Bird Watching

There is a house finch in here somewhere! 

Today we went bird watching in 3 different locations and practiced recording our bird counts in our bird books. On all of our bird watching trips we focused on trying to see chickadees, robins, magpies, and downy woodpeckers. We also left some blank spaces to add other birds we saw.

First, we went to the Whispering Woods. We tried to find spots to sit or stand to do a stationary bird count.  We saw a lot of chickadees! We also saw magpies, robins, downy woodpeckers, a hawk, and some sparrows (we think!).  Next we went down the green belt and did a traveling bird count. We saw a lot of robins and also chickadees, but when we came back to the school and looked closely at our bird guide we realized some of the chickadees might have actually been nuthatches...oops! We also saw some gulls, 2 mallard ducks, and lots of house finches! Finally we went to Barrett Park to do another stationary bird count. We could hear lots of birds in the park, but it was more difficult to see them. We think that some of the birds were in the backyards that surround the park and were hidden by the tall bushes.

After each bird watching session we came inside and shared our findings at the carpet. Next week will try to enter our information into eBird. If you still don't have your eBird account please try to set it up this weekend. Remember, your email password is the same as your password for logging in to the computers and into google docs.

Have a great weekend!

Our helper on Monday is: Joachim

A Surprise Project

Today we started with guided reading and centers. We also had a fire drill. After that we went to library and then we started working on a special surprise project. We worked on the project almost all day! You will have to wait to find out more details because it is a surprise.

In gym we played with the parachute. We warmed up with the weather, then we made mushrooms, and then we played shark attack.

After that most of us got to have free choice. On Wednesdays our free choice has to be a low-tech choice.

Our helper tomorrow is: Liam

A special guest

This morning we had a special visitor in our class. He was yellow and very hairy! He helped Ms. Boyer with her guided reading groups, listened at the carpet while Ms. Boyer shared the story of the fire at the original Dr. Coffin school, watched us while we did our own sketches of the school fire outside, kept us company during our lockdown practice drill after recess and supervised our games of Race to 100 in math. 

Please ask me about our special visitor and the activities he helped us with this morning. We were all especially excited to hear about the fire. Ask me to tell you a few details about this. Please also ask me to teach you how to play Race to 100. This is a great game for practicing our 'counting-on' adding strategy. 

This afternoon we worked on our dioramas and then went outside to play Kings Gold in gym. Today we had a ladies team and a mens team. But, we have more boys than girls in our class so a few boys agreed to play on the ladies team. It was our best game of Kings Gold yet! Ms. Boyer noticed students being really honest about tagging and being really good sports during the game.

Our helper tomorrow is: Lily

Bird Watching!

Birding with Vlad

Today was our bird watching day with CPAWS! We started the morning by going birding with our expert guide Vlad. Vlad is a very knowledgeable birder who helped us to see some amazing birds today. Here's what we saw:  2 Franklin's gulls, 2 downy woodpeckers, 3 black-billed magpies, 35 common ravens, 5 black-capped chickadees, 1 red-breasted nuthatch, 10 american robins, 1 dark-eyed junko, 1 white-crowned sparrow, 3 house finches, 10 white-winged crossbills, and 4 house sparrows!

Can you see the white-winged crossbills?

A brief stop to visit Iain's dog Sandy

Consulting the bird books

After our hike we met up with Vanessa from CPAWS and played some bird games in the Whispering Woods. The games we played were all designed to help us learn more about birds, what they need to survive, and the challenges they face. Ask me to tell you these things:
1. What are the 4 things birds need to survive?
2. What are the 4 life stages of a bird?
3. What is happening to burrowing owls that has caused them to become a species at-risk?
4. What caused Peregrin falcons to become at-risk. Why are there numbers now starting to grow?

Stephanie from Green Calgary was also here and taught us how to enter information into our eBird accounts. She also shared with us that tomorrow is a very special day in the birder community. Tomorrow is Global Big Day! Global Big Day is a day where birders from around the world try to go bird watching and enter their bird findings into eBird to see if all 10,000 bird species around the world can be seen. Last year almost 7000 species were spotted. This year they are trying to break that record. If you would like to help, spend some time bird watching tomorrow and then enter your findings in your eBird account. If you are interested in participating, here is a link with some more information: A Beginners Guide to Big Day.

Have a great weekend!

Our helper on Monday is: Addison

An assembly and getting ready for bird watching!

This morning our schedule was a bit different because the grade 5/6 students were doing a practice exam so we switched music times with room 7. This meant that we went to music at 9:00! We were all joking that it was time to get ready to go home when Ms. Boyer came to pick us up at 9:45!

After music we worked on finishing the second part of our Dr. Coffin timeline. The second piece was that in 1968 Mickey the Mascot was created by an artist in Edmonton and gifted to the school by the architects who designed the first Dr. Coffin school. To show this part of the timeline we drew sketches of Mickey.

After recess we went to watch the Grade 3/4 learning assembly. They have been working as jr. geologists and anthropologists this year so they put on a "rock" show! They sang some great songs and shared their learning about different types of rocks and how we can tell them apart. When the assembly was over we had some time to finish up our math problems from yesterday. These problems were more challenging than the ones we had done before and took quite a bit of perseverance to complete!

After lunch we spent some time learning about our focus birds in anticipation of our CPAWS visit tomorrow. We went with our focus bird groups and learned about the size, habitat, food, and range of our focus birds. Ask me to share some facts about my focus bird! 

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be going bird watching. If any parents would like to join us please feel free! We will be hiking around our neighbourhood for about 1 hour so please make sure students are dressed for the weather and wearing good walking or hiking shoes. 

Our helper on Monday is: Addison

Setting up eBird:

Thank you to those students and parents who have already set up eBird accounts and returned the orange paper.  A few parents have emailed with questions about email addresses and passwords. All students should know their password (it is the same one they use to log-in to the computers and to log-in to google docs) but if they can't remember or if you aren't able to find the educbe.ca email address at home, please email Ms. Boyer and she can send it to you.

Timelines and Dioramas

This morning after guided reading and centers we started working on our Dr. Coffin timeline. Today we started by getting our page set up with our school sketch in the middle. Then we read part of the Dr. Coffin book to find the first date for our timeline. Did you know that the first Dr. Coffin school was opened in 1967?

After recess the grade 2's met with Ms. Boyer to review and practice the rules for adding -ing to the end of words. At home, try testing me with some words to see if I can use the rules! While the grade 2's were working with Ms. Boyer the grade 1's worked on a practice page for this week's words. Then it was time for math. In math we worked on finishing up the problem we started yesterday. If we finished early we had some time to play Mathletics.

This afternoon we started by reading an Eric Carle story called Mister Seahorse. Ask my what made the animals in this story interesting and a bit unique.  Then it was time to work on our dioramas. Before we went to work we reviewed the steps for our work that we learned yesterday. We also talked about ways to give our friends feedback about their work. Ask me what types of things would be good feedback and what types of comments would not be good feedback.   

Here are a few examples of our dioramas so far. We are working really hard to add lots of details so that our dioramas look realistic.



When we had finished working on our dioramas we went outside to play kings gold. In our first ame some people got upset because they felt that not everyone was being honest about tagging and being tagged. We had a conversation about the importance of honesty in sports and especially in games where there isn't a referee. After our talk the second game seemed to go a bit better.

When gym was over we went to see Mr. O-Reilly for music.

Our helper tomorrow is: Senna