Oct. 28

Today we worked on our portraits, played a new math game, and finished our colour wheels.

Portraits
We learned a few different ways to make noses and mouths. We used felt, tissue paper, paper, sequins, buttons, and beads.

Race to 100
To play race to 100 (first way) you take 2 dice and take turns rolling them. After each roll your write down how many points you rolled using tally marks. You keep rolling until your tally marks add up to 100.
To play race to 100 (second way) you need a group of 3 and one dice. Your group picks one lucky number. If you roll that number you get to start writing down the numbers from 1-100. While you are writing the other two people keep rolling. If one of them gets the lucky number they take the pencil away from you and then start writing. You keep going like this until someone has written all the numbers from 1-100 correctly.

Colour Wheels
Today we finished our colour wheels by adding the secondary and tertiary colours. The secondary colours are: purple, orange, and green. The tertiary colours are: blue-green, blue-purple, red-purple, red-orange, yellow-orange, and yellow-green.

Tomorrow we will have our Halloween parade in the afternoon. In the morning we will be doing our regular school work so please don't wear your costume in the morning. We will have a chance to change into our costumes after we eat our lunches.

Oct. 27

Today we started our new colour study by starting to paint a colour wheel. We started by painting the primary colours. The primary colours are red, yellow, and blue. They are called the primary colours because we can use them to make all the other colours.  We also watched a colour movie called "The Little Men of Chromagnon" .

In gym we started learning tricks with a hula hoop. We are learning to how to get our hoop to roll away and then come back, to spin it, and to jump through it.

Oct. 26

Today our grade 2s got a head start on their journals while the grade 1s did guided reading. The grade 2s don't have guided reading on Mondays so we decided that some extra time to write even more in their journals would be a good use of their morning time.

This afternoon we had some time to try to finish our facts for the Purple Aster and Goldenrod on our Natureground project. Most people are now finished their projects and many of us hit the centre of the target! We are planning to start a new study about colour tomorrow!

Starting tomorrow morning we have some new special centres for the week before Halloween. They are: Fortune teller, Poem performance, Acrostic poems, Halloween wordsearch, and Halloween signs. In music we learned about quarter notes and half notes. Ask me to demonstrate my half notes and quarter notes for you!

Our helper tomorrow is: Pania

Oct. 23

Today was Fresh Air Friday!

Today we started by doing some landscape sketching in the Whispering Woods. We paid attention to the Aspen trees, Rosehips, long grasses, mountains, the path, and the foothills. Then we came inside and we transferred our ideas to paper using fabric crayons. We are going to iron these drawings on to the t-shirts that we dyed a few weeks ago. They are going to be our Fresh Air Friday t-shirts!

Our helper on Monday is: Eiman

Oct. 22

Today we had library. We read a new book called Wild About Books. It was written by someone who really liked Dr. Seuss.

We added facts to our Goldrenrod page today. We had LOTS of facts to choose from thanks to Claire who looked up facts at home to share with us. Thanks Claire!

We played 2 new games in gym today called Snakes on the Rocks and Frogs Across the Pond. It was also Fun Lunch. Thanks to Jessica's survey we found out that cheese pizza was the most popular. Thanks for doing that research for us Jessica!

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be heading to the Whispering Woods at around 9:30 so please bring mittens and a hat in case it is still chilly. 

Oct. 21

Today was picture day!

We played a game in music called Scary Skeleton. We started learning to use our abacuses to solve addition problems today in math.  In gym, we played a new game called the Coconut Tree.

Tomorrow is Fun Lunch! We also have a few treats leftover from Treat Day to sell at recess. 

Our helper tomorrow is: Carissa

Oct. 20

Today we started our multi-media self-portraits. They are sort of like making a Mr. Potato head (except we hope they won't look like potatoes when we're done!). Today we cut out our head and neck shapes and put them on a background.

In math, we each made our own mini abacus. Tomorrow we are going to learn how to use them to help us with adding and subtracting. We used popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, and beads to make them.

In the afternoon we worked on our Natureground reseach and then worked to finish our journals. Most of us were able to finish but a few of us have to finish them at centres tomorrow.

Don't forget it is picture day tomorrow!

Our helper tomorrow is: Levi

Oct. 19

Today we were practicing a beautiful song in music. Stay tuned tomorrow to see a video of us singing it!

Today we continued working on our addition bracelets and our Natureground study.  Ask me some facts about Purple Aster!

Oct. 16

We had a very busy Fresh Air Friday. We worked on two different projects:

1. Weeding
We worked with Tessa from the Calgary Zoo. We weeded lots of Canada Thistle, they were very prickly! We also looked for Sow Thistle and Dandelions but we didn't find many.

2. Temporary Land Art
We went to the Whispering Woods and gathered natural supplies like twigs, leaves, berries, rosehips, and rocks to create temporary land art. This art is temporary because we left it outside and it might be moved or changed by animals, wind, snow, or people. We were inspired by an artist named Andy Goldsworthy. He makes amazing land art and sculptures.

Our helper on Monday is: Morgan

Oct. 15

This morning we learned about our next project. We are going to make multi-media self-portraits. Multi-media means that we are going to use lots of different tools like paint, markers, paper, and other exciting things to make our portraits.

After recess we had a special assembly about Fresh Air Friday. We have each been given a special Fresh Air Friday backpack and a Dr. Coffin travel mug! We will be keeping these at school to use on Fresh Air Fridays.  We talked about some things that we might want to bring from home to put in our special backpacks. Here are a few ideas:

- travel pack of kleenex
- small hand sanitizer
- a few bandaids
- a little "emergency" snack

It was very warm inside the gym today so we had outside gym. Some of us looked for seed capsules, other people played at the playground, and other people used equipment.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday! We will be going to Barrett Park, Whispering Woods, and doing weeding with our friends from the Calgary Zoo. If you want to come and join us please feel free!

Oct. 14

Today we started with guided reading and centres.  Lots of people are doing really interesting things like creating survey and writing stories at centres.

Today we worked in our new math journals and worked to figure out addition facts using addition bracelets. We used pipe cleaners and pony beads to make bracelets that helped us to figure out addition facts kind of like an abacus.

7+5=12

We learned a new song in music. It was called the Carnival of the Animals.

Our helper tomorrow is: Hussain

Please remember to return photo forms and fun lunch forms if you haven't already done so. 

Oct. 13

Today we spent a lot of time on our journals.  We worked really hard to get to the centre of our targets and shared our work with a buddy.

We also organized our graphing work in math to make sure we are ready to start our next set of math work.  We had inside gym. We did some running warm ups like high skips, kicks, and high knees. Then we did some friendly relay races.

Tomorrow our helper is: Jason

Fun lunch forms are coming home today. Please return them by Thursday. 

Oct. 9

Today was Fresh Air Friday. We went on a seed hunt. We tried to find seeds on the plants in the natureground. We noticed that some seeds were very tiny and inside the flowers. We also found seeds inside rosehips. These were seeds that were inside the fruit of the plant.  We noticed that some plants, like wild blue flax, have seed capsules that hold the seeds.

Today we also dyed our t-shirts using vegetable dye that we made using the beets from our natureground and from purple cabbage. We noticed that the pigment came out of the vegetables when we boiled them. We tied up our t-shirts and now we have left them in the dye baths. We are excited to see what the colours look like next week!

We are also bringing home a few surprises today. There are special projects to share in our backpacks and also 2 potatoes and a carrot from our Sun Circle garden!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

OOPS! I forgot to hand out the Fun Lunch Forms! I will be sending them home on Tuesday.

Oct. 8

Today we made soup. It was potato and corn soup. The potatoes came from our Sun Circle garden. It was really really yummy! While the soup was cooking we kept working on our special surprise!

We also got ready for our Fresh Air Friday project today. We used beets, cabbage, raspberries, and blueberries to make dye baths. Tomorrow we will get to test out the dye on our white t-shirts.

Today we got to have a free gym time because we worked so hard on our soccer skills all week. We also had library.

Our special helper for Tuesday is: Aanya

If you still have not brought a white cotton t-shirt please try to bring one tomorrow. 

Oct. 7

Yesterday was the start of our baking week! We are baking using the vegetables we harvested from the Sun Circle. Yesterday we made pumpkin muffins and today we made carrot cookies! We learned how to read some measuring terms like tsp (teaspoon) and we also learned a bit about fractions like 1/2 and 1/4.

We are busy working on a special surprise that will be coming home for the Thanksgiving weekend. We are very excited to share some of our learning with our families through this special surprise!

This week we also began guided reading. Guided reading happens at the very beginning of our day so please make sure to be on time for school.

Oct. 5

Today began with our Monday routine of centers and journals. We kept focusing on hitting the center of our journal target. In gym we kept practicing our soccer skills. Today we worked on passing and running at the same time. In science we continued our Natureground study. Today we focused on painting the coneflower. We really worked on adding the details to the cone part of the flower. That's where the seeds are! In math, we spent some time finishing up our choices graphs and Terry Fox graphs, people who were finished got to play mathletics.

Tomorrow our helper is: Atiksh

Reminders:
If you have not brought in your white cotton t-shirt for our Fresh Air Friday project, please have that here by Thursday. If you need help finding a t-shirt please email Ms. Boyer.

We will continue collecting Terry Fox donations for the rest of this week. We are less than $300 from our goal! 

Oct. 2

Today we harvested our Sun Circle garden! We had 3 stations of gardeners helping to get all the jobs done. Some of us were diggers and pickers, others were washers, and some of us worked to collect all the tops and leafs for the compost. After we finished harvesting we counted up all the vegetables. Here are the results:

Our helper on Monday is: Stefan

Oct. 1

This morning we did centres to start. Lots of us are busy writing stories and doing surveys.  We worked on our All About Me books and used our Terry Fox surveys to make bar graphs.

After lunch we started adding facts to our Natureground plants project. Did you know that Wild Blue Flax can be used as eye medicine, the seed capsules can be used as beads, the blossoms only last for one day, they help keep bees alive, and it makes your hair shiny?

In gym we practice some soccer skills. We practiced dribbling, scoring goals, and passing.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be harvesting our garden!!! If you would like to come and help (and you have your volunteer clearance done) please feel free to join us at about 9:45.