Today was our last swimming day.  We will be getting out swimming report cards in the next two weeks.

This afternoon we shared about some important buildings in Calgary from 1911- 1916.  Some kids brought pictures they ha found last night.  After that we watched a video about early Calgary.  We also got to go and look up buildings in Calgary.  If you want to see the great video and also look up some buildings the links are below:
For the buildings:
http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/pd/Pages/Heritage-planning/Inventory-of-evaluated-historic-resources.aspx#DHCresult

For the video:
http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/pd/Pages/CPC-Teachers-Guides/CPC-Teachers-Guide-Episode1.aspx

We have been junior historians learning about  what Calgary was like 100 years ago, 1916.  If you have some extra time tonight a challenge could be to look up the following:

What buildings existed in Calgary in 1916?
What were some of the most important buildings and what were they used for?

We will be sharing about this together tomorrow.

Some reminders:
1. Tomorrow is our last swimming day.
2. Please return your signed field trip forms for Heritage Park.

Reminders:

- Please remember your swimming bag for Monday and Tuesday.

- Please return your fieldtrip forms ASAP.

- Inga is the Helper on Monday.

- Next Friday we will be having our Sports Day.

Have a great weekend! 

We are sending home a field trip form for Heritage park today.  Please fill out the forms and return them for next week.

Tomorrow is a swimming day even though it's Fresh Air Friday.

We have been learning about Calgary long ago.  Today we looked at pictures from the Glenbow Archives to help us see what it was like.  We tried to look for information about jobs, homes and buildings, transportation, clothing, people and a category of other things we thought were interesting.
Yesterday we watched a video of ideas we had given in an interview with Mrs. Lee about what Calgary was like 100 years ago.  We are learning the difference between what we think and what we know.

So far we know that...

- Children played hockey on the river ice.
- They built houses with logs and sand stone.
- They had construction workers.
- They built some houses with sand stone.
- Some people worked for the North West Mounted Police.
- It looks like some people had fancy hair and clothes.
- One job was working at Hudson Bay as a fur buyer.
-There was a bridge that crossed the Bow River to go into the very small down town area.
- Canadian Pacific railway was important.

The best part about swimming today was...
-We got to wear flippers.
-We got to swim with marshmallows, big tubes like bar bells.
-We got to swim.
-We got to do rolls in the air and land in the water.
-In swimming we got to do the back crawl.
-We did the rocket glide.
-We got to do back floats, swim to survive.
-We did whip kicks.
- Going into the tank.
-Doing our dives and playing a game.
-We didn't have to wear life jackets.
-We had to hold our breath for a very long time.  Some of us learned how to swim under water holding our breath.

Today was our first day of swimming.  We went into different groups in swimming.  Some groups practiced front and back strokes. Some practiced doing dives. Some groups got to wear life jackets.  Some kids were moved to other groups if they seemed to be better swimmers than the skills their group was focusing on.  Many of the volunteers stayed to watch us swim.  Thank you to all the volunteers today.  Some of us were extra hungry today so please add some extra food to our lunch kits.

When we came back from the pool we worked on Mathletics.  We had to do the addition and subtraction strands or Mathletics Live.  Many of us are getting our golden bars.  That means we are getting really good at it!  Swimming was our gym time today so we didn't have gym this afternoon.

This afternoon we were learning about Calgary 1916.  We read a story about early life on the prairies and learned that there was not a very big downtown and that there was not anything besides prairie close to Nose Hill.

In music we practiced our Saving the Earth Song.  We got played the Metalaphones, xylophones and the glockenspeils.

Remember to send a bathing suit and towel tomorrow for swimming!

Today was an exciting privilege day.  We were all very excited to use our privileges.  Julia did a great job teaching us for some of the afternoon and Ava was a great assistant.  We had to

On Tuesday our swimming program begins.  Please make sure that your child brings their bathing suit, towel, plastic bag for wet gear, and goggles if needed.  Some children get very hungry after swimming and so an extra small, easy to eat snack while walking back might be a good idea.  We will be walking to the pool and back, leaving to go at 9:00.  It will be important to be on time for these swimming days.  Please make sure that your child has appropriate walking shoes for this trip.  A schedule is coming home today if you volunteered for one of the swimming days.

This morning we visitor from little green thumbs.  The theme was about harvesting and we had to peel the peas in the pod and see if we could beat the frost.  The frost was actually a timer.  We got to eat the peas.  Today was our last day of Wee Reads for the grade ones.  Our high school buddies came and we got to give them our thank you cards and we also had hot chocolate.  After we finished reading with our buddies we took a huge photo together.  After they left we all worked on our stories in the learning commons.

This afternoon we practiced soccer skills during gym.  We had to practice dribbling and also practiced goalie skills and kicking with a buddy.  In Social studies today we learned about how Calgary was 100 years ago.  We learned that they made buildings out of sandstone. They used sandstone because there had been a big fire in the downtown.

In Music today we learned a moon song and also another new song about the earth.

Tomorrow is our book fair.  Please bring money if you would like to buy books.  Each book is 25 cents.  We can still bring bring money to buy privileges for Thursday.

Bring money tomorrow to buy privileges  for Privilege Day on Thursday.  The money raised from this day is going towards Fort Mac. This morning we all worked on starting our journals at center time, unless we had guided reading.  Today the kids that finished their journals got to go on the computers in to grade one and two bookmarks.  Today in math some of us learned a new game called Dicey Deuces.  We learned the strategy of counting on.  That is putting the biggest number in your head and then adding the other number to it.  In Ms. Boyer's math group they worked on simple word problems.

This afternoon we worked on trying to finish our pictures of Calgary from Fresh Air Friday.  We had a checklist and we had to make sure that we included all the landmarks, labelled them, colored with pencil crayon, added trees and houses for Brentwood and colored the background sky and mountains. Our title was, "The View From Nose Hill."  In gym we took out small equipment and played compound games.   Some of us played Bucket Ball.  

The helper tomorrow is Chelsea.

Today on Nose Hill we drew the view from the top.  Some of the landmarks were the Children's Hospital, Northland Mall, COP, University of Calgary and the Condos, McMahon Stadium, and Downtown. We walked all the way to the top of the hill beside the bridge.  We went to the same place where we sketched crocuses.  We didn't see crocuses but we did see Buffalo Beans.  Once we came back to school we had to finish drawing the view.  We had a landmark list and we needed to include all the things on the list.

Today we had a very exciting day.  This morning we worked to make sure that we were ready for our animal museum for the afternoon celebration.  We finished our Did you knows... and we also worked on our stories and finishing up some math from the week.   Thank you to all the helpers that came for our fun lunch today.  Many of us got a happy meal and liked the toy.

In the afternoon we got ready for our museum.  We set up our dioramas in the library along with our facts.  We had to stand beside our diorama and share with people as they came to see us.  We were excited to show them what we had worked so hard at.  We wanted them to see how much we knew about our animals.  Everybody was very impressed!
Today in music we learned a spanish lullaby.

Tomorrow we will be going to Nose Hill for our Fresh Air Friday.  Please send your child with appropriate clothing for the weather.

Our helper on Monday is Vanessa.

Today in science we worked on our Did you knows... so that we could share them with our dioramas at the animal museum on Thursday afternoon.  In math today, Miss Boyer's group worked on practising strategies for adding and subtracting double digit numbers.  Mrs. Hamby's group worked on the strategy of using a number line to add and subtract numbers.  Some of us have moved on to typing up our stories but some of us are working on the illustrations for our stories since we don't want to type them.

In order to get ready for the Celtic performance tomorrow we watched the River Dance and some Irish dance in music today.  Chelsea, Teia and Vanessa have already taken Irish dance lessons.

 In gym we did different kinds of drills with a partner.  In story writing today we all made sure that we had moved on to the story writing component.

Our helper tomorrow is Cohen.  Thursday is Fun lunch.

Today we learned about what Nose Hill and Whispering Woods was like long, long ago.  We learned that Nose Hill and Paskapoo Hill created a bowl shaped valley and that the buffalo would come down the valley around the same time that the Buffalo Beans were blooming.  That was a sign to the First Nations to be watching for the buffalo coming down the valley. There used to be as many buffalos as the number of trees that we can now see in the valley.  We learned that the First Nations used Nose Hill as a Summer Home because of the warm breezes and the view to the valley.  The animals would move back and forth between the river and Nose Hill.

We sat in Whispering Woods with the buffalo beans all around us.  We sketched the flowers and then we used water color pencils to paint them with water and pencils.  We were outside almost the whole morning!

This morning we started working on a special Mother"s Day surprise.  But, you will have to wait until tomorrow to see it!  The surprise includes two different projects that we have put together to make something beautiful!

During math grade 1's spent time practicing adding and subtracting on Mathletics.  The grade 2'"s worked on a hidden picture activity where they had to do 2-digit addition and subtraction and also use a hundred's chart to find the picture.  This activity will become a center choice next week so we can have even more practice with our adding and subtracting.

After lunch we continued working on our Mother's Day surprise until it was time for the Volunteer tea.  At the tea we sang "Tomorrow" and "Red, Red Robin".  We were very jealous of the beautiful tea cups the volunteers got to use and the yummy treats they had!  There were beautiful flowers on the tables for volunteers and some of the volunteers got to take the flowers home as a prize.  After we performed we got to have an extra recess break instead of having gym because the gym was being used for babysitting.

Please member that tomorrow is the Family Dance!  Tomorrow is also Fresh Air Friday.  Please be sure to dress for the weather.  We will be working in the Whispering Woods.

On Monday our helper is Freya.

  In story writing today many of us started writing down and illustrating our stories.  Some of us are still telling our stories on photo booth.

In math today Mrs. Hamby's math group worked on adding and subtracting stories.  We had pictures and we had to decide if it was an adding or subtracting story.  Then we had to write the number sentence to go with the story.  Miss Boyer's math group played race to 100 and had some finish up work to do.  Mrs. Wolfe was in room two this morning because Miss Boyer was at a meeting.


Today in gym we played a new running game called "4 Corners".  We had to get to a corner before the person in the middle counts to 20.  They had their eyes closed and we had to run to a corner.  The person would then call corner 1, 2, 3 or 4.  If we were in that corner we had to come to the middle and if the corner was empty then everybody was free.  Today in music we sang our song that we will be singing at the tea Thursday.  We also sang some songs from Annie.  Today we video recorded our songs for the volunteer tea.

In science today we added images to our research Did you knows...  Some of us are still working on dioramas.


Tomorrow they will be selling treats again at lunch time.  If you would like to have another treat please send 25 cents.  Ava will be room ones' helper tomorrow.

We had a busy day today.  This morning we worked in our journals to write about our weekend.  We will have time to finish in center time if we are not yet done.  In math today the grade one's started working on addition stories and subtraction stories.  We learned about what words to listen or look for to help us decide if it is adding or subtracting.  For adding we need to look for words like "altogether" or" how many in all?"  It might even have the word sum.  We learned that for subtraction we would look for words like "how many are left?" or "taken away".  The grade two group started working on strategies for adding two digit numbers.  They will be practising that for the rest of the week.

This afternoon many of us started typing up our Did you know... facts to go with our dioramas.  We are getting ready to have a sharing museum some time soon.

In gym today we started working on some golf skills.  We had two stations, a putting station and driving station.  at the putting station we had small rings to be the golf holes.  At the driving station we had to stand on a white line and then hit the ball as far as we could out into the field.

We would like to go to Nose hill on Friday and are hoping that some of you can join us so that we can ensure the ratio that we require.  The students will be sketching a city scape view.

Please return your fun lunch forms and swimming forms as soon as possible.