Today we worked on creating animal tracks like some of the tracks we saw in Whispering woods on Friday.  We worked with partners.  We are going to create a wall of animal track stories in the hallway outside our room.  Today we played three on three keep away basketball in gym.  We had to keep the ball away from the other team by dribbling or passing.   It was fun.  Today was the last day to bring money for the rafiki bracelets.   See the festive evening notice coming home today.

Today was an exciting day at Dr. Coffin.  We had subway fun lunch and then we went to the gym to watch the big kids shave off their hair for Kids Cancer.  They raised over $5000.00 for the cause.   Today was Crazy hair day.  The craziest was the balloon hair in grade 6. It was fun to see all the hairdos.  For Fresh Air Friday we will spend some time in Whispering Woods.  Warm boots, snow pants, gloves, hat and a warm coat would be great for tomorrows outdoor activities.

Tomorrow is Fun lunch and Crazy hair day.  At 12:30 we will be going to the gym to watch Shave Your Lid For a Kid as 8 students participate in having their hair shaved or cut for a cancer fundraiser.  We did a cool experiment with food color,  homogenized milk and dish soap.  We watched as the colors swirled after we added the dish soap.  It was so exciting!  We called it The Magic Milk Experiment. Mrs Kidd said that we are doing a very good job at bringing back our library books.  Way to go room one!  We worked on our Color pattern a Palooza in Math today.

Today we started getting ready for our indoor garden. We opened the package that had all our seeds and we looked at our nine vegetable choices.  Some were Tiny Tim Tomatoes, Purple Peacock Pole Beans, Paris Market Atlas Carrots to name just a few.  We will be voting later this week to decide on our garden plants.  This afternoon in science we used black to shade the color we had chosen yesterday for our painting experiment.  In gym the grade twelve kids came to teach our gym class.  They planned some fun games like toilet tag, Chicken invasion and a Teddy Bear Relay Race.  They will come again on Thursday. We stayed in the music room today to do our blog, but it was very toasty up there!

Remember Thursday is fun lunch, crazy hair day and at lunch we have some students from the school that are doing "Shave Your Lid for a Kid" in the gym following fun lunch.

Today in math we did a pattern problem.  We had to use only two colors.  We had to come up with at least 9 different patterns with the same two colors for grade twos and grade ones had to come up with six different ones.  In science we learned about tints, shades, and hues.  We painted tints of a color and each time we had to add a little bit more white.  We noticed that each time the hue got a little bit lighter.  Today in gym we started some basketball practice.

This Thursday is crazy and fun lunch.

Today we worked very hard to finish up our poetry project paintings.  We still have one more practice tomorrow morning before our big Bollywood Dance performance after recess.  We hope that everyone can come and watch.  Tomorrow is the last day to send in your fun lunch orders.  We are excited to share with you all the projects that we have been working on during our face to face conferences either Thursday night or Friday morning.

Today our treat day was a big success.  Thank you to all the families that sent in treats this morning. We have been busy this week trying to finish up projects that we hope to share with you this Thursday or Friday when you come for conferences.  If you would still like to order scholastic books please have your order back to school by the end of this week.  All fun lunch orders are due this Thursday.  They will not be taking any late fun lunch orders as there is no school Friday.

Just a reminder that tomorrow is treat day sponsored by room 1.  Please send in your treats first thing in the morning.  Remember that you will need 25 cents to buy a treat.  Today we worked on creating panels to display our multi-media self portraits.  Our design choices were polka dots, stripes or a solid color with frame. We worked with our big buddies to type up some of our poetry. We worked on more poetry to include in our book.  We practiced some new moves to add to our Bollywood dance.

We had a great morning on Nosehill.  We hiked up to the top using the paved pathway over the bridge.  Once we got to the top we sketched our view and enjoyed a snack.  It was shorter than we had hoped as it was very windy up at the top.  All together we hiked 4.5 kilometers.
Tuesday Room 1 is in charge of Treat Day.  Please remember to send in your treats with your child in the morning so that they can be sold at recess.  Each family is asked to donate at least one dozen nut free treats as a fundraiser for the classroom.

We have had a very busy day.  We started to learn Bollywood Dance!  Our teacher's name is Ms. Kody.  It was fun.  It had different music that made us want to move.  Next Thursday we hope you can come for our performance.  We also worked on our poetry.  We added the finishing touches to our self portraits.  We are excited to share them with you next week at our face to face conferences.

Tomorrow we will be walking up to the top of Nosehill on the paved pathway.  From the school, there and return, it is about a five km walk.  Please ensure that your child is dressed for the weather and has proper footwear for walking.  We do have enough volunteers but if you would like to join us we will be leaving shortly after the bell.
Today we are sending home the next fun lunch form.  Please check your child's back pack for this form.

We are hoping to go to Nosehill again this Friday.  We will be using the paved pathway to walk up close to the top so that the students can see the view of the valley, neighborhood and city.  Please let me know if you are able to join us for this walk.  We will need people to meet or ratio required.
 We went to our Remembrance Day assembly by the room 5, 6, and 7.  We wore our poppies and learned about the day.  We made poppies and glued them onto a poster to be included in the assembly. We saw a performance using black light and performed to a Remembrance day song.  They wore white gloves for the performance.  Tomorrow there is no school but we will see everyone on Thursday.

Tomorrow at 10:45 there will be a Remembrance Day Assembly.  The students will receive a poppy for this day.  If you would like to send a coin donation for the poppy it will be collected before the assembly in the morning.  If your child is in Cadets, Cubs, Scouts, Sparks or Brownies they are welcome to wear their uniform tomorrow or for the assembly.  Other students have been invited to wear black, white or red.  If you would like to join us for this assembly you are most welcome.

Today we walked to Nose Hill to discover the habitat at the hill.  We discovered evidence of various animals living there as well as some interesting plant life.  We were excited about taking pictures and recording field notes to document our discoveries.  We had a bag to collect very small artifacts to further investigate back at school.  We were gone for most of the morning.  The fresh air and exercise was good for everybody.  Some kid quotes from the day,

" Whispering Woods is a mini version of Nose Hill."

" These look like frozen rose hips.  They have snow wrinkles."

"Wow what a beautiful view!"

After finding a space where an animal had bedded down, " Hey that animal was really big, maybe a deer"

"Wow, look at that bright red tree!"  (It was a dogwood)

Stay tuned for some photos of the day...

Learning About Colour

We are learning about colour. After doing a few activities and learning about primary and secondary colours we started brainstorming all the questions we have about colours.  Then our teachers sorted our questions into categories so that we could decide what we should try to learn next. Here are the categories we have:

1.   History of colour.

·      How did colours get their names?

·      How did people first make colours?

·      Who discovered colours?

·      Why do colours exist?

·      Could new colours be invented?

·      Who discovered the primary, secondary, and tertiary colours?

·      Why are colours important?

·      Who invented crayons?

2.  Making colours.

·      Can you make dark colours out of light colours?

·      How do you make the primary colours?

·      What type of colour is brown?

·      What comes after tertiary colours?

·      Are there “forthiary” colours?

·      How many colours are there?

3.  Black and white.

·      What makes white?

·      Is white a colour?

·      Can you make colours out of black?

·      How do you make black?

·      Does mixing the primary colours make black?

·      How are different shades made?

4.  Colours in nature.

·      Why are there so many colours?

·      Why can’t flowers be black?

·      Why is food so many colours?

·      How do things get their colour? Eg. Why are leaves green? Why is the sky blue?

·      Is there any place that doesn’t have colour?

·      How do they make coloured plastic?

·      How to rainbows happen?

5.  Seeing colour.

·      How does information about colour get to your brain?

·      Do animals see colour the same way we do?

·      Why is green so bright?

6.  Feelings from colours

·      How would people feel without colours?

·      Why do we use colours?

·      What are cool colours?

·      What are warm colours?

·      Can colours make people feel mad?

·      Can colours make people feel happy?

Today we are sending home permission forms which need your attention and then need to be returned tomorrow.  We have guests in our school tomorrow and they will be interviewing and filming students as they do their work for Fresh Air Friday.

We will be going to Nose Hill tomorrow, leaving almost right after the bell.  Please make sure that your child has proper foot wear, gloves, toques and warm clothing and coats for this trip.  We will be walking and will be on the hill for about an hour and then walking back to the school.

Today we played the xylophones in music.  In Science we did a black dot experiment. We wanted to see what colors made black.  We saw all the colors in the rainbow when we wet our black dot on a coffee filter.

So far we have two volunteers for our Friday morning.  We need four volunteers for each room so if you are still available please email Mrs. Hamby to let her know that you can come as a volunteer.  Book orders are coming home today.  Please return them by next Thursday if you would like to order any books.

Today we started working on patterns in math.  We learned about growing patterns, repeating number patterns, story patterns and we went on a pattern hunt around the school.  we also learned how to use letters to show our patterns.  Today we added hair using yarn and felt or burlap to our self portraits. They are looking really good! We picked a new category for our helper sharing.  It is to bring  something about a trip that we have taken such as a photo or an artifact.   We are going to start a new writing project, some color poetry.  Please continue to send in food items for our food bank donations.  We still need some volunteers for our Fresh Air Friday this week.

This morning we wrote in our journals and shared our stories about our Halloween weekend.  We also worked on becoming better at estimating in math time today.  We had some estimation jars and we were allowed to make one guess.  After that we were given some ore information and then we were allowed to make a second guess.  We are getting better with our estimating skills.

This afternoon we shared things that we already know about colors and then we wrote on sticky notes some things that we wondered about colors.  We are going to do some testing to find the answers to some of those questions.

Today we are sending home the class and individual photos.  Please return your orders by November 9th.  The class photos are for you to keep.  We are also sending home a notice asking for volunteers to go along with rooms one and two on Friday for our Fresh Air Friday this week.  Please let us know by email whether or not you are able to come and help.