Traditions, Pattern centers and Who Am I? Animal Research Game

Dates to Remember:
Tuesday, February 4th afternoon whole school field trip to Bella concert centre. Forms coming home this week.
I already have two volunteers, if you are interested in volunteering please email me.
Wednesday, February 5th, Winter walk day.
Thursday February 6th, Healthy Hunger Lunch.

** Field trip forms coming home today.  Please return them by tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

Learning Highlights

This week we have started working on our fancy copy of our traditions writing.  We are using the planning webs we have been working on to help us put our ideas into a short paragraph.  The grade twos are working to type their ideas on the laptops and the grade ones are printing their fancy copy.  These will be displayed along with a picture when we have finished.

In math this week we are completing our Pattern Paloozas in center time and are beginning to work on pattern centers.  We have six centers.  They are:
Animal patterns
Music patterns
Action patterns
Design patterns
Shape patterns
Bead Patterns
We will have two rotations of each center.

In science this week we are working to create a game called Who Am I?  Each group must choose a Nose Hill animal and must create a clue for each of the following areas;
Habitat
Diet
Family
Appearance
Tracks
Something Interesting
Predators

We will be researching what we need to know in order to create the clues by using books and the internet.  Once we are finished we will be playing the Who Am I? game with our classmates and Big Buddies.  We will also be making a mural to reflect our learning about Nose Hill  animals out in the hallway to go along with this work.

We have started gymnastics as our new unit in gym.

Fresh Air Friday Animal Research

Dates to Remember:
Tuesday January 28th, Spirit Day which sill be Twins Day
Friday January 31st, No school as it is a non-instructional day.

*  On February 4th, Tuesday afternoon, we will be going to the Bella Concert Hall as part of a school music field trip.  If you are able to volunteer for this please email me and let me know.  The notices will be coming home shortly.


Learning Updates:

Today for our fresh air Friday, our focus was on gathering animal evidence in the Whispering Woods.  We began by reading a story called, "In the Woods, Who's Been Here?" by Lindsay Barrett George.  We spent some time looking at photos of animal evidences that Mrs. Hamby had gathered on her walks and also when she is out at the cabin.  We tried to guess what type of animal may have left this evidence.
We also talked about what types of things we might find as evidence and we made a list.



When we went out to the Whispering Woods  each group had a map as well an IPad to take photos of the evidence.  We found lots of animal evidence as well as seeing some interesting birds.  We saw a woodpecker and some chickadees.  We also saw holes from wood peckers as evidence that they use the woods often.  we found lots of tracks and scat too.  We even found some fur!  Next week we will be working on a mural about the animal evidence that we had gathered.

Animal Research, Pattern Palooza, Traditions

Dates To Remember:

Friday, January 31st is a non-instructional day, no school for students.
Report cards go home January 30th
For our Fresh Air Friday we will be having a visit from Saakokoto and we will also be going outside to look for animal clues.

Learning Updates:

For our animal research , as junior zoologists, our focus this week is to look at images of all the animals on the "Animals of Nose Hill" list.  Because we live close to Nose Hill it would make sense that we would become Nose Hill Animal Experts!  We are working with a partner and if we see an animal that we think we would be interested in researching, we put a star beside it on our list.  Many of the animals on the list are animals that we don't know so this will help us picture what the animal looks like.   Once we finish the animal list we will also have a bird list that we can look at.

Nose Hill Animal List

In math we are working on our Pattern Palooza Challenge.  Using large grid paper we have to create rows of pattern designs.  Each row must be a different type of pattern from the row above it and the row below it.  We also have to include a growing pattern.  In our work we re practicing identifying the pattern using letters and also the core of the patterns.

Our tradition writing this week focuses on the "How" we celebrate our celebration.  We are trying to write about all the things that we do to prepare and celebrate together with our families.  We have been talking about  Chinese New Year as some of our families prepare to celebrate this weekend.   Today Mrs. Hamby interviewed Miss. Ha bout her Chinese New Year celebration.

Because the weather has been so nice we have gone outside for two of our gym times this week.  Today and tomorrow we will be playing basketball inside for gym.

Indoor Friday...

Upcoming Dates:

- Treat day on Tuesday.

Learning Updates:

Yesterday the whole school went outside for an experiment.  The experiment was that we had one pot of hot green colored water and one pot of cold green water and we wanted to see what would happen when the water is thrown into the air.  Ask me about what I saw happen...

Outdoor science experiment

Today we began our animal study.  we will be studying and researching animals on Nose Hill.
First we started by talking about animal experts and Mrs. Boyer shared some photos of a trip she had done with a guide to see grizzly bears in their habitat.

Next Mrs. Hamby shared some antler artifacts that she had found when exploring the woods at the cabin near Bearberry.  She talked about how after they find an artifact she has to go and research what it is since they do not have experts or guides to provide the information to them.  We are going to become our own Nose Hill experts so that when we find clues in our own Natural spaces we might know what animal they came from.

After that we brainstormed some animals we know or think we know that live on Nose Hill.  We worked with our table groups to see if we could think of the 27 mammals that live on Nose Hill.  We could also add birds and insects.

Once we had finished our brainstorming we worked with a partner from room 2 to draw one of the Nose Hill animals for the mural in the library.

We are excited to learn more about Nose Hill and have a chance to explore it!

Animals of Nose Hill

In the Deep Freeze...

Dates to Remember

Tomorrow is Fun Lunch

Tomorrow we welcome back Saakokoto to our school.  He will be spending time in each classroom.  Room one will have him from 10:45-11:15.


Learning Updates

This week has been indoor everything!  We have been working hard to build in movement breaks throughout the day.  This seems to help us improve our focus when we have work to do.

In journals this week Mrs. Hamby gave us a prompt.  The prompt was "Dr. Coffin is a great place to learn because...."
or
"I like coming to school every day because..."
Ask me what I wrote for my ideas. 
The other prompt was, "If I could change something at the school I would..."

We have also been working on an idea web for our traditions writing.  The  web includes, Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?

In math we continue to explore patterns.  We are looking at growing patterns, and design patterns, story patterns and name patterns.  We are working on an activity to help us discover what pattern each of our names has.

In science we are finishing up our color unit with an exciting art project using food coloring and corn syrup.  Our pieces will be on display outside our classroom very soon.  Our next unit in science will be the needs of animals and animal research.  Our focus will be on Nose hIll animals.  The kick off for this will be on our Fresh Air Friday this week.  (Even though we will be indoors)

In gym this week we have started playing hoop ball and we are working on our offense and defense.

Fresh Air Friday

Today we went on a pattern hunt outside.  We looked for man made patterns and we looked for patterns in nature.

We found so many patterns!  The best part was that when we were done we got to have hot chocolate!