Today our visitor from CPAWS taught us some things about Alberta animals at risk.  We learned that caribou, whooping cranes, leopard frogs, swift fox, grizzly bears and the burrowing owls are all at risk.  Some of the reasons are because of poaching, chemicals from farmers fields, tractors from farms,  oil wells, trains and cutting down trees from the forest.  We had investigation stations where we got to see bear and caribou fur, claws, skeletons of a whooping crane and swift fox.  Each station had clues about what was endangering the animals.  We also played a game called Happy Frog and Sad Frog.

The other thing that we did this morning was we went for a walk to look for treasures from nature.  We had treasure boxes that we took with us.  We learned from Mrs. Gummo that every treasure has a story.  Mrs Hamby shared treasures from her box that she brought from home.

Please check your child's backpack for their report card.

Tomorrow we have a special guest coming for part of our Fresh Air Friday.  Can you guess who?
- She has visited us many times before
- She helped us with our indoor garden.
- She started a new job that had to do with animals instead of gardens.

She will be teaching us about animals in danger. Can you guess who?

Report cards also go home tomorrow.

Today we worked to  finish our animal headbands, our hundreds charts patterns and our mural project.  We added our animal research poster to the mural today.  Next week we will be able to put up the mural in our hallway.

Today was black and white day most of the class wore some black and white.  In math we tried to finish our hundreds chart patterns and we talked about odd and even numbers.  For our story telling we made costume headbands of the characters to wear while we tell the story of the Bear Who Stole the Chinook.  In gymnastics today we worked on a 1 point balance 2, 3, and four point balances.
Tomorrow our helper is Inga.

Today we started Gymnastics.  Our safety rules are that we can not wear dangly jewellery,  loose clothing or hoodies with strings; long hair should be tied back and we won't be wearing socks or shoes in the gym.

In math today we worked on patterns with our 100's chart. We made a poster with our clue groups of all our animal clues for our special interactive mural we are working on for the hallway.

Tomorrow is black and white day and Cohen is our special helper tomorrow.

Today we started our Fresh Air Friday by going outside to Whispering Woods and we played our animal game.  We pretended to be an animal making a sound.  We had to find the other "animals" making the same sound in order to find our family.  We were learning about how animals communicate with each other.  Today we met our big buddies and made temporary art using ice, snow and our tools were rulers  sticks and hands and feet to give the snow some shape.  We are sending home a purple notice today.  Please check the backpack for this notice.

Sorry I forgot to post this yesterday.  Oops!
Today was our last day of volleyball.  We got better at serving the ball underhand and throwing the ball over the net to our buddies.  Today we finished typing up our animal clues.  We will using them for some of our project work.  We also worked on retelling the story of How the Bear Stole the Chinook.    For fun lunch we had Boston Pizza.  5 kids had Bugs and Cheese, 5 kids had pizza, 4 kids had chicken strips and fries 3 kids brought their own lunch.

Thank you to all the parents that helped today with our Fun Lunch.

Tomorrow we will be outside for most of Fresh Air Friday time.  We will be playing a class animal game before recess and then after recess we will be doing an activity outside with our Big Buddies.  We will meet our big buddies tomorrow.  They will be our buddies for the rest of the year.  We can hardly wait!

On Monday the helper is Jajohn.

Today we worked with Mrs. Gummo again.  She told us a story called, How the Bear Stole the Chinook.  We acted out the story while she told it to us a second time.  Then it was our turn to tell the story.  We went into small groups and we each chose a character from the story.  The characters were:  Narrator, Orphan Boy, Magpie, Owl, Weasel, Coyote, Prairie Chicken and Bear.  Next we will practice retelling the story and acting it out with our small group.  It was so much fun.

Tomorrow is Fun Lunch Day.

Today we started drawing and painting our mural project of Nosehill.  In math today we worked on discovering patterns in the hundreds chart and then we worked to add numbers to our own chart. One of our patterns was 2,4,8,16,32,64,__,____, Can you guess our pattern?  The grade twos had to start at 101 and go to 200 on their chart.  The grade ones had to start at 1 and go to 100.  In music today we listened to a Brass orchestra of Wales.  We also played a new game in music.  We closed our eyes and we had to sing as part of the game.  We used Mrs. Potato Head pieces and gave them out to people and if you had a certain body piece that she called out then you had to sing back to her.  It was fun.  Tomorrow Mrs. Gummo is visiting our classroom again.

Today we worked on our journals.  We practiced where to put periods and capitals in our writing before we started our own journals.  We learned a trick, to use a color for periods so that we can see how often we used them on our page.  If we didn't have any or enough we needed to go back and check where to put them in.  This afternoon we started working on typing up our animal clues.  We are creating a bigger project and we will need the clues for this surprise.  This is our last week of volleyball in gym.  Next week we will start gymnastics.

Tomorrow is wear green and blue day and this Thursday will be fun lunch.  Thank you to the parents that have signed up to volunteer for our fun lunch day.  Please check the calendar to see if any more parents are needed.

Today we spent time with Mrs. Gummo in the Whispering Woods.  We played an animal game where we had to find the rest of our animal family by making the sound of the animal.  We were all given our animal sound and then when she rang the bell we had to start making our sound and walking around. When we found someone from our family we would join together and then keep looking. We were all in different parts of the woods so we really had to listen for the right sound. It was fun! I guess that's how animal mothers take care of their babies.  Once we came inside Mrs. Gummo lit her story candle and then told us another story called The Prairie Princess.  It was a story about a girl and ladybirds.  The setting for the story was Nosehill.

This morning we worked on our Whispering Woods pictures in our visual journals.  Mrs. Gummo had asked us to draw the secrets and treasures of Whispering Woods yesterday.  After recess we had the first of our two finish up days for math tubs.  Following our patterns work we will begin work with recognizing and counting number patterns.  Patterns to practice counting would be counting by 2, 5 and 10 to 100.  For grade two the extra practice of counting by 25 to 200 and then by 100's to 1000 is good practice for them.  Tomorrow Mrs. Gummo will be here again to work with us on our Fresh Air Friday.  We will be playing an animal game in the Whispering woods.  Please try our animal sound game.  Can you guess which animals make these sounds?
Click on the link below and follow the link:

.www.kidsplanet.org/games/js/whoami.html

Today Mrs. Gummo came and told us a story about Whispering Woods.  She whispered "Whispering Woods what are your secrets? Tell them to me..."  The story was about respecting the animals that live in the woods. She used a story candle.  She also brought a story boy and a story mother.  She carried them in her heart shaped story basket.  After her story we played an imagination game about being in the woods.  The next time she comes to visit will be for our Fresh Air Friday.   We started our animal guessing game but we will have to finish tomorrow.

Reminder
Tomorrow your Fun Lunch Orders are due.

This morning we learned about our new literacy centers.  We have included story writing, word searches, Tumble books, animal research and book awards  and a math center.  We worked hard to finish our animal clues and tomorrow we will play our guessing game.  In music today we learned all the words for our Dr. Coffin Song.  Tomorrow we will have our first session with our artist in residence story teller, Mrs. Gummo.  Our new category for sharing is objects from nature.  Jordan is the helper tomorrow.

Reminders...
Tomorrow is treat day sponsored by the portable.  Tomorrow is also a School Spirit day and kids are encouraged to where either purple or orange or both!

Today we worked on our animal clues for our Nosehill animal research.  We needed to have clues about food, habitat, tracks, appearance, survival, family group and sound or communication.  We are going to give our clues to the class and see if they can guess our animal.  In gym today we tried to throw the ball over the net to our partner.  If the ball bounced once and we caught it we got one point, if it didn't bounce we got two points and if it bounced more we got no points.  We are getting ready to play Newcomb Ball.

Just some reminders...
Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday.  Please make sure that your child is dressed appropriately for the weather tomorrow.  We are sending home pizza lunch order forms today to be returned for January 14th.

Today some of us made a top five  Nosehill animal folder and dragged photos into the folder.  We had to choose the five that were the most intriguing to us.  Today in gym we played volleyball dodgeball.  Had to throw the ball over or under the net.  If it hit anybody the would have to go under the net to the other teams side.  In music we learned a new song called "This Way That Way".  We also learned a french song.  We also learned 10 new french words that were in the song.

Today we introduced a new set of pattern centers in math.  We only have one day now to complete each center so we have to work very hard.  We continued our Nose Hill animal research.  We have discovered that animals from the same family name may have big differences in how they look.  We also discovered that the white tailed deer has white under its tail and the Mule deer has white on top of its tail.  The Mule Deer has bigger ears than the White tailed deer.  Some of the kids have requested a list of the Nose Hill Animals so that they can begin to do some research at home.  Below we have included a list from the Friend's of Nose Hill Society.  We were surprised to see how long the list was!

 In volleyball today we practiced throwing the ball over the net to a partner.  We tried to volley the ball.  It was hard! We also tried underhand serving. sometimes the ball doesn't go where we want it to.  We will keep practising!


Mammals on Nosehill

Mule Deer
White-tailed Deer
Moose
Lynx

Coyote
Red Fox
American Badger
Porcupine

Long-tailed Weasel
Least Weasel
Muskrat
Striped Skunk

Varying Hare
White-tailed Prairie Hare

Richardson's Ground Squirrel
Northern Pocket Gopher

Meadow Vole
Southern /Red-backed Vole
Deer Mouse
Western Jumping Mouse
Prairie Shrew
Dusky Shrew

Little Brown Bat
Long-eared Bat
Hoary Bat
Silver-haired Bat
Big Brown Bat
 
Amphibians on Nosehill

Chorus Frog
Garter Snake
Tiger Salamander

 
Birds on Nosehill

YEAR ROUND RESIDENTS
House Sparrow
Short-eared Owl

SUMMER RESIDENT NESTERS
Red-tailed Hawk
Swainson's Hawk
Mallard
Northern Harrier
Gray Partridge
Ring-necked Pheasant
Sharp-tailed Grouse
Killdeer
Mourning Dove
Great Horned Owl
Alder Flycatcher
Downy Woodpecker
Horned Lark
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Bank Swallow
Barn Swallow
Black-billed Magpie
American Crow
Black-capped Chickadee
Rock Wren
House Wren
American Robin
Sprague's Pipit
European Starling
Lazuli Bunting
Chipping Sparrow
Clay-coloured Sparrow
Brewer's Sparrow
Vesper Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Baird's Sparrow
Le Conte's Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Western Meadowlark
Brewer's Blackbird
Northern Oriole
American Goldfinch

SUMMER RESIDENTS
American Kestrel
long-eared Owl
Northern Flicker
Least Flycatcher
Common Night Hawk
Eastern Kingbird
Brown Thrasher
Cedar Waxwing
Pine Siskin
Yellow Warbler

SUMMER VISITORS
Canada Goose
Gadwall
Northern Pintail
American Wigeon
Blue-winged Teal
Common Merganser
Prairie Falcon
Great Blue Heron
Black-billed Cuckoo
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Western Kingbird
Chestnut-collared Longspur
Brown-headed Cowbird
Red-winged Blackbird
Rufous-sided Towhee
Tree Swallow
Blue Jay

WINTER RESIDENTS
Snow Bunting
Common Redpoll
Hoary Redpoll

WINTER VISITORS
Merlin
Snowy Owl
Northern Saw-whet Owl
Bohemian Waxwing
Northern Shrike
Pine Grosbeak
Red Crossbill
White-winged Crossbill

Today  we continued working on our garden journal.  We recorded two ideas about our garden and two ideas about our vermi-compost.  We also added detailed pictures of the plants growing in the planter box.  We tried to show how all the leaves are different on the various plants.    We were glad to have Freya, Ava, and Teia back again from their holidays.  We also started some animal research about the animals on Nose Hill.  We had a list of animals and used the lap tops to google images so that we would know what all the animals on the list looked like.  We will continue this research tomorrow.

Welcome back from holidays!  We wrote and shared about our holidays in our journals this morning  We shared our journals by doing knee to knee sharing.  We continued with our pattern tubs in math.  We were surprised to see that there were growing potato plants in our compost bin.  We also discovered that our garden is growing really well.  We have basil, tomato plants, cucumbers and peppers.  How exciting!  We also started volleyball skills in gym.