Winter Solstice Buddy Walk

Happy Winter Solstice Day!
We enjoyed our big buddy winter walk and camouflage game today with our big buddies.  We took the time to notice how low the sun was in the sky and talked about this being the day with the shortest amount of sunlight.

Happy Holidays!  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and relaxing time catching up and visiting with family and friends.  Safe travels to any families traveling over the holiday.



See you in the New Year!

Polar Express Spirit Day

Reminder :  Tomorrow we will be taking a short winter walk with our big buddies and then play camouflage in the Whispering Woods.  Please make sure that your child is dressed for the weather tomorrow s they will be outside for some of the morning.

Carol Singing this morning

Getting ready to listen to the Polar Express story.

What a super fun day!  We even got to have hot chocolate while we listened to the story.

Today was our last day of carol singing.  Time to wrap it up!

Excitement is Building!

We have been enjoying the carol singing in the morning.  We have enjoyed having many families and volunteers coming to join us.

Today we worked on adding to our "If You're Not From the Prairie " ideas and we have noticed the our ideas are sounding more poetic with each new ideas that we write.  Some of us have started writing out the ideas in our best copy so that we can begin to make our books.

In math today we started our third math center.  We are improving at making our patterns more challenging and more complicated.

This afternoon we worked on adding our last layer of Modge Podge and we got to go to centers when we were done.

In gym we played ringette games.  We had to end a little early today because many of us were tired and we had lots of tears while playing the game.

We ended our day with calmly and quietly with sharing and then Mrs. Hamby read two stories.  One of the stories was called "Christmas Cookies" and the other was called "Whose that Knocking On Christmas Eve" by Jan Brett.

Tomorrow is Polar Express Spirit Day.  We can wear Pajamas to school and any Christmas type clothing or red and green that we would like to wear.  We will also be having hot chocolate in the afternoon and at 2:45 We will all go to the learning commons and Mrs. Kidd  will read the Polar Express story.  This will be so much fun!

First Day of Carol Singing

This morning we started with Carol singing.  If you were at the festive evening you would have recognized most of the songs that we sang today.  It was so much fun.  Mrs. Polski lead it today because Mr. O' Reilly was on a field trip today with the grade five and six classes.

After singing we went back to the classroom and we worked on our If You're Not From The Prairie ideas.

One of the ideas that Yazmine wrote was
"IF you're not from the prairie you don't know the bright sun, you can't know the bright sun.
The bright sun on a hot summer day shining on my face.  So hot I want a cool drink.  If you're not from the prairie you don't know the hot sun."

Elaina's idea was:
"If you're not from the prairie you don't know the bright moon, you can't know the bright moon.  The moon is gray.  The moon that goes down in the day and up in the night.
If you're not from the prairie you don't know the bright moon."

For math today we worked on our pattern centers.  Some of us shared music patterns, action patterns that were combined with music.  Some of us shared our shape patterns.  We talked about how a design can be in a pattern too.


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This afternoon we worked on our ornaments.  We added decorations and we added Modge podge to seal them an make them shiny.

In gym we worked on ringette skills.  We worked with a partner and then we practiced shooting at the net.

Last Week before the Break

Tomorrow morning we will have carol singing from 9:00- 9:30.  If you are here as a volunteer you are welcome to join us for the singing.  If you would prefer to come after, we will be done by 9:30.  All families are welcome to join in with our carol singing.

This Thursday will be a "Polar Express" Spirit Day.  There will be a golden ticket draw for a prize on this day.  Each teacher will have tickets to give out.  The teacher will be watching to see who is caught being kind.  The names will go into a draw.  We are allowed to wear our Christmas pajamas on Thursday for the whole day .

Today in gym we used rings and ringette sticks to practice some ringette skills.  It is different than hockey because the sticks have different ends and they are just straight.  We also use rings instead of pucks.  We worked by ourselves and with partners today.

This morning the grade ones had printing time while the grade twos  had book time.  We are going to be finishing up the printing this week.  After Christmas we will all be having word work time after recess.

We also worked on journals, math centers and finish up our work.  In computers we went on to "Make a Flake".  We are improving at being able to log on to the computers with out help from a teacher.  We also had library today.  We get t keep our books till after the break.

Insect Survival Game

Today we played an insect survival game.  
Some people were omnivores.  The omnivores were special because they could eat, tag, the herbivores and the carnivores.  The omnivores could't get eaten.  There were red cups with beans for the food source and there were blue cups for water.  Once the red cups were empty you had to survive on the water from the blue cups.  The herbivores could only eat from the red food cups and they had to hide so that the carnivores and the omnivores couldn't eat them.  If you got tagged you had to give up a bean to the person that tagged you.  The carnivores could only eat the herbivores.  they could not eat from the cups and they could also not eat the omnivores.  You couldn't tag an insect that was the same type as you were.  When you didn't have anymore beans left you had to go and get a red hibernation ticket from Mrs. Yoon.  That meant that if someone tagged you, you had to say "sorry I'm in hibernation".  You could still walk around in hibernation mode.

We discovered that an omnivores life is easy.  It can eat from many food sources with very few predators.  A  carnivore would still have to be careful because it could still get eaten.  A herbivore would be very frightened and would have to use camouflage to protect itself.  It has to work hard to survive. 

After we went back inside we worked on our landscape paintings to add the snow that we still needed to add so that our picture told the story of a very cold and snowy day.

Festive Eveining

We look forward to seeing you tonight at the Festive evening from 6:00 - 8:00.  The performances will begin shortly after 7:00.  We have been working very hard on our song and we are looking forward to performing it for you.  We hope you can make it!

Tomorrow is the last day to bring items for the "Fill A Sock" campaign.  Thank you for your support. 

Math Centers, Family Surprise

Reminders:
1. The Fill a Sock campaign ends this Friday.  Some of the items you can donate might be, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, mittens, socks, hats, candy and treats, transit tickets.
2 Festive evening tomorrow, starts at 6:00 p.m.
3. Festive spirit day all day.  Wear Christmas type clothing, hats, etc.
4. Gavin is the helper tomorrow.

This morning we got to try out our new literacy centers during guided reading time.  After that we talked about our new "If Your Not From The Prairie" Writing project.  We reread the story and practiced writing our own prairie ideas to write about for our project.  We are learning how to use descriptive ideas while we work on this project.

After recess we practiced our song and then we had math centers.  We took lots of pictures at center time.  Here is what were were working on.

This afternoon we worked on a very special decoration for the family.  It will be a surprise!

Constable Richard's Visit

This morning we started our day by learning about the new literacy centers.  This was followed by Constable Richard's visit.  After our Treat Day recess we learned about our new pattern centers in math.  All these new centers will begin tomorrow.  This afternoon we worked on our Emotions Chart from our morning visit.  We are bringing it home with us so that we can share it with you.

Reminders :  Spirit Day Thursday: dress in festive Christmas sparkle and clothing such as antlers, santa hats, tinsel, elf hat etc.

Fill a Sock Campaign continues please check the blog from last week if you need some ideas for what to send in to help the homeless population in Calgary and spread some Christmas cheer.  Thank you to those families that have already contributed.

The Sign Up Genius is available to sign up for home reading dates from January to Spring Break .

The Helper tomorrow is Ansel.

Constable Richard talked to us about controlling our actions so that we are all safe.  

When we are upset or angry we have many choices that we can make to stay in control of our feelings.  He taught us to try and remember WITS when we are upset or angry.  

He said that the most important thing about his job is making sure that everyone is safe.  He is the constable that comes to the school when we have lockdowns.  He also helps us if we have trouble with anything happening at school.

Our Usual Monday

Reminders
Tomorrow is treat day. Please send a quarter with your child if you would like them to buy a treat at recess time.
Fill a sock campaign continues this week.
Yazmine is our helper tomorrow.

This morning after guided reading, we worked on our journals.  Almost everyone finished their journals today.  We can tell we are getting better at journal writing because we are writing more sentences.  Our spelling is improving.  The grade ones are getting better at leaving spaces between words. The grade twos are getting better at writing about more than one idea and some are using simple paragraphs.  We are also trying to be more focused at writing time so the classroom is quieter.

After recess, we practiced our Grinch song for the festive evening.  We worked to finish our pattern palooza.  After today it becomes a center job.  The ones that finished pattern palooza went on to Athletics or finished their journal writing.

This afternoon in gym we played floor hockey.  It was fun!
In computers this afternoon we went on to a game called, "Make A Flake".  You get to practice making snowflakes by cutting out parts of the paper and then when you are ready it opens up to show you the snowflake.
After computers we had library. Please remember to send back library books every Monday.

Arthropod sharing Day With Big Buddies

Next week is the start of our Fill a Sock campaign  Please send your items beginning Monday .

Today we shared our dioramas and Arthropod research with our Big buddies.  The buddies had a list of questions that we had practiced so we knew we were ready to share our information.  We were so excited and a little nervous too.  After it was over we were so proud of how well we did and all the information we had learned.  We really had become experts ! It made us feel really happy.  All the hard work was worth it!

We are bringing home the questions that our big buddies asked us so that we can also share with you at home.  On Monday we will be bringing home our Fact Books too. 

Here are some pictures of our sharing today.