Caroling was fun today.  I think that Ms. Stephure and Ms. Boyer made sure we had some peaceful songs along with fun songs to calm us down a little bit.

After carol singing we worked on the next step of our secret project and then we had to let it dry.

Recess was indoor today and so was our lunch time recess.  It was just too cold!
We had an early recess at 10:15 because we had someone from the Mustard Seed coming to accept all the cards we had made.  She told us about all the great things the Mustard Seed is doing to help homeless people in Calgary.  She said that those cards will mean so much to them.

This afternoon we added the decorating part to our secret project and finished them all up.
Shhhh it's a secret...  You'll find out soon!

We also had music.  In music we sang "There was an old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell" and we wrote our own version of that song.

In gym today we played Doctor Dodgeball.  We ended the day with some stories and sharing.

Tomorrow we will be doing activities inside because of the temperatures.

Today in carol singing we sang ; Six White Boomers, Santa Came to Town, Twelve Days of Christmas, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a few more.  When we sang Six White Boomers we sang it with a video from You Tube.  It was fun! Ms. Stephure was here this morning but then had to go home since she was still not feeling well.  We hope she's feeling better soon.

After carol singing we worked on our watercolor poetry until recess.  We hope to complete most of this project before our break.

After recess we had to go out to the library so that room two could make their cards for the Mustard Seed with their big buddies in our classroom.  Mrs. Hamby read Polar Express and then we got to go on the computers.  For half the time we worked on Mathletics using numbers 1-100 and for the rest of the time we could choose from bookmarks.

Today in gym we played a game using ringette sticks.  We had the grade ones playing on one side of the gym and the grade twos playing on the other side.

We read another Michael Garland story called the Mouse Before Christmas.

Today it was warm enough to go outside for both our recess times. Thank goodness we could go outside today since we are bubbling over with excitement.

Today we created step three of our secret project.  Tomorrow we will do step four.  Almost done!

We hope you will like it.

This afternoon we worked to finish up our journals and then we could make a quiet choice after we shared our work with Mrs. Hamby.

This morning we had carol singing.  We sang Jingle Bells, Hippo song, Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, Silent Night and We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Up on the Housetop.  We even got to use some Jingle bells for some of the songs.  We had words up on the screen so that if we didn't know them we could follow along.  We will have singing again tomorrow morning.

After singing we worked on our watercolor poetry.   At recess time we had treat day sponsored by room 4.  We can bring a quarter again tomorrow to buy treats.

Today our classroom was a little messy by the end of the day.  We played mystery mess to see who would pick up the mysterious piece of garbage.  It is a quick way of getting our classroom cleaned up for Mr.  Rozema.

In gym we used the ringette sticks to pass to a partner across to the other side of the gym.   We also worked on some skills by ourselves.  Mr. Ogilvie was here to teach us music this afternoon since Ms. Stephure was home sick today.

This morning we did step one of our secret project project and this afternoon we did step two of our secret project. Sorry we can't tell you but it is a secret.

Cohen is our helper tomorrow.

December 12th, holidays are almost here...

We started the morning by working in our journals.  Most of us have had a busy weekend preparing for the holidays.  Some kids even had hockey tournaments and won medals.

We had outdoor recess today.  Please make sure that your child has all their outdoor winter gear at school this week so that they are prepared to go outside if the temperature allows them to.

This morning we worked on Christmas cards for the Mustard seed.  We worked with our big buddies and we each made a card.  The grade ones made a card that had a Christmas tree with a star on top and we wrote a message inside, our big buddies helped us.   The big buddy made a card with a special message on the outside of the card.  Inside we wrote our message and then signed it, "From a caring student".

This afternoon we had some time to do festive centers.  Our choices were: word search, coloring pages, making an ornament or making a card for someone.  If we still had our first three pages to finish in our Inuit book then that was our job instead.

During library today Mrs. Kidd read us one of her favorite stories, "Brave Irene".  We did not sign out new books and some of us have slips of paper in our backpacks with our overdue book titles.

Today in gym we did some partner work using ringette sticks.  We practiced passing and aiming at a target.

Tomorrow morning we will have carol singing in the learning commons from 9:00- 9:30.

Our helper tomorrow is Muhammed.

We started our morning by meeting our big buddies in their classroom.  They worked on a project to teach us why the arctic has months of no sunlight and then also times of mostly sunlight.  We learned that this has to do with the earth moving around the sun and tilting away from the sun on its axis.  We also shared our arctic work with our big buddies.  We ended big buddies by reading a story together.

Today we worked to finish the first three ideas of our arctic life research, clothing, transportation and shelter.  Those that were finished go to go and work on the computers for 30 minutes.

For our indoor recess we got to have hot chocolate with marshmallows.  Some volunteer moms came around and we got to drink them from our Fresh Air Friday mugs.

We ended our morning with gym time.  We played Count Up dodgeball.  When you were hit you had to go to your teams bench and count.  The grade ones had to count to 50 and the grade twos had to count to 100.  If you knew the counting by twos skip counting you could do that instead.

One more week till Winter break!

Monday the helper is Danish.

Inuit Clothing, Can You Guess?

We have been learning about Inuit clothing.  We have learned that the extreme weather conditions have made us learn how to dress to stay warm as the animals in the arctic also must stay warm.  Ask me which animals the clothing comes from and what is special about the different pieces of clothing.  I have also been learning the Inuktitut names for some of this clothing.  They are hard to pronounce!

Qulittaujaq is a parka
Silapaak means snow pants
Iggaak means snow goggles
Kamik or mukluks means boots
Pualuuk means mittens

This morning in math we worked on making counting by two cards for a speed game.  We will have to race against a friend putting the cards in to counting order.  The grade ones did the counting by two to twenty pattern for their game and the grade twos did the counting by two to 50 pattern.  Grade twos really need to practice skip counting to 100 but we thought that would be too many cards.  Next week we will do skip counting by 5's and 10's for our game.

We also worked on our water color paintings for our poetry.

We had another indoor recess and lunch.  The teachers have been helping to run stations at lunch time this week so that we have more choices of things to do.

Hope to see you tonight at the Festive Evening!

This morning in math we went out to the learning commons to work on the computers. We worked on numbers to 100 in Mathletics.  For the last 15 minutes we got to go to the Christmas folder if we wanted to and try some of those games.

Today in poetry we began working on our watercolors for our poems.  We are trying to make our writing more interesting by adding pictures that reflect our ideas.  We are getting better at using watercolors and our paintings show this really well.

This afternoon we had some journal finishing up time.  When we were finished we had to show it to a friend.  Our friend tried to find something we had to fix.  Then we took it to show Mrs. Hamby.

We learned about Inuit outdoor clothing.  We had to guess which clothing picture was behind the Inuit word.  The Inuit language is called Inuktitut.  We will add to our clothing pages tomorrow.

In word work we finished our hidden pictures and when we were done we got to choose a spelling center.  The grade ones have been working on long "I" word families, "ike" and "ice".

We had indoor recess again today! We are getting a little restless inside and need to let off some steam...

Our helper tomorrow is Solomon.

This morning we started working on our watercolor paintings for our poems.  Once guided reading was over we had some sharing time. We only had time for a painting demonstration and then we planned out first painting with pencil on our special watercolor paper.  We each got five small pieces and we had to store them in our writing folders along with our poems.  We have to be very careful with this paper since there is no more and it is very expensive to buy.

In math this morning we started working on our counting patterns.  We are coloring a hundreds chart  in different patterns to prepare us for some games that we will be playing.  Mrs. Hamby circled some numbers on a chart and we had to look for patterns.  Then we worked on coloring the counting by twos pattern with only even numbers but the grade twos had to color the evens one color and the odds a different color.

We had indoor recess in the morning and at lunch time today.

This afternoon we continued to work on adding details to our shelter page in our Inuit history books.  We also watched a video about how some Inuit people built an igloo.  They bevelled the edges so that the igloo wouldn't fall in.  We learned that the reason the Inuit have temporary homes is so that they can follow the animals that they need to hunt.  We learned that this way of life  is called "nomadic".

We went to music and then to gym. We had a warm up and then played hockey for most of the time.  We are practicing being good sports and turn taking.  We are also getting better at our hockey skills.

Our grade six leaders came to talk to us about the fill a sock campaign.  They showed us what a filled sock would look like.  Remember to send items all week so that the socks and mitts can be stuffed on Friday.  We still need lip balms, cough drops, lotions, deodorants candy and gift cards as well as the other items on the list.

The helper tomorrow is Jordan Ding.

Fill a sock , Brrrr it's cold!

Today we had indoor recess at lunch time.  After we finished our lunch we had some choices of indoor activities.  They were Chess and games, computers, games in the gym and drawing or coloring in the learning commons.  Please make sure that your child is wearing warm clothing tomorrow since they still went outside for morning recess today.

This morning we worked in our journals and at guided reading time we had to work on our pictures for our journals.
Many of our families spent their weekend preparing for Christmas in their homes or attending events with family.

In math we had our last day of completing our pattern check.  Most of us finished!  If we were already finished we had to work on either our pattern palooza or mathletics.

We had library today and we read a story called "Little Santa".  Some of us have notes in our backpacks if our books were overdue.

Today we researched traditional Inuit shelters.  We found out that in the summer they lived in animal hide tents and in the winter they lived in igloos. We added some of these pictures to our history books.  A homework question is "Why do they build homes that can be taken down and moved?"

In gym today we played hockey games.  Each team had six players but only three from each team could play at one time.  we didn't have much time to play today because we had to watch a demonstration game first.

Thank you if you have donated items for filling the socks.  Please continue to send items all week long.

Our helper tomorrow is Leo.
Stay warm....

Fill a Sock for the Homeless

Our Fill a Sock , Fill a Need has started at Dr. Coffin.! The boxes are set up in each classroom and the list of items to send in is above.  Items will be accepted all week long and then the socks will be stuffed on Friday by our grade 5/6 students.

Today in gym we worked on stick handling, shooting and passing.  Next week we will start playing some games.  In music today we learned a funny snowman song.  The snowman's nose was stolen by a rabbit.  We are also working on telling an arctic story using instruments for sound effects.  The book also had northern lights!

This afternoon George, the student from Captain John came to explain his science fair project that he donated to our classroom.  He said that the reason he made it was because he wanted something interesting to make for the science fair.  He donated it to us because he had it in his basement but there wasn't enough sunlight there.  He hoped that we could take good care of it.

In social studies today we worked on trying to add more clip art to our Inuit Transportation pages in our History Books.

This morning we did a desk clean out if our poetry typing was complete.  For some of us this was a very big job!  We had to organize our tools back into our boxes also clean out our desk tray.

Today in math some of us worked on our pattern check, some on pattern Palooza and some worked on Mathletics.  We are hoping to move on to number patterns next week.

After guided reading we had a chance to work on our whispering Woods poems. Many of us finished our poetry typing today.  Those that were finished worked to help the grade ones on the computer.  Next week we should be ready to start our watercolor illustrations.

We started our work on our Inuit History books this afternoon.  We learned that they used kayaks, umiaks, snow shoes and dog sleds.

Fun Facts: Umiaks are made out of driftwood, whale bones and animal hides  are used to cover the frame.  They use seal and walrus skins to stretch over the frame because they have to be waterproof. They had to use driftwood for their boats because they do not have trees to cut down and use to make boats.

In word work today the grade ones worked on the long "a" sound in the word family "ame".  Grade twos worked on their own hidden words picture or they had  to finish work on the hidden words from yesterday.

Mrs. Kelsey is a visitor that was in our classroom today, she is learning to  be an Educational Assistant.

In gym we worked with a partner to practice passing with hockey sticks and also aiming to shoot the puck and blocking the pucks with our sticks.

We had journal finishing time and we had some time for journal sharing.

Our helper tomorrow is Muhammed.

Today in gym we started floor hockey skills.  We talked about making sure that our sticks stayed in the safe zone.  The safe zone is from your waist to your ankle so that no one gets hurt with a stick.  We practiced controlling the puck and then some shots to the net making sure that our stick was always in the safe zone.

Today we had a lockdown practice.  We had to lock the door and turn off the lights.  Our voices had to be silent and we had to go to the spot in the classroom with the green circle.  It is the area behind Mrs. Hamby's and Ms. Boyer's  desk.  We had to sit very still and keep our voices off until Mrs. Polski made an announcement.  Constable Johnston and Mrs. Polski came and unlocked our door to let us know that it was safe.

In math today we worked on our pattern check.  For those of us that were done we had to also finish our Pattern Palooza and then we could do Mathletics.

Today in word work the grade twos worked on a hidden picture.  We had to find words with long "e" and then color them in one color.  Once we had them all colored the hidden picture was two capital "E" letters making the long "e" sound.  The grade ones' learned about the "ake" word family and the magic "e" on the end of a word and what that does to the word.  We also worked on typing up our poetry.

This afternoon in social studies we looked at our ideas about Arctic transportation and then we had to decide which ideas they may have used long ago and we crossed off the ideas that they would not have had yet.  We learned that we will be making a small history book about the Inuit people lone ago.  We will be learning about food, shelter, clothing, games and recreation and tools.  We have been learning about transportation and found out that the Inuit people invented the Kayak.  One of the students was wondering about whether or not they used skates long ago, perhaps made out of animal bones for blades.  This would be a great little homework question if anyone is interested.

 The festive evening notice is coming home today in the green envelope.  Please return the envelope  again tomorrow.

Our helper tomorrow is Chelsea.

Today in gym we tried some of the activities from the Arctic Games.  In Social Studies we watched a video about the games.  They invented these games to practice their hunting and tracking skills.  The activities we tried were called the high kick, seal walk and stick catch with a ring.  We also read a story called Aurora and we learned about the Northern Lights.  We watched a video of the Northern Lights.

In math today we worked on our pattern check.  If we were done we worked on Mathletics of our Pattern Palooza.

At journal time we split up the grade one and two kids for a mini lesson.  The grade two lesson was about creating paragraphs.  They were given a hamburger to show how to layer your paragraph.  The topic idea is at the top and then you add three supporting sentences.  Once the ideas are done you go back to your topic idea to see how you should wrap it up with your last sentence.  Grade ones learned about making sure that their words are made of lower case letters.  Each idea must begin with a capital letter and  it needs to end with a period.

Today we had library.  Some of us couldn't take out books because we still need to bring our books from home.

Our helper tomorrow is Logan.

Please see previous blog post for curriculum info.

Thank you for coming to interviews with your child.  What a valuable way to celebrate success and set future goals for success.

Here is the overview of what we have been doing in case you did not have a chance to see it.

Thank you for joining to celebrate the growth and hard work of our Room 1 and 2 students. Here is a brief overview of the topics that we have studied so far this year.

Language Learning:

Reading

All students are now engaged in home reading and guided reading.  Our grade 1 students are working in small guided reading groups 4 days per week and our grade 2 students are working in guided reading groups 3 days per week.

Weekly Journals: Each Monday students are asked to write about a topic of their choosing in their journal. Students often choose to write about their weekend or something exciting that is happening in their lives. Grade 1 students are working on writing 3-4 sentences using their “best guess” phonetic spelling with support from sentence starters developed together.  Grade 2 students are working on writing 8-9 sentences using correct letter case and punctuation. Grade 2 students are also encouraged to use their personal dictionaries as part of their focus on correct spelling.

Guess Who: For this project students worked to write clues about themselves as a way to learn more about each other and to begin thinking about writing in full sentences and using descriptive ideas. For the grade 2’s the expectation was to complete at least 4 topics about themselves and write small paragraphs about each topic. For the grade 1’s the expectation was to complete 4 sentences about themselves using their best sounded out spelling and neatest printing.

Whispering Woods Descriptive Writing: Our students have worked hard to integrate their understanding of the senses and their explorations of Whispering Woods with some descriptive poetry. The grade 1’s worked to develop two descriptive ideas for each sense. Their ideas needed to include strong describing words and a detailed illustration. The grade 2’s worked on writing three descriptive ideas for each sense. Each idea needed to include at least two describing words plus an interesting ending that helped the reader create a vivid picture in their mind. All students are now working to type their work on the computer and then they will be making watercolor illustrations for each page. 

Remembrance Day Poetry: Students used their understandings about descriptive writing to create a short sense poem to describe their feelings and ideas about peace. Although these ideas were short, they demonstrate each student’s ability to transfer their learning from our descriptive writing study into a different context.

Word Work: Grade 1 students are engaged in daily word work. They are focusing on developing their understanding of word families as well as short vowel sounds. Grade 2 students are engaged in word work three days per week. They are focusing on mastering their short and long vowel sounds. They are also learning to use their personal dictionaries to help them improve their spelling in their daily writing work.

Math:

Counting: We began the year exploring counting and developing strategies for counting large sets. We looked at grouping objects into sets of 2, 5, 10, and 100 in order to make it easier to count. We also looked at the ways we organize our sets to make them easier for other people to count.

Patterns and relationships: Students used objects in nature to develop an understanding of attributes and to learn to sort materials in a variety of ways based on common attributes. This included learning to create Venn diagrams and T-charts. Students have also learned to create and identify a variety of repeating and increasing patterns using 2-or more attributes (gr. 1), 3-or more attributes (gr. 2).  This pattern work is an important step towards understanding number patterns. Students have used their understanding of patterns to create a special name pattern placemat to use for Fun Lunches.

Problem Solving: Students are engaged in weekly problem solving related to our current topic of study. Some of these problems are completed as a large group, some are completed as small group tasks, and others are completed individually.

Basic Addition skills: Students are developing their basic addition skills through math games and online practice in Mathletics each week.

Social Studies:

Community Stewardship: Following the harvest of our Sun Circle garden we cooked and baked using the vegetables from the garden. This was a way for us to come together as a community around a common project and allowed us to give back to others by sharing recipes with our families.

An Arctic Community: We were excited to help Ms. Boyer prepare for her trip to Churchill, MB. We learned about temperature, landscape, animals, and transportation in the north. We shared what we learned by compiling travel packages. Next, we will continue looking at traditional ways of knowing in the arctic by exploring Inuit stories and culture.

Science:

Community Stewardship: Students were responsible for harvesting the sun circle garden and reporting the harvest results to the school community. Next, we will be starting our indoor garden where students will be responsible for watering and monitoring our plants.

Temperature and Liquids: As part of our study of the Arctic students are learning about the ways that humans and animals adapt to harsh temperatures. Students are learning about insulation, including animal insulations such as fur and blubber. They are also looking at the differences between salt water and fresh water as well as ways that warmer temperatures affect our oceans, ice caps, and animals in the arctic. Students will be continuing this study through a series of science experiments in the next few weeks.

Wednesday, November 23rd

This morning we worked hard to type up our poetry so that we can begin working on our water colors to illustrate our poems next week.  In math we worked on our pattern checks and some of us are beginning to finish.  Our next focus will be exploring patterns in numbers and learning how to count using these patterns.

This afternoon we presented our groups ideas for transportation in the arctic.  Some of us got to share but if we didn't we will share tomorrow.  While we were sharing Miss Boyer and Mrs. Hamby begin to create a common list on the smart board.  When we were coming up with our ideas we had to consider things like hunting, water freezing over and melting, sea ice, large spread out landscape and that there is not always a road to drive on.

In gym we played a version of a basketball game and we were each on teams.  We had to score by bouncing the ball into the hoop.  Each team had a guard in front of their hoop.

We had our journal finish up time today after gym.  Most of us finished and some of us will have to finish at centers tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing you at conferences.  Your child will have work to share with you when you come so please leave some time either before or after the interview time.

Today was twin, triplet day and also treat day.  Thank you to everyone for sending in all those delicious treats for today.  They were a hit!

In gym today we had basketball stations.  One was keep away, two were basket shooting and one was to try and get the ball past your partner and into the hoop.  In music we worked on our music scrapbook.  We had to put our music notes and activities into our music journals.

We worked on our pattern checks but we only had twenty minutes because Mrs. Cowdy came to talk to us about digital citizenship.  We learned about taking care of the computers in a responsible way and making sure that if we notice anything unusual we tell a grown up.

We worked on our poetry typing this morning and got a little bit more done on our poems.  Typing takes a long time for some of us.
 In social studies we are learning about transportation in the Arctic.  We read a story called "Pipaluk and the Whales."  They used an icebreaker and  dog sleds to go from one place to another in this story.  The beluga whales got trapped in the ice and a big icebreaker had to come from Russia to break through the ice and get the whales out.  The icebreaker was called Moskva.  It took the icebreaker three about three two months to get to the whales.  It is  true story.

After the story we got together in groups and made a list of all the things we think people might use to get from one place to another in the Arctic.  We will share our ideas tomorrow.

Our helper tomorrow is Inga.

Target review

Reminder:
Tomorrow is room one sponsored treat day.  Please send your treats for the students of the school, with your child in the morning so that they can be sold at recess. Please also send 25 cents with your child tomorrow so that they can buy a treat at recess. Tomorrow is also twin and triplet day.  This is a day where your child can dress up like a friend.

This morning we worked on our journal writing and picture.  We looked at our journal writing target to see where we might be on the target for our journal writing and where we need to get to.  Our goal would be to try and get to the middle of the target by the end of the year.  We glued this in our journal so that we can always see it when we are writing in our journals.

In math we started our pattern checklist.  We also reviewed a target for our pattern work.  This is so that we know what we need to show in our work and our working choices to get to the middle of the target.

In Social studies we worked on the cover of our travel folder.  We had to add our landscape painting, come up with a title for it, type up the title with our buddy, print it and glue it on to the cover.

This morning we came in and saw our new desk spots.  Ask me who is in my table group.

This is our last week of basketball skills.  We worked on defense by using our bodies to stop our buddy from getting the ball.

Our new helper sharing category is "something I made".  Our helper tomorrow is Maria.

Today was our Evergreen performance.  Room ones play was about snowy owls and wolverines.  They competed to see who was the best animal in the arctic.  They competed in contests of golf, hunting, rock, paper scissors game, and a running/flying race.  When we got here this morning we went to our dress rehearsal right away.

Our costumes were awesome!  the wolverines had a bonnet with ears on it and grey shirts and the snowy owls got to wear glasses with beaks attached and also white shirts.

While we waited to be called for our final performance we were allowed to make a quiet choice in the classroom.

Some of us were feeling nervous, scared, shy, excited and worried about making a mistake.  After the performance we felt relieved, free, happy that it was over and that we had done a good job.  We felt very proud that we had performed so well.

A big thank you to our coaches Natalie and Alexa.  We learned that when we act we can have fun but we need to stay controlled and in our role.  She reminded us to smile and make sure that we had memorized our lines.

One More Day Till Our Evergreen Performance

We have been very busy practicing our performance and we are really excited to share it with you tomorrow.  Today we saw our costumes and we will be wearing them for our performance tomorrow.  The snowy owls will have cool yellow beaks and white T-shirts.  They are supposed to try and wear light beige or white pants/leggings.  The wolverines will be wearing grey T-shirts and black hats that look like wolverine heads.  They are supposed to try and wear black or grey pants.  We practiced our speaking parts and went through the play a few times.  We are getting better at remembering our lines and knowing where we have to go and stand in the play.  We are also getting better at working together as a group.  At the end we got to give our ideas for a title.  We had to vote on the title that we liked the most.  Our play is called "Arctic Animals".  We hope that you can join us tomorrow.  Our dress rehearsal is at 9:00 and the performance for our parents is at 11:15.  I need to make sure that I get to school on time tomorrow so that I can put on my costume and I am ready to go.

In math today we learned about a pattern check that we will be doing next week.  It will be our chance to show what we know and what we can do with patterns.  We also need to try and challenge ourselves to show the best that we can do using and making challenging patterns .

Many of us starting typing up our poems for Whispering Woods today.  If we were not ready we had to work to finish writing our poems.

We had a great fun lunch today.  Thank you to all the volunteers that came to help at lunch time.

On Monday the helper will be Cohen.

Evergreen Theater, Two More Days to the Show...

Reminder: Tomorrow is Fun lunch.
Friday the Evergreen performance will be at 11:15.
We hope that you can come!

Today we finished working on our growing patterns.  When we were done we had to show Mrs. Hamby and then we got to go onto Mathletics/ patterns and relations.

In our poetry writing we learned how create and save a document so that we could start typing our poems.  That was all we had time for during our writing time.

In Evergreen theater today we got to go and practice our show in the gym. We added speaking parts to our performance and then practiced them with our actions.   We only got to use the gym for half the time because another class needed to try their show in the gym too.  We went to the learning commons then and went through it one more time.  Natalie says that one thing we need to work on is making sure that we are listening and following her directions and making sure our voices are turned off when it is not our turn.  One thing we are doing well is that we are remembering our parts. Tomorrow we will get to see our costumes!

We ended the day with Journal finish up. Some of us will be bringing our journals home to finish for homework.  Please bring them back tomorrow.

Evergreen Theater is Great!

We had a great session today with our Evergreen Theater leaders Natalie and Alexa.  Our workshop time is everyday after lunch.  We started to work on our play today.  It is about wolverines and snowy owls. They have competitions with each other to see who is the top animal.  Half of us are snowy owls and half of us are wolverines.  We had some good laughs. You will be surprised at all the contests we have to help decide the top animal.  One is especially surprising and funny...  You'll have to come on Friday morning to see the performance and to find out what happens.  We are working really hard to get ready for the performance!

After that we had music with Ms. Stephure.

This morning we worked to finish our Whispering Woods Poetry.  We will be typing up some of our best ideas to go along with watercolored pictures. The project will be in a small book.  We had to choose one idea that we had written for each sense.  We showed these ideas by highlighting the ones that we had picked and wanted to use for our poem.  We are now beginning the final part of this project.  We are poets and artists.

In Math today we worked on showing our understanding of growing patterns.  We had to look at a growing pattern and then draw what would come next in the pattern.  Some of them are a bit tricky.   Most growing patterns we tried today involved pictures and numbers.  Ask me to draw you a growing pattern and see if you can draw what comes next.

Our helper tomorrow is Poorvi.

***Picture retakes are tomorrow morning, please send in your unwanted photo package if you still have it.

Peace For Remembrance Day

Just a few of our ideas for remembering peace on Remembrance Day tomorrow

Getting Ready For Remembrance Day...

Today we read a book called What Does Peace Feel like....  This inspired us to write our own ideas about peace.

Peace feels like when you touch your baby's hands.
Peace sounds like birds singing in the trees.
Peace smells like drippy and melty chocolate.
Peace sounds like the ending of gunfire.
Peace tastes like fresh food in my tummy.
Peace feels like a poppy rubbing against my cheek.
Peace feels like soft bear fur.
Peace tastes like a happy dinner.

You can see our ideas hanging with our poppies in the gym tomorrow.  We will bring our poppies and ideas home next week.

We finished making our poppies and then we added stems and glued the flower and our ideas about peace onto a piece of paper.

For the assembly tomorrow we are inviting anyone that would like to come.  It starts at 10:50 and we will also be singing a song.

If you would like your child to dress up a little bit for the assembly that would be great.  If your child is in Brownies, Sparks, Cubs or Beavers they are also welcome to wear their uniforms tomorrow.  Please send a coin donation for a poppy tomorrow.  Tomorrow is the last day to send non-perishable food items for Veterans.

Tomorrow our helper is Diego.

This morning we worked on the first part of our poppy project for the Remembrance Day Assembly.  We looked at pictures of an artist that had created poppies around the Tower of London and then talked about what may have inspired the artist to do that work.  We also saw pictures of some big red poppies from Mrs. Hamby's garden.  The poppies we are going to make will look like those poppies too.  We had to color two coffee filters using red and pink markers.  Next we had to paint the filters with water.  It made the colors go like watercolors.  Tomorrow when the pieces are dry we will make our poppies for an art piece in the gym for our Assembly.

We had our arctic animal research this afternoon.  Many of us are beginning to finish.  We had to find out what our animal eats; where it lives; its size and weight; appearance and two interesting facts.  When we finish we can help some of our friends find their information.

In music today we practiced for the assembly and also practiced using the risers.  Because it was such a beautiful day outside we got to go and practice our basketball skills outside.

Our helper tomorrow is  Jack.

This morning we worked on our journals.  We talked about what is expected for grade ones and grade twos.  Grade ones should be trying to write four or more ideas, grade twos eight or more.  Grade ones are learning to use periods at the end of their ideas and grade twos need to have periods and capitals in the correct spots.  Grade ones are using sounding out spelling and beginning to use easy word family words correctly.  They are also trying to use lower case letters.  Grade twos should be using correct spelling and sounding out harder words.  We always have Wednesday as a finish up day for journals and also center times to finish.  After that it becomes homework.

Today in math we learned about growing patterns.  We learned about picture growing patterns, shape and number growing patterns.  We will be practicing these over the next few weeks.

Some grade six girls came to talk to us about Remembrance Day.  They reminded us to bring non- perishable food items for our Veterans and also a poppy donation.  A loonie or a toonie was what they suggested.  Thursday we will have our assembly and we will be singing a song called, "Sing for Peace".

In the afternoon we worked on our Arctic animal research.  We had library and then went to gym.
In gym we started working on basketball skills. We practiced bouncing and dribbling in different ways.

Our helper tomorrow is Inga.

Reminder:  The 22nd of November room one is hosting Treat Day.  We are responsible for sending in treats to be sold at recess on that day.

Today was beautiful day for Fresh air Friday.

We created temporary art outside in the Whispering Woods.  To inspire us we watched a video of Andy Goldsworthy from Scotland who also creates temporary land art.  We used things that we could find from the Whispering Woods and then we found a spot to start creating in the woods.  We didn't all finish our pieces so maybe we can work on them again.  They may still be there... or they may not.  We talked about the idea of it being temporary and not permanent.

This morning we met our Big Buddies.  This year we have Mrs. Saunders class for our Big Buddies.   Today they read us a story that they had picked from the library just for us.  They even practiced reading it so that they were ready.  Ask me who my big buddy is.

We also finished up our Alphabet sign hunt  outside, so much nicer than last week.  We added pictures to the ideas if we had already finished.  The hardest sign to find was the "T" sign.  It was off to the side in the Whispering Woods.  I wonder if you can find it...

We had to go to the gym to practice our song for the Remembrance Day Assembly.  It will be next Thursday morning.  Please come if you are able.  Eric's mom helped to play the piano for us today.
We learned that room two will be at the top of the risers and room one will be at the bottom.  We will have to practice that next week.

This morning we started our day with guided reading and literacy centers.  Our writing today was to finish up our descriptive "I smell...",  ideas for our Whispering woods poems.  we are almost finished, we only have the I taste" part of our poems left.  In word work time today Mrs. Polski came and she presented the grade one students with a book.  Each year we receive books for the grade ones to keep as their own.

In math today we worked in teams of three to create movement patterns.  We had to create four patterns and then choose our best one to perform to our classmates.  We used alphabet letters as another way to describe our patterns.

After lunch today we learned a little bit more about polar bears from Ms. Boyer's trip and then we worked on our own arctic animal research.  We also had music and gym. In music we learned a new song called"Land of the Silver Birch."  Ms. Stephure showed pictures of Taiki's grandpa and Ings's grandpa who fought in the war.  We are preparing a song for Remembrance Day.  In gym we had hoops and skipping stations.  We worked to improve our tricks and we got to try each station.

Our helper tomorrow is Eric.

Tomorrow is the order deadline for school photos.  If you have not ordered online please send your order envelope in if you would like individual school photos.

Today we learned more about Ms. Boyer's trip to Churchill .  She told us about a beautiful male bear that she saw and he was performing for the visitors.  The guide said that he could tell the male was young because he didn't have any scars yet. We saw a picture of a little bear cub and he was pouncing on the snow to practice what he would do if he was hunting for seals on the ice.

After we had a chance to hear about Ms. Boyer's trip some more, we worked on our northern landscape paintings.

In writing today we worked on our poems for the Whispering Woods.  We added our "I smell..." ideas to our poems.  Freya's idea was "I smell sweet and minty tree bark by the fort." Logan's idea was, "I smell the frosty wind in the air." Eric's idea was "I smell vanilla smelling dandelions." Yafet's idea was "I smell stinky, rotting grass." Jordan's idea was "I smell the minty, fresh leaves swirling down from the trees."

In math today we worked on Mathletics in the patterns and relations section.   I added Mathletics to the blog as a link in the Resources for Home section.  You can access it using the blue log in card that came home last week.  We are working on patterning in math and they can work on the Patterns and relations section in Activities to compliment their learning in math.

Today in gym we practiced different tricks using the hula hoops.  Some of the tricks were skipping, triple hooping, double hooping, boomerang and many more.

Tomorrow Taiki is the helper.

This morning we got to try our new centers.  They are Raz Kids, Bookmarks and Patternpalooza. We will so these centers during guided reading.  Our first job is to finish our journals from Monday.  Then we are allowed to go to a center when we are not at guided reading.

Today in math we worked on our pattern challenge again. This challenge was to try and create as many patterns as we could using only two colors.  We also talked about the pattern of time such as days of the week and the months of the year and seconds, minutes and hours.  We are learning to recognize all kinds of patterns in our everyday world..

This week in word work the grade ones have been practicing the short "U" sound with the word families "ug" and "un".  The grade two students have been working on the long and short "A", and now some people are moving on to long and short "E".

Today Ms. Boyer shared some of her pictures about her trip to Churchill.  We were surprised to hear that there is a polar bear jail for bears that keep wandering into town.  Instead of shooting them they put them in "polar jail" and wait till the ice freezes over Hudson's Bay they let the polar bears out. They run off onto the ice to go and catch ring seals.

In gym today we practiced skipping.  We tried skier jumps, X jumps, jog and run, swing skip, side step hop, front and back, rocker skip and some of us tried helicopter too.  We are getting better everyday with practice.

The helper tomorrow is Trinity.

Today we looked at the website natureground.org to learn all about the alphabet signs around our school and Whispering Woods.  The project was all done by Dr. Coffin students more than ten years ago.  All the art work was done by students at the school.  On the website we looked at a map that shows where all the signs are located.  There is even one by the Whispering Grasses bridge going to Nose Hill.  We went outside and tried to find all the signs.  They were all over the school grounds, Whispering Woods and the Natureground.  We had a recording sheet to write what each letter stood for but when we tried to write the paper was too wet and most of them ripped into pieces.  Oh well, we tried to find them all anyway!

Once we got back inside we were given new recording sheets and we got to go onto the web site and look up the signs with our buddies.  We filled in the information we still needed.  This time we were warm and dry!

Many of us today forgot to bring mittens, socks, hats, boots and extra clothing to make sure that  we stayed warm and dry.  We talked about making sure that every Fresh Air Friday we needed to come ready for the weather and for learning outside.

Miss Boyer had sent Mrs. Hamby a video of herself dressed up this morning for her trip to Churchill to see the polar bears.  She also sent us a picture of what it looked like when they were landing.  She will post pictures to her blog on the weekend and then we can see them.  She will also show us the photos on Monday in class.

Reminder for Monday
Students were told today that they were allowed to wear their Halloween costumes on Monday after lunch.  If your child stays for lunch they may bring their costume and then put it on after they have eaten their lunch.  If you choose to take your child home for lunch on this day just let Mrs. Kidd the lunch room supervisor know.   We will have a small Halloween parade and special activities in the classroom on Monday afternoon.  If you would like to send special snacks in for the class that is up to you but certainly not expected.  A few parents had asked about this.

Today we watched a video about animals in the Arctic.  Our job was to try and remember the animals we saw in the video so that we could start a list of choices for some Arctic animal research.  By the end of our list we had twenty five animals to choose from.  Some of us decided to work with a partner and some of us decided to work on our own.  Ask me what animal I will be researching and who my partner is.  Tomorrow we will use books to see what information we can find about our animals.

Today we made cards to glue all our computer login information onto.  We have information about how to go to our account in Mathletics to practice our math; Raz Kids to practice our reading and then our login number with the CBE to go and look at our own Iris account.  We made one card for school and one card for home.  The school pays for Mathletics and Raz Kids which many parents and students have found worthwhile.  This also gives them a way to practice math and reading skills if you are interested in having a small homework routine at home.

Coming home today is the school photo proofs in case you are interested in ordering.

Our helper tomorrow is Vanessa.

National geographic kids has some good websites for animal research.  The video we watched was a national geographic clip on Youtube called "Arctic; Exploring Oceans"

Today in social studies we worked on our watercolor northern landscapes.  We are becoming good artists using watercolors.  Some of us finished, they look beautiful!

 In math we worked on an indoor pattern hunt and we had to record our patterns in our math journals using pictures, labels and letters.  We are trying to identify various types of patterns in different environments.  We learned that the first part of a pattern before it starts to repeat is called the core of the pattern.  We have to watch that they repeat three or more times to make sure that it is a pattern.

 We worked on the "I hear..."  part of our poems for Whispering Woods.  We practiced using juicy words to describe the sounds and then we tried to think of a word that would describe our sound such as bzzzzzzz, shhhhhshhhhh,  glick, glick, glick.  Some of us added those into our poems.

We enjoyed two David Shannon books.  One is called "Alice the Fairy" and the other one is called"Good Boy Fergus".  We enjoyed both of them.  He says that Fergus the dog is in ten of his other books.  Can you find them?

Today in gym we played with the skipping ropes.  We learned to do some tricks along with skipping.  One trick was called Swing skip and you have to swing the rope in a figure eight and then skip it.
In Music today we listened to a song called Fossils and we had to draw a picture of what we imagined.  We also had to see what instruments we heard in the song.  We heard a piano, xylophone a violin and a flute.



Tomorrow Payton is the helper for room one.

This morning we worked to become better writers by writing in our journals.  Some of us wrote about Halloween and some of us wrote about our weekends.  Each week we are trying to write more details and ideas.  Our word work practice has really made a difference for the grade one kids when they go to write in their journals. We are sounding out our words and now we don't have to ask for help all the time.

For math today we worked on a pattern challenge.  We needed to see how many patterns we could create using only two colors.  We added the letter labels to our patterns as another way to label the pattern.  We discovered that even when we put the colors in a different order it might still be the same pattern as another one when we add the letter labels.

We added a hydroponic fish tank and plant system to our classroom.  The fish create the fertilizer for the plants that are on top of the station.  The pumps carry the water and fertilizer to the plants and then it filters back.  It was donated by a student from Captain John. He had worked on it for a science fair project.  Thanks!

This afternoon we began a watercolor of our Northern landscape to be included in our Northern travel portfolio.    After studying the landscape last week we now know what we need to include in our landscapes.

We also had library and gym.  In gym we are learning to skip.  We have little cards that show special skipping tricks if we feel like we are ready to try them.

Hailey and Jordan shared about lady bugs and showed us some that they had collected.  Our helper tomorrow is Jordan.