Preparing for Conferences

Today we got organized and ready to share our work with you at conferences. We started by making a mini museum.  We had prepare a background and we glued on some artifacts.  We glued on a map of Acadia and our Bluenose painting.  We made a little paper shelf to put our Acadian flag.  We also added out lobster trap artifact.  We went to the library to find a place to set it up.  We hope that you will go and look at them when you are here.

We organized our math, science, arctic and Acadian folders.  We added our journals both writing and Fresh Air Friday journals for you to see when you come tonight or tomorrow.

We worked on treasure math.  We are excited to show you our challenges in the library when you come for conferences.

In gym we played blob tag, revenge tag, octopus tag and wax museum.

In music today we played a game.  She is trying to get us to follow the tempo of the song.  There is a tempo for each corner of the game.

There will be no school tomorrow because of conferences.

We look forward to sharing our work with you and celebrating our accomplishments.

Hailey will be the helper on Monday.

Diorama Beginnings

This morning we were very busy trying to finish up our Acadian centers so that we can make our mini museum tomorrow and share all our hard work with you at conferences tomorrow and Friday.  We spent the rest of the time before recess working on our Arctic stories.  We will be sharing our story ideas with you at conferences.

After recess we had word work and the grade ones worked on finishing up their spelling tests.  Then it was on to Treasure Math.  More than half of us have now finished the voyage and become junior Generals.  At conferences we will be able to show you some of the challenges that we had to complete.

This afternoon we finally started our dioramas!  We began with the first layer of painting the background. Our background had to include sky, ocean and land.  We each planned where we wanted that to be in our dioramas.  We are very excited to begin the next layer of creating the landscape.

In gym today we played a game called, "Gathering Coconuts".  We each had a home (dot) that we had to stand on and it had one coconut (pom pom).  While Mrs. Hamby beat the drum we got to go around and gather coconuts from other homes.  We could only take one at a time and we had to take each one to our home in between.  The hard part was that as soon as we put them down someone could come and gather it up and take it to their house.  We had to keep gathering until the drum stopped.  Then we ran home and counted out coconuts and then tried again.

We did some organizing of our work in preparation for sharing tomorrow and then we ended the day with helper sharing.
Our helper tomorrow is Inga.

April 25, 2017

This morning we worked on our centers to start the day.  This is our last round of centers for Nova Scotia artifacts.  After centers we worked on our story writing.  Most of us have started working on writing our stories now and some of us have finished and are typing up our stories to publish them.

After recess today in word work the grade ones had a spelling test.  They are being tested on the 40 "no excuse" words that we have been practicing.

In Treasure math today we introduced the "shift" change for the Jr. Generals.  Now that so many sailors have completed their voyage we don't need as many Generals helping.  If you are not on "shift" then you have to work on Mathletics until it is your turn to help out.


Today in gym we played Octopus tag.  The octopus was it and had to stand on the dot and they could stretch as far as it was able to reach but one foot still had to be on the dot.  The boundary was a rectangle and if you left the ocean boundary you had to go and get a dot to be an octopus tagger.  If you got caught you also became an octopus and could put your dot wherever you wanted to.  We started gym time with two partner tag games.  One was Knee Tag and the other was called Catch your Partner's Tail.

This afternoon we had to plan what we wanted to put in our diorama.  We had to highlight from the list we made the things we wanted for our own diorama to show our learning about Nova Scotia.

In music today we played a new poison melody.  You have to sing what the computer says to do and if you don't sing the exact melody you get "poisoned".

We are sending home a little booklet of the lyrics for the songs we will be singing in our assembly.  Please help your child practice the words at home.  They have enjoyed singing them so they can sing them to you as you practice together.

Today was the last day of game club at lunch time.
Mika is the helper tomorrow.

Yellow Fish Road

This morning we had a special presentation from the Yellow Fish Road.  They came to teach us about all the hazards that go down the drains and gutters and go straight to the rivers.  Some hazards would be oil from cars, soap, dirt, dog poop, litter, pesticides, and herbicides.  These contaminates can effect the river and kill all the fish, animals and plants that are in the river  We each got an animal that we had to include in the river habitat and we had to use it to help us act out the river's story.

We also worked on our journal writing this morning.  Some of us will have to finish it tomorrow morning instead of doing centers.

This afternoon we practiced our songs for the assembly next month.  When this was done we worked on preparing a display background to share some of our learning about Canada this week when our parents come for conferences.  We have been working hard and are excited to share what we have been doing.  If you have not yet booked a conference you may do so online, check with the weekly update sent out on Friday.

We had library and then we went to gym.  Today in gym we played a new tag game with a partner.  We had to face each other and then crouch down.  We had to try and tag the knee of our partner.  If we tagged the knee we could give ourselves a point.

If your child has not brought a shoe box or cereal box for their diorama please send one for tomorrow.  If you have a shoebox available that would be preferable over the cereal box.  If you have extras to send then please do, we would welcome extras.

Taiki is the helper tomorrow.

We began our Fresh Air Friday with our Human Impacts in Whispering Woods project.  We took the information posters that we had made in small groups and we had to put together our ideas for a presentation to the classrooms.  The three things we had to write our ideas about were:
1. What we noticed...
2. Why it's a problem..
3.  How you can help us...

Each group prepared their presentation and then practiced.  Mrs. Hamby and Ms. Boyer will set up our presentations with the other classes.
When we were done we went to get our recess snack and have a little break.

Next we began our investigation question to prepare us for the Yellow Fish road presentation next week.  It was; Where does the rain go?
We read a story called Water in the World.  It starts with the idea that all the water in the world... is all the water in the world.
We looked at a map from the area around the school.  It had 7 investigation points on the map.  We talked about where each one is and what we would be doing at each investigation point.  We each got a mini copy of the same map.  Our job was to record at each point what we noticed was happening to the water and where it was going.  We could use arrows and jot notes at each point on the map.  We had an investigation partner that we had to stay with.

To end our morning we came back and discussed what we had observed in relation to our investigation question.  Here is what we noticed:
- Some water ran down the road and into the drains.
- Some sat on the concrete in puddles.
- Some went into the ground on the grass and in the flower beds.
- The drains had pipes down inside them that looked like the pipe was underneath the road.
- A lot of debris gathered around the drains.
- The water ran down hill to collection points.

This morning we started our day with centers.  The projects we are doing at centers will be on display for you to see, maybe even by conference time next week.  After centers we worked on our story writing.  We made a chart to see where everyone was in the story writing cycle.  We had three choices, they were:
1. I am writing my story
2. I am trying to finish the pictures for my story plan to show all the parts of my story
3. I am stuck and I need some help.
Mrs. Hamby worked with some of the kids in the I am stuck category so that they could get their story going.

After recess we had word work and then treasure math.  We are hoping to finish up our treasure math by next week.  We all wonder what the treasure is going to be?
We were very excited for lunch time today since it was fun lunch.

After lunch we practiced our "Canada" songs.  So far we have four songs we will be singing. If we need extra practice we will send the lyrics home next week.
Then Mrs. Hamby showed us the homework she did last night.  It was a diorama model of the ones that we will be making to show what we know about Nova Scotia.  It will go with the list we created yesterday. She picked things in each category to show in her diorama.  While she was making it she googled images to see how things looked in Nova Scotia like, rocky cliffs, houses, blue lobster, fishing boats.  We will have to do that too.  We can also bring things from home that we may want to include.  At school we will have foil,  colored tissue, plasticine, paint, moss, construction paper.  We will need to bring a shoebox from home and anything that we may want to include such as tiny shells.
We will begin working on these on Monday.

We went to music and then gym.  In gym we played "Kings Gold".  Now that we know how the game works, next week we will play it outside as a field game.

For our fresh air friday tomorrow we will be going on a short walk around the neighborhood to see where the storm drains are and observing what might possibly be running into the drains.  This will prepare us for our visit next week from the Yellow Fish Road painting projects.  If you are available and would like to join us we will be leaving around 10:30.  It may rain so please make sure that your child is dressed for the weather conditions tomorrow.

It feels like it should be Tuesday...

We got to do our new centers this morning.  Some of us still had journals to finish from yesterday.  In story writing today you either had to be on story writing or working on the events of your story on the story map.  Ms. Boyer and Mrs. Hamby have started doing some reading assessments to see how far we have come along in our reading this year.

In Treasure Math today we had some more people that finished.  We noticed that since we made the chart to show where people are in math, more people are working quickly to try and move themselves along to the next challenge.

We started the afternoon with practicing our songs about Canada.  After that we created a master list on the smartboard of all the things we found out about Nova Scotia.  We are getting ready for our next project to share our learning about the Acadians and Nova Scotia.  We will each need to bring a shoebox from home.  Please make sure that it has your name on it.  We will need to have our boxes at school by Monday but we can bring them before that.

This afternoon we had outdoor gym time.  We played the field game called 'Hill Dill Come Over the Hill".  We ended with 5 minutes on the playground.
We had journal finish up time.  Some of us still have to bring them home for finishing tonight.

Tomorrow is fun lunch and Diego is the helper tomorrow.

Sounds like we all had a great, long Easter weekend.  This morning when we got to school we were excited to write in our journals about our long weekend.  Many of us went to visit family and had special Easter egg hunts.  Tomorrow we will have our time in the afternoon and at centers to finish up our journals.

After recess we had word work.  The grade one word family this week is the "op" family and the "no excuse" words are your, said and when.

After word work we had treasure math.  Today we did a survey and made a chart to show who is at which treasure challenge.  We have eleven to finish before we can become Junior Generals.

This afternoon we practiced our songs about Canada.  We are hoping to share them next month at our assembly celebration.  We added to our Nova Scotia research by using the books and trying to make sure that we had at least four ideas in each category.

In music today

In gym we played King's Gold.  Our new unit is field games and compound games.

This morning we had a chance to work at our new centers again.  You will have a chance to see what we made at our learning celebration in May.  We are excited to show them to you.

We worked on our story writing this morning.  Most of us have a pretty good idea of what our story plan is and have starting writing our stories and some of us will have to sit down with a grown up to help us work out our story idea.

After recess we had word work and then we read a story by Bill Peet called, "The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluish Egg".  We finished the morning up with treasure math.

After lunch today we had a chance to go and see the learning celebration in the gym.  The grade three and four students did so much work and we had fun listening to their presentations and seeing their displays.  Because the gym was in use and it was too wet to go outside we went on the computers during our gym time.  We went on to Mathletics and many of us raced each other in Mathletics live.  We are getting faster at our addition and subtraction facts.

We ended the day with our helper sharing time.

Have a Happy Easter weekend!  Remember there is no school on Monday.

Glass tile Art

Tomorrow rooms three and four will put on their learning celebration, Destination Conservation.  We will be able to buy some wasetless treats or items.  The most expensive item will be $2.00.  One item is reusable food wraps, baked treats, recipe books.  We will be going in the afternoon.

This morning we got to try out our new centers.  Some of us finished the center choice and then got to be helpers.  After centers we met to talk about story writing.  We looked at two stories and talked about how they "wrapped up" the story at the end.  Some of us are ready to start writing our stories since we have it all planned out on our story map with our drawings.

After recess we had word work and then Treasure Math.  In Treasure math we got two more new Junior Generals.  They have completed all the treasure challenges. They get to help with watching people at the domino station and at the sorting station.  They can also help at other stations too.

This afternoon we went to do our glass tiles.  We had to bend two wires and glue them onto the glass tile.  One wire went on the top and bottom of the diamond points.  Then we got to begin working on our picture designs.  We used glass pieces to create our picture mosaic.

We had relays outside and then five minutes at the playground.  Once we came inside we had journal finishing up time.  Some of us are bringing our journals home for homework to be completed tonight and returned tomorrow if possible.

Chelsea is the helper tomorrow!

Today we introduced three new centers for our morning guided reading/center time.  All three centers have to do with our Nova Scotia research.  They are making an Acadian Flag by sewing felt together, making a lobster trap with popsicle sticks, coloring and labeling a map of the Acadian communities in Nova Scotia.  We will start them tomorrow.

We started a design for our school clay fence art project.  We each got to design a tile about nature that will be hung on the fence between the Whispering Woods and the school playground.  Each person in each class will be making a tile with the Clay for Kids artist.  We will have our studio time tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 to create our tile.

After recess we had word work and then we continued on with our treasure math.  In treasure math we have quite a few helping Generals now.  They are helping because they finished. They are Hailey, Payton, Mika, Chelsea, Poorvi.  Once we complete this we will begin working on number operations.

We began the afternoon with our Acadian research.  We went to the same research groups as yesterday and continued to add to our category charts.  Most of us have at least two or three ideas in each category.  We are discovering many things about this French community.  Some of the jobs there include fishing, logging, boat building, house building, artisans, bakers.  These are the jobs we have discovered so far.  We learned that for recreation many people enjoy fishing, hiking, swimming, beach walking , shell collecting, music, art, dancing.  The landscape is sandy beaches, rocky cliffs and woods.

In music today we had music centers.  During gym we went outside for our relays.  We had running and soccer relays.   It was fun because we had to run from our marker to the fence and the distance was longer than the distance we can run in the gym.  We also get to cheer as loud as we want for our team mates.










Tomorrow the helper is Trinity.

Treat Day Tomorrow

A reminder that it is Treat day tomorrow please remember your quarters.

This morning we worked in our journals and some of use wrote about the family dance, the upcoming Easter weekend, the past weekend or birthday parties.

Today in treasure math some people finished and so they got to be helping Generals.  Four people have finished and are the helping Generals.

Today in gym we played two relays one was called frogs across the pond.  We all had a dot and the way to get across was that you had to jump on the dots.  The back person had to bring the front person the next dot and then we all jumped froward by one.

Today we had library this afternoon.  Please remember to return books each Monday..

In social studies, exploring Nova Scotia, we switched our research groups.  Room one went to do research by watching a video with Ms. Boyer.  Room 2 went with Mrs. Hamby to research using books.

Tomorrow Erik is the helper.

Mr. P. will be starting games club at lunch for grades one and two.  You have to bring your own board game and it has to be a game that you play with someone else.

On Thursday it will be room 4 and 5's learning celebration.  They said that they will be selling recycled items that people can buy for 25 cents.  They will also sell reusable food wrappers for one dollar.

Nose Hill Investigation

Today we went to Nose Hill to investigate positive and negative human impacts that we noticed.  We had to take our Fresh Air Friday journal and record our evidence in them by drawing a small picture  and label. We also took binoculars with us so that we could use them to view from the top of the hill.

As we went up the hill we stopped part way up to record some of our evidence and then again at the top.  We also had our snack once we got to the top.  Some of the things we noticed were:
-tipis built from deadfall
-pathways, gravel, asphalt and grass and dirt
-broken signs
-garbage
-broken trees
-grass trampled down
-benches and signs
-old car parts
-concrete pieces
-fence posts
-car or wagon tracks

Once we got back to the school we had to record ourselves on a rubric to show how I did with my investigating job today.  Once we recorded on our rubric we had to decide and record what we were going to try and get better at in our investigation skills for next time.

Story mapping

My story map

This morning after guided reading time we worked on story writing. In story writing we looked at a story string map.  We read the beginning pages of 6 stories to see how writers begin their own stories.  We listened to hear if the author had introduced the character and setting and the kick off of the story in the first few pages and how each author did that. We then went to work on our own stories.  If you ask me I should be able to explain the different parts of the story string to you.

After recess we had word work and then we worked on our treasure math.  Some of us are getting close to the end of our treasure map journey, number 11.  Some of us are still on number three or four.

We looked at treasure box ten today and in the box we had to find the chain that had 91 beads.  We had to count 8 different ropes to find the right one.  If you were lucky you counted the right one before you had to count all eight! Here is a picture of the ticket for the #10 treasure challenge!

Treasure challenge #10

This afternoon we worked on our Acadian research.  Our goal was to add one new idea to each category.   Today we discovered that long ago they used wagons for transportation.  One of the jobs is fishing and they love to eat fish.  Another job is lobster and crab fishing.  The landscape has rocky cliffs.  One of the things they like to do is look for seashells on the beach.  Sometimes they use the sea shells to make things.  Another thing they like to do for recreation is clam digging, swimming and hiking and skating in the winter.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday.  We will be walking up to Nose Hill so please make sure that your child has proper footwear for a long walk and also a jacket appropriate for the type of weather we will be having.  Also send a small light snack and a water bottle.

Exploring Nova Scotia

This morning we worked on our story writing.  Some of us began story mapping by drawing the events for our story.  Some of us tried to finish telling our story using our puppets.
After recess we had word work and treasure math.

This afternoon we learned about the Acadians coming to Nova Scotia.  We learned that they came from France and they speak French.  They brought with them their culture and traditions such as cooking, language and traditions. We began gathering information that we had to record in a chart.  The categories were landscape, houses, jobs, animals, transportation,  recreation and other information. We used books to do our research today.  We will also use books tomorrow and then next week we will use videos.  Our goal is to fill our chart as we gather information.
 Some of the things we found out were:
- They were some of the first people to arrive in Canada.
- You can gather seashells on the beaches.
- Nova Scotia has lots of bays, and it is part of the Atlantic ocean.
- Some of the jobs are lobster and scallop fishing, factory work and building things.
- The landscape is ocean, sandy beaches, woods, rocky cliffs.

 Today some finished one or two  category boxes.  We got to work in partners but we each had to record a sheet.
In gym we did relays.  One relay was with an egg on a paddle.  We had to run keeping the egg on the paddle.  Before our team could start we had to roll a six with the dice. Once we rolled we could start.

We ended the day with journal finishing time and then helper sharing and the blog.

Our helper tomorrow is Danish.

Clay for Kids

Today we had Clay For Kids from 10:00-12:00.  We had to have an early recess.

Our project was to make a plaque, she called it a pancake, of some symbols of Canada.  First we traced a maple leaf into the pancake shape that we had already made.  Then we started making our symbols.  Most people put a beaver on their pancake and some added a dam.  We also made hockey sticks and pucks, teepees, trees,  a Canada Goose, Inuit and polar bears, Inuksuks, gold rush gold from the Yukon, canoes, mountains and lakes. and some people even made a camp fire for camping.  We got to put 3 or 4 things on our pancake.  After we added our symbols the Clay Lady showed us how to paint the glaze on.  We learned that glaze comes from the ground and paint comes from chemicals that are man made.  She showed us how to make a bowl on the pottery wheel.  After she fires the clay she will bring them back to us.  We learned that the kiln is hotter than lava!  It was so much fun.

This afternoon we worked on our boat reflection and we had to write about the procedure and what we learned about floating and sinking when we tried to make the plasticine boats.  We learned that to make the boat float it has be spread out over the water so that there is more water to hold it up.  That means it will work even if it is heavy.

We also had music and outdoor gym today since we missed our outdoor recess this morning.

We are hoping to go to Nose Hill for Fresh Air Friday this week if we can get some volunteers interested in joining us.  If you are able to help out please let us know.

The helper tomorrow is Jack.

Welcome Back!

This morning we worked on our journals to write about our holidays. We were trying to pay attention to our punctuation such as capitals at the beginning of each sentence and  a period at the end of each  sentence/idea.  We had to show them using a different color in our writing.  We are learning to edit some of our work if we notice something is wrong.  Grade ones are trying to write five ideas in a paragraph and grade twos are trying to write at least ten sentences within two paragraphs.

After recess the grade ones practiced their new words in word work and the grade twos had solo book time.  The new word family for grade one is the "ick" family.  The no excuse words this week are: by, words, but, not.

In math today we worked on our treasure math.  Some of us just finished treasure station two and some of us are already on treasure station eight. For treasure station eight we had to get past the School of Ghouls.  We had to line up the ghouls in the correct order and record the order so that we could move past them.  Part of the job was to figure out the counting pattern too.

This afternoon we started a reflection of our plasticine boats that we designed before the break.  We had to start by drawing a picture of the design that held the most coins and was still able to float.

When we went to library, Mrs. Kidd was very happy that we all remembered to bring at least one of our books back.  She said we did a great job!

In gym today we started doing relay races. We did three different races.  Each team had five people and we had to sit down when our turn was over.  We cheered for the people on our team.

We picked a new helper category and it is to bring a favorite animal to share.  It can be a picture, facts, poster, drawing or stuffy.  A "super wow" for sharing would be if we had a picture or stuffy and some facts to share.
Our helper tomorrow will be Yafet.
***Check for a notice that came home today.
Also a reminder that tomorrow is Clay Lady.  Please make sure that your child is dressed in clothing that can be washed if it gets too messy.