Today we will be sending home the fun lunch forms.  Please check your child's backpack for the form.  Just a reminder that tomorrow is our Fresh Air Friday and we will be spending time in the Natureground and school areas for signs of spring.  We will be sketching outside so please dress accordingly.

Today We added trees and shrubs to our Dioramas.  Some of the trees and shrubs we talked about were aspens, dogwood,  evergreen trees, willows, wild rose bushes.  In music we learned a new game.  We sang a song called "Little Bunny Hop" and some of us got to hide eggs and then the hunters went to look for the eggs.  In gym we played cat and mouse under the parachute.  The mice were under the parachute and the cats were on top. When we made waves on the parachute the cats had to find the mice by crawling around.  It was hard! Most of us finished our math assessment today. When we were finished we got to do Mathletics.
Our helper for Monday is Jordan.

Today we started working on sharing what we learned about our animal research by getting the habitat ready in our shoeboxes.  Please remember to send a shoebox to school for this sharing project if you haven't done so yet.  We continued with our math assessment and showing what we know about number counting and patterns.  Today in gym we played a new game called Cat and Mouse.  We had to work as a team to keep the cat away from the mouse by lowering our hands to block the cat from coming into the circle to catch the mouse.  We wrote in our journals today.  We shared about our holidays and about the Bird Sanctuary yesterday.

We were so excited about going to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary today!  We saw and learned about the wildlife that lives down by the Bow River.
While we were there we saw:
- a coyote pelt
- chickadees
-Mallard ducks
- Canada Goose
- a skeleton of a bird in the forest
- Northern Flicker Woodpecker

We went to centers that had artifacts from different animals.  We saw fur, skulls, claws, scat, quills, footprints and facts and pictures from many different animals.  When we went for our walk we saw animal homes likes holes in the trees and the ground, magpie nests and trees that beavers had eaten and chewed down to help them build a dam.  We saw where the beavers had made a dam across part of the river. We learned that magpie nests have back doors and front doors because the tail is so long that it can't turn around in its nest. They also build a roof on the nest to stop the snow from covering it.  We saw some porcupine quills and also some porcupine scat.  We recorded some animal adaptations by drawing animals and showing some of their adaptations.  We learned that if an animal has their eyes at the front they like to hunt and at the side they like to hide.  Cat tracks are round and dog tracks are long.  Cougar claws are very curved and look like they glow.  We learned a lot of fun facts and got to ask questions about many of the animals.  What a great day!

Today we tried to finish our story plans so that we could start creating the puppets for our stories.  We will practice telling our stories with puppets before we write them.  In math we continued to work on our math assessment.  Some of the activities we have to do are showing counting patterns by 2's, 5's and 10's, completing a 100 or 200 chart, telling about odd and even numbers and counting numbers forwards and backwards from a certain number between 1 and 100 for grade 1 or 1 and 1000 for grade 2.

In the afternoon we tried to  finish up our research booklets about our animals.  We hope to start showing what we learned after to break by creating our animal habitat in the shoebox.  If you have not brought a shoe box or similar box, please bring one a soon as possible.

Tomorrow is our last day of school before the break please make sure that water bottles and anything you may need goes home with your child tomorrow.  Tomorrow is Saint Patricks Day,  remember to wear green!
Our helper tomorrow is Poorvi.

Sorry, I forgot to hit the share button!

We want to wish Sanuka a Happy Birthday today.  We played dodgeball 100 in gym today.  When the ball hit us we would have to go to the team bench and count to 100.  Once we finished counting we could come out on to the court again.  We started working on showing our math learning in an assessment that will go till Thursday.  It is on number concepts.  In music we learned a new song called the Red Red Robin.  We also got back our music compositions.   In animal research some people became helpers today if their research was completed.  They helped other kids to find facts about their animal.

Our helper tomorrow is Inga.

Today we used centimeters to measure our life size animal.  Once we finished measuring we wrote our amount on a card along with the animal name.  The skunk was 48 cm, badger was 76 cm , deer mouse was 8 cm,  little brown bat wing span is 26 cm. and the lynx is 1 m  and 9 cm.

For step two of our animal animal project we need to bring a shoe box to school to create our animal habitat and show what we learned using plasticine.  In a few days spring break will begin, our last day of school this week is Thursday.  In gym today we worked with field hockey sticks and also lacrosse sticks.  We had two stations.
Our helper tomorrow is Freya. Please return field trip forms as soon a s possible.

We were so excited to work with Miss Rachel this afternoon to create our beautiful clay animals.  The choices were that they had to be real, live in Canada and had to have four legs with some exceptions.  Many of us made the animal that we are researching but some of us decided to make a different animal.  We also painted them with a clay paint. We learned that Miss Rachel's kiln can go up to 1000 degrees when she bakes our projects and they take a whole day to cool.  We spent the whole afternoon working on them and we are very excited to share them with you when they come back.

We had an exciting day today. In the morning we began planning our own story to write.  We have been reading some of Jan Brett stories about animals and now we are trying to write our own story using a similar pattern  In math we continued to create our life size animals based on our measurements that we found when we researched our own animals.

This afternoon we were excited to get to the Whispering Woods. The woods gave us a map and we had to follow the map to find our surprise.  We found a juice box and a rice krispie square for each of us.  All the maps were different and we worked with a buddy to find our surprise.   We were sad to see that someone painted some graffiti on one of our Whispering Woods signs.  We hope that doesn't happen again.  Once we finished our snacks we got to go and play in the woods.  Since we have clay for kids tomorrow we had our music time today.

Today we worked to finish our journals while room 2 had Clay for Kids.  We will have our turn on Thursday afternoon with Clay for Kids.  We continued with our animal research and animal measurements today.  A new fact from today was that Southern Red backed Voles make a chirp like bark when they are disturbed.  Little brown bats can hibernate.  They have a winter cave and a summer cave.
We also went on the computers and we did Mathletics or Raz Kids.
In gym we continued to practice our badminton game with a partner.  We are noticing that our badminton skills keep getting better.  We are able to hit back to our partners more than once and our serving is improving.  Today in music we learned a new song called "Haul Away Joe".  We also played a game called Tic Tac Toe.

Today when we went to the Whispering Woods we found a letter that invited us back to the woods on Wednesday afternoon for a special surprise.  We found out that the secret was that the Woods likes us coming to visit so often.  It enjoys hearing us discover and play in the woods.
In math today we had to draw our animals that we are researching in life size.  We had to look up the measurements and then we had to use grid paper to draw our animal.  In gym today we practiced hitting the badminton bird back and forth with a buddy.   Today we had library instead of Wednesday but just for this week.  Wednesday we have a date with Whispering Woods!

This Thursday afternoon room 1 will be doing Clay for Kids.  We will be making clay animals.

Today we continued learning about cartography.  That means we were making and using maps. Today we created maps of Whispering Woods. Mapping was challenging because we had to orient ourselves to where we were on the map and also choosing what we wanted to draw on the map because there were so many things to add.  It was hard to decide what to draw first.  Cartography is important to zoologists because they need to be able to read and mark evidence on maps when they are studying animals  Maps are a good way for Zoologists share their findings with other people.

Our helper on Monday is Hailey

Today we made headbands for our storytelling for next week when we share with our big buddies.
Some of us started craft club today and today was the last for games club.   This morning we went to the woods.  Our challenge was to find things to measure that were above our waist but below our fingertips raised up over our heads.  Tomorrow we will choose our measuring tool and go outside to complete the challenge.

This afternoon we worked on animal research.  We learned that animals survive by either adapting, hibernating, or migrating.  We also learned that the coyote, and a white tailed deer can run faster than a car.

Tomorrow is fun lunch and also treat day again.  Our helper tomorrow is Cohen.

Today we welcomed a new boy to room 2.  He is in grade one and his name is Bilal.

This morning we worked on our story telling.  We are almost ready to share our stories with our big buddies.  We went out to visit the woods after recess and we found our new challenge.  It said that we needed to collect 50 sticks and pile them in groups of five.  We ended up having ten piles.  We had to work together as a team in small groups.  The sticks will be to help the birds find twigs for their nests as they begin to return from their winter break.

This afternoon we worked on our animal research.  We learned that some of the predators of the red backed vole are owls, lynx, coyotes, wolves and red fox as well as hawks. White tailed deer escape from their enemies by jumping in the water to swim away.  The enemies of the striped skunk are wolves, wild cats, wild dogs and big owls.  Little brown bats have owls, hawks and weasels as their predators.  Our next category we will be researching for our animal is How I Surive or What Helps Me to Survive.

Our helper tomorrow is Jajohn.