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.