We had a great day today and very exciting of course!  Just a reminder that there is no school for students tomorrow.  Wishing everyone an exciting and safe weekend!

This morning in math we learned a game called Race to 100.  The grade ones had to roll the dice and add the numbers until we reached 50 as our total.  We had to keep track with tally marks.  The grade twos had to roll the dice and write the numbers to 100.  Your pencil will get taken away from you if someone else rolls the special number decided by the group. We also continued to add more parts to our self portraits.   In science this afternoon we finished up our color wheel adding secondary and tertiary colors.  Tomorrow we will have a Halloween dress up parade in the afternoon.  The children are invited to dress up for the afternoon only.

Today we learned about the Color Wheel.  We learned that the Primary Colors were red, yellow and blue.  They are called primary because no matter which colors you mix you would never get these colors.  When you mix the primary you get the secondary colors.  We will paint the secondary colors tomorrow.  In music we learned about Vivaldi.  We listened to Winter and The Nutcracker. Mrs Wilkens was our music teacher today because Mrs. Lim went home sick.

Today we had an exciting Fun Lunch.  Thank you to all the helpers that helped in our classroom.  Today we worked on our Self portraits adding our eyes.  We learned that our eyes are right across from the top of our ears.  In math we practiced using our abacus by a dice game and writing number sentences.  In The afternoon we worked on facts for our Goldenrod painting.
Tomorrow is our Fresh Air Friday.  We will be adding more to our T-shirts.

Mr. Ogilvie will be here the next two school days as I am away.

Please enjoy the video of our song from music yesterday.

Today we had treat day.  In the morning we worked on Multimedia self- portraits.  We are building our portraits sort of like a Mr. Potato Head.  I think they'll look better than a Mr. Potato Head though!
For math today we made our own abacus.  We learned that people all over the world have used an abacus and that they have been around for over a million years.  We will be using them to solve number problems.
Tomorrow is our picture day and please send in your preference form if you have not yet done so.

Today we worked on adding more number combinations to our math bracelets.  This morning we worked on our journals to tell about our weekend.  We had guests in our classroom.  They were student teachers from the University.  We learned that the Purple Aster flower was used for medicine by the First Nations. We learned that the roots were used for sore eyes, cavities and toothaches.  It can also be used for a tea.  The nectar is enjoyed by bees and butterflies.  Babies used to chew on the roots when they were teething.
Tomorrow is treat day sponsored by room two.  If you would like your child to buy a treat then please send 25 cents for a treat.  Wednesday is picture day.  Thursday is fun lunch.  If you did not order fun lunch then your child would eat in the classroom with your regular lunch.

We had a very busy Fresh Air Friday.  We worked on two projects today.

1. Weeding
We worked with Tessa from the Calgary Zoo to do some weeding in the Whispering Woods.  We weeded out some Canadian Thistle, Sow Thistle and Dandelions.

2. Temporary Land Art
We went to the Whispering Woods and gathered natural materials such as berries, leaves, twigs, bark and stones.  We used our new Fresh Air Friday backpacks to hold all our stuff!  We looked at an artist's creations.  His name is Andy Goldsworthy.  He inspired us to create our own temporary art pieces.  When we were done we took a picture with the i-pad and then left them there for other people to enjoy on the compound by the sun circle.  We hope they enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed creating them.

P.S.  We can hardly wait to drink out of our new travel mugs too!

Today we worked to finish our Cone Flower page and our Wild Blue Flax page in our visual journals.   We used a target to check our work and make sure that we were trying to do our best.  In math this morning we made bracelets using pony beads and pipe cleaners to show all the ways of making a number between 5 and 20.   We picked our own numbers.  We will be making a bigger abacus project to go with this.  Today we took our t-shirts out of the dye bath and we hung them in the tree to dry.  We have one more thing to do before we can wear them.  They look so neat and cool!

Today the students will be bringing home their fun lunch forms.  Please return these by Friday.  If you have not yet returned your photo day form please send those in this week as well.  We hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Celebration with family or enjoyed your long weekend together.  We have some friends in rooms 1 and 2 that are beginning a nine day celebration called Navratri tonight.  Enjoy your celebrations.

Today was Fresh Air Friday. We went on a seed hunt. We tried to find seeds on the plants in the natureground. We noticed that some seeds were very tiny and inside the flowers. We also found seeds inside rosehips. These were seeds that were inside the fruit of the plant.  We noticed that some plants, like wild blue flax, have seed capsules that hold the seeds.

Today we also dyed our t-shirts using vegetable dye that we made using the beets from our natureground and from purple cabbage. We noticed that the pigment came out of the vegetables when we boiled them. We tied up our t-shirts and now we have left them in the dye baths. We are excited to see what the colours look like next week!

We are also bringing home a few surprises today. There are special projects to share in our backpacks and also 2 potatoes and a carrot from our Sun Circle garden!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Oops, forgot to send out fun lunch forms.  Coming home on Tuesday and due on Thursday.  Sorry!

Today we made Potato and corn chowder.  We used the potatoes from our sun circle garden.  We discovered that the food you grow is the healthiest and most delicious!  We also continued to work on our Harvest surprise.

This afternoon we made.dye baths for our Fresh Air Friday tomorrow.  We used beets, blueberries, raspberries, red cabbage.  Please remember to brng a T-shirt for dying.

Today we made carrot cookies with the carrots from our harvest.  They were very delicious.  We have been working on a special Thanksgiving surprise to show some our learning that has happened in our Fresh Air Fridays and harvesting time.  We are excited to bring it home and share it with you this weekend.  Tomorrow we will be making soup, our final recipe of the week leading up to Thanksgiving.

We always write in our journals on Mondays.  We created a target to aim for our best work.  Some of the things in the middle of the target are great detailed ideas, neat printing and our best grade one and grade two spelling.  Grade ones are trying to write 4 or more sentences and grade twos are trying to write eight sentences.  In math time we were trying to finish up our surveys and graphs from last week.  In the afternoon we painted our cone flowers in our visual journals.  We were trying to paint the details in the cone of the flower.  The details came from the seeds in the cone.  In gym today we practiced soccer skills like passing while we were running and using our body to keep the ball away from our partner.

For Friday many of us still need to remember to bring a white cotton t-shirt.

Today was our garden harvest.  The kids were squealing with excitement as they saw the carrots, beets and potatoes coming out of the ground.  We had three groups of kids they were either washers, diggers or composters.  Here is the result of our harvest today.

This morning we created a Terry Fox run graph.  We surveyed our friends yesterday to see how many laps they had run.  This afternoon we added facts and fancy writing to our Wild Blue Flax page in our visual journal.  Today in gym we started some soccer skills.  We practiced dribbling, shooting at a target and passing.

Tomorrow we will be harvesting our garden in the sun circle.  We have already picked the beans and have a great crop.  If there is anyone that would like to join us feel free to bring a gardening shovel and gloves and meet us in the sun circle at about 10:00.  All are welcome!

Today the room one students will be bringing home scholastic book orders.  If you are interested in ordering a book please send in your order and money or cheque by next Friday October the 9th. Thank you.