've been investigating plants and what they need to survive. We have brought in many plants and often compare them to other living and non living things around our class or in the community. 

Notre système solaire

Our système solaire is all finished and hanging! Some students enjoyed lying under it and looking up at the planets we made!

Sunripe on Monday

Bonjour!

Just a reminder that on Monday (March 9th) we are going on a field trip to Sunripe! We will be walking there at about 9:15 and coming back and returning at about 11:00.

Please send us permission forms asap.

Thank you to parents who have volunteered. I will draw names for the 5 parent spots and send notes home to confirm.

Notre fusée

We have built our very own fusée! We are learning about rocketships and astronauts and now we can be astronauts ourselves.

Les planètes

Aujourd'hui on a construit des planètes! We used clay to make some of the planets we've been learning about!

Les hiboux

We are learning about les hiboux. We have discussed what we know and would like to know. We have been watching a live stream of a great horned owls nest. You can visit the live cam at this site: 

http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/46/Great_Horned_Owls/?utm_source=Cornell+Lab+eNews&utm_campaign=7c83a8f034-Cornell_Lab_eNe

Some of our students are building owls and their nests out of classroom supplies like these blocks!!

L'espace

We are beginning to learn about l'espace, les planètes, le soleil et les étoiles! So far we have discussed mostly Mercure but look forward to investigating all planets of our système solaire!

La boulangerie

On a ouvert une boulangerie dans la classe! We are discussing baking, baked goods and canadian coins. We are working on ordering in French and taking orders in person and on the téléphone.

100e jour d'école!!!

Today is our 100th day of school! Here we made a chocolat chaud avec 100 guimauves!!

Les guimauves

Today we built 3D shapes using les guimauves et les cure-dents. Our students were able to make cubes and pyramids!

Outdoor literacy and exploration!

Today we extended our morning outdoor play time to practice our writing in the snow! We also brought out magnifying glasses and examined snowflakes and ice. We have been bringing ice and snow into the class to examine it while it melts but this was our first time really exploring it outside together.

Les formes de 3 dimensions

On the topic of winter, we are building les bonhommes de neiges et les igloos. While making these crafts we discussed les sphères et les cubes and their properties.

Notre igloo

We've transformed our maison de pain d'épices into an igloo!

La bibliothèque

Today we took out books from the library. Our students are still familiarizing themselves with the library and where to find books that are appropriate for them. We will be going to the library every Monday so please have the books back by Friday or Monday absolute latest.

Merci!

2D contre 3D

We are continuing our learning of shapes. We have now introduced 3D shapes and are comparing them to 2D. Below is one of our comparison activities on the Smartboard. If you see some of these 3D shapes around the house ask your child if they recognize them. This will help them identify the shapes outside of our class.

Album de famille

Thank you parents and guardians for sending in family photos. We are working on our pages and labelling each member. We look forward to adding this album to our classroom library.

La neige et la glace

We are doing an experiment with ice and snow. We filled these jumbo test tubes and are waiting for them to melt. This has brought up the topics of hot versus cold and solid versus liquid.

We made predictions about what we thought would happen to the snow and the amount of water that would be left after it melted. 

Les formes

One of our shape activities. The students enjoyed using these templates and creating images independently.