Almost vacation time!!

Today was our second day of caroling. We also had dress like an elf spirit day. At caroling Mr. O'Reilly came ready to play Six White Boomers on his guitar and we all sang along! We are excited to see what Mr. O'Reilly will be ready to perform tomorrow!

Tomorrow the theme for our day is "Polar Express Day". That means we are invited to wear our pyjamas and we will be getting hot chocolate. Please leave your stuffies at home so they can't accidentally get forgotten here over the holidays.

Today we are bringing home a special gift for our families. We have put a lot of love and work into them and we hope you enjoy them!

Please remember tomorrow is a half-day. Students will be dismissed at 12:00. Before we leave for holidays we will be doing a desk clean out. Please try to bring an extra bag for any bits and pieces that need to go home. 

Festive Hat Day!

Today was our first day of caroling and also festive hat day. Lots of us had special hats to wear today. Some were store bought and some were home made. For caroling Mr. O'Reilly had lots of songs ready for us to sing and Ms. Boyer helped him out. Ms. Boyer says our school sounded even better than last year! Ms. Boyer thinks all our new students must be helping us out. We sang six white boomers, frosty the snowman, and I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.

Tomorrow we will have another day of caroling. The theme for tomorrow is "Dress Like an Elf", or, wear red and green day.

After caroling we worked on our poetry project. Ms. Boyer showed us how the poem will fit with our tree project to make a really beautiful piece of art. We are excited to finish them up tomorrow and bring them home!

After recess the grade 1's spent a bit of extra time on their poems and then continued their graphing work with Mrs. Hamby. The grade 2's went to the learning commons to finish their graphing projects. When the grade 2's were finished they got to play Mathletics.

This afternoon we read a story and then we worked to finish up our trees and our poems. Tomorrow we will put the whole project together.

Then it was time for gym. Mr. O was here today for Mrs. Hamby so he took us for gym while Mrs. Hamby's class was in music. We played ringette. After that we had music. We did some writing about our favourite instruments. At the end of the class Mr. O'Reilly gave us a special gift. We could either choose a book mark or two erasers.

Tomorrow our helper is: Ashton

The countdown has begun!

Today we had to work on our winter poems instead of journals because we only have 3 days to get our project finished. We worked really hard and everyone was able to finish their rough copy.

After recess the grade 1's worked on reading graphs with Mrs. Hamby. We worked in groups to answer questions about a graph. The grade 2's worked to finish their graphing project on the computer. They will need one more day to get all finished.

This afternoon we worked on our trees. Some of us were able to finish and the rest of us are really close. After that we had gym. We played ringette. Then we had finish up and free choice.

Tomorrow our helper is: Taylor

Tomorrow we will have our first day of carol singing at the start of our day. The theme for tomorrow is festive hat day. Please feel free to wear your festive hats if you have them. 

Herbivores, Omnivores, and Carnivores

Good afternoon parents,

Today we continued our animal study by talking about animals that live on Nose Hill. First, we brainstormed animal that we know live on Nose Hill. Some of the animals we came up with were: fox, porcupine, owl, cougar, grasshopper, bear (long ago), weasel, rabbit, red-winged black bird, hawk, bald eagle, mouse, insects, bat, deer, moose, and coyote.

Then we talked about the terms herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore. A herbivore is a plant eater. An omnivore eats plants and meat. A carnivore is an animal that only eats meat. After we learned about those we went outside to play a game. In the game we pretended to be animals. Some of us were carnivores. Some of us were omnivores. Some of us were herbivores. If you were a herbivore you had to hunt for plants in the Whispering Woods. Our food was cups filled with pennies. If you got tagged by a carnivore or an omnivore you had to give them one of your coins.  If you were an omnivore you could hunt for plants and you could also hunt herbivores. But, you had to watch out for the carnivores. If they tagged you, you had to give them two pennies. If you were a carnivore you could hunt herbivores or omnivores for food but you couldn't collect pennies from the cups.

Our helper on Monday is: Senna

Have a great weekend!

This morning we moved on to the "I hear" part of our winter poems. We started by brainstorming lots of ideas about things we hear in winter and then we brainstormed describing words for hearing. We came up with words like jingling, growling, ringing, whooshing, howling, and snoring. Then we each went and wrote our own idea on our poem template. Ms. Boyer could tell that we are starting to get the hang of using describing words because we had a much easier time completing our sentence this time!

After recess we worked on our survey project. The grade 1's had a special guest come to visit...Mrs. Polski! She came to hear each group present the findings from their surveys and to hear her recommendations. She was very interested to hear about all the information we have discovered for her about fun lunches, gym, special days, lunchtime, and special events. The grade 2's kept working on their survey reports on the computer. If you would like to see what your grade 2 student has done so far, ask them to log-in to google at home using their email address and new password. They can show you their report in google docs and how they made their graphs in google sheets.

This afternoon we continued working on our trees. It is a lot of work to cut out all the hand shapes we need but we are working really hard so they will be ready to bring home before the holidays. Next week we will be starting to decorate the trees and add our poems.

In gym we played a big game of hockey using the whole gym. We had to play in shifts, just like real hockey players. It was a really good game and ended up with a score of 2-2! We are getting better at controlling the puck and keeping our sticks down.

After that we had music. We watched a video of a person who can sing two notes at the same time. We also learned about beat, rhythm, and melody.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We were not able to get volunteers so we will be staying at the school and working in the Whispering Woods. In preparation for our work tomorrow here is a homework challenge:

1. What is a herbivore? What is an omnivore? What is a carnivore?
2. Can you think of 5 herbivores that live on Nose Hill?
3. Can you think of 3 omnivores or carnivores that live on Nose Hill?

Our helper on Monday is: Senna

We are still collecting items for the "Fill a Sock" campaign. We are in need of deodorant, kleenex, gift cards, candies/chocolates, razors, and lip balm/chapsticks.

This week our blog team is Lawrence, Aksel, Leander, and Jasper.

This morning we had festive centers, had library, and then worked on our winter poems. Here is what we have so far:

I see my jolly little elf in his crimson red coat. ~Jasper
I see my jolly little elf in his emerald and red coat. ~ Leander
I see puffy shiny snow. ~ Aksel
I see fluffy shiny snow. ~ Lawrence

After recess we had booktime and then math. In math the grade 1's worked on making our survey reports. We are inviting Mrs. Polski to come visit so we can show her what we found out in our surveys. We think knowing about our surveys will help Mrs. Polski with the decisions she has to make about things like fun lunches, clubs and special days.  The grade 2's continued working on their computer graph projects. Today we had to start making our reports in Google Docs. We had to copy and paste from Google Sheets into Google docs and then start writing up the report.

After lunch we started making pine trees for our new project. We made the trees by tracing our hands and cutting them out.

In gym we played hockey again today. The gym was divided in half with the benches so there was space for a grade 1 game and a grade 2 game. Some people got a bit upset when things in the game weren't fair, but we were able to solve the problem and make the games fair again.

We are still collecting items for the Fill-a-Sock campaign. We will be collecting items until Friday.  We are hoping to go to Nose Hill on Friday. If you are able to volunteer please email Ms. Boyer

Our helper tomorrow is: Leander

This morning we started working on a new poetry project. We are each going to making a special gift to bring home and it will have a winter poem on it. Our poems will be senses poems. Today we started thinking about ideas for "I See...". We talked about using "juicy" describing words to make our writing really interesting. Ask me what idea I am planning to write.

In math our grade 2's started making their graphs in google sheets. The grade 1's started working on a group report to share our survey findings with Mrs. Polski.

This afternoon we continued making fancy paper using coffee filters and smelly markers. We will move on to the next part of our project tomorrow.

In gym we played hockey. We had a grade 1 game and a grade 2 game. We had to remember to keep our sticks low so that people wouldn't get hurt since we weren't wearing hockey gear.

At the end of the day our Amaryllis team measured the plant. It is now 29cm tall. It has grown 20cm in one week!!  It has some leaves at the bottom and it is very tall and skinny. It has two stems that are growing.

We are hoping to head up to Nose Hill on Friday. If you are able to volunteer please email Ms. Boyer.  We will be collecting items for the "Fill a Sock" campaign until Friday. Here is the list of items we are being asked to bring:

Our helper tomorrow is: Shawn

Today the grade 2's started a new survey project. To start we had to get signed in with our CBE Google accounts. Then we went to Google Sheets and started experimenting to see if we could figure out how to make a graph. We are going to be making a survey report using Google Docs and Google Sheets. While the grade 2's were working on their project the grade 1's did some more practice with reading information from graphs.

This afternoon we started the first step of a new project that we will be working on for the next two weeks. Today we worked as a team to start making some fancy paper using coffee filters and smelly markers. To make the fancy paper we coloured the coffee filters and then we got them wet. When they got wet the colours spread and blended together.

In gym we started playing floor hockey. We practiced passing. We practiced keeping the puck under control when weaving through cones. There was a slow lane, a medium lane, and a fast lane for practicing.

Please remember that tomorrow is treat day!

Our helper tomorrow is: Liam

What makes black?

This afternoon we did an experiment. The question were were looking to answer was: What makes black?

Some of our predictions were: All the colours, brown and grey, dark colours, primary colours.

To find out the answer to our question we each took a coffee filter and put a black dot in the center using a smelly marker. Then we used droppers to put water onto the black dot. We watched as the black separated into many colours as it spread across the coffee filter.

Before

After

We noticed pink, blue, yellow, orange, purple, red, green, turquoise, and lime green. This made us think that the "All the colours" prediction was correct. But, we also figured out that the "Primary Colours" prediction was correct too because all the colours are really made out of the primary colours.

Tonight is the festive evening! Our class will be singing a special song at about 7:15.

There is no school tomorrow. Enjoy your long weekend. 

Our helper on Monday is: Dhvani

Good afternoon parents,

Our blog team this week has been Ashton, Senna, and Lily.

Today we had centers in the morning and also guided reading. Then we went to library and Mrs. Kidd read us a story called Brave Irene. It was a very old story made in 1920. Then we started working on making puppets of our family for our All About Me books. We noticed that everyone was planning a Family category so it made sense to do this part first.

After recess we did printing and guided reading. The grade 1's have finally finished our printing practice and will be moving on to studying word families. The grade 2's practiced spelling the months of the year. Ms. Boyer will give them a quiz tomorrow.

In math we needed to finish up our survey projects. If we were finished we got to play Mathletics.

After lunch we continued our paint chip challenge from yesterday. We needed to use what we know about colours and mixing colours to try to make the colours on a whole bag of paint chips. Some of the colours we tried to make were: Beach Purple, Bold Orange, Track Green, and Clear Teal.

Then we went to gym. We played pillow polo. We had two games going, one for the grade 1's and one for the grade 2's. We are getting better at passing but sometimes we will forget that we shouldn't take the ball away from people on our own team :)

After gym we did sharing and then we met with Room 1 and PT to practice our song for the festive evening.

We have a new sharing category starting tomorrow. It is "Bring Your Favourite Toy". Please remember that anything very expensive or breakable should be left at home. 

Our helper tomorrow is: Addison

Good Afternoon Parents,

This is what we did today:

First we did our journal pictures. Then we did our journal writing. The grade 1's were trying to write one hamburger paragraph and the grade 2's were trying to do two hamburger paragraphs. A hamburger paragraph has 1 topic sentence, 3 detail sentences, and 1 wrap it up sentence.

After recess we worked on our survey project. Today some people were finishing their survey and some people were working on their graph. After the graph is finished we need to write about our survey and the information it has taught us.

This afternoon in our colour study we learned how to make a shades. A shade is when you take a colour and you add black to make it darker. It is the opposite of tint. We each started with a colour and kept adding black to make darker and darker shades. Black is very powerful so we only needed to add a tiny bit to see a difference.

After that we did gym. We are working on pillow polo and hockey. We started by practicing keeping the ball under control using the polo mallets. Some of us were ready to try weaving between cones when walking, some of us were ready to try jogging, and some of us could keep the ball under control when weaving while running!

New Info:
In our class we are trying a new strategy at the carpet. This strategy is called "No Hands Up". When we use this strategy Ms. Boyer chooses people to answer her questions or share their ideas by choosing names out of a jar rather than calling on people who have their hands up. By using this strategy everyone has to try to think up an idea because we don't know who will be picked and we need to listen closely to our classmates so we can build on their ideas. This is important because when we are thinking up ideas and listening to others our brains are getting smarter. When we stop listening or let other people come up with all the ideas we aren't giving our brains the chance to learn. If Ms. Boyer calls on us and we don't know what to say that is ok, sometimes we just don't know yet. If this happens we have to listen closely to the ideas that other people share and then Ms. Boyer will come back to us and ask us to add on to those ideas or to re-phrase someone else's idea to show what we have learned from our classmates. 

Our helper tomorrow is: Taylor

Animal Evidence

Today we started our study about the animals that live in our neighborhood. We learned that a scientist who studies animals is called a zoologist. Today we used cartography, statistics, and photography to help us document signs of animals we could find in the Whispering Woods. We looked for tracks, scat, homes, fur/feathers/bones, and other signs that animals live in the woods. We were in groups of 3. One person was in charge of recording the location of our findings on a map. Another person was in charge of keeping track of how many pieces of evidence we found using tally marks on a chart. The last person was in charge of taking photos of the evidence we found. Here is a chart that we made together when we shared our findings at the end of the day.

Group	Findings
Jasper, Aksel, and Joachim	1 track – maybe deer or coyote 10 scat 6 homes – ants 1 set of teeth marks
Taylor, Ashton, and Liam	2 tracks – hare 4 scat – dog, and rabbit 6 homes – ants, mouse chewed bark
Dhvani, Cedar, and Shawn	2 tracks – maybe from deer 5 scat – rabbit 3 homes – ants and mouse
Addison, Abdul Ahad, Lily	3 tracks – rabbits, dogs, maybe deer 2 scat – dog and rabbit 3 homes – mouse chewed bark
Leander, Senna, and Katie	7 scat – rabbits, dogs, 1 fur – rabbit 5 homes – ant, deer, wasp chewed bark
Reid, Aiden, and Josie	1 – dog 2 scat – dog, rabbit, coyote 3 homes – ants, mouse, rabbit broken bark

Have a great weekend!

Our helper on Monday is: Addison.

Coffin Cares!

This morning we had our Coffin Cares Assembly. Our assembly was about recognizing students who have been helping to care for our school and our community. We celebrated our Green Team who helps to make sure our school is recycling, the destination conservation club, and the WE club who organized our Veteran's Food drive.

After recess we worked on our survey project. Today we were ready to conduct our surveys. We had to ask 20 people our question and we had to get them to sign their name on our survey so we could remember who we had asked. Here are some videos of us at work:

This afternoon we finished our self-portraits. Today we had to finish our details and add a background colour. Then we had gym. We played basketball-ish again. After that it was time for music. We practiced our Winter Fun song for the festive evening.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be working in the Whispering Woods. Please dress for the weather!

Our helper on Monday is: Addison

After centers and guided reading we continued working on our important things categories for our All About Me project. Ms. Boyer also gave us a preview of the types of books we will be making. The books are made using paper bags and have pockets and flaps that make them really interesting.

After recess we didn't have printing and wordwork time. Instead, we got together with Room 1 and the Portable to practice our song for the festive evening.  Then we worked on our survey project. Today we had to make sure our survey was all set up. We needed to have our question and our explanation about why the survey would be important written down, and our survey chart set up. We will be conducting our surveys tomorrow.

This afternoon we painted our self portraits. We had to learn how to make skin colours using watercolour paints. We learned that we can make skin colours by using brown, beige, or pink and spreading it with water until it is the right shade.

Then it was time for gym. We played basketball-ish. It is the same as basketball except instead of shooting into the basketball nets we have a team member that stands in a hula hoop and we have to pass to them to get a point.

Tomorrow we are having our first Coffin Cares assembly. If you have a Dr. Coffin t-shirt please try to wear it. If you don't have one, please try to wear a green shirt.

Our helper tomorrow is: Dhvani

This morning we worked on planning the topics we want to share in our "All About Me" books. We read a story called The Important Book and then brainstormed topics that would be important about us. In math we started working on our final graphing project. We are trying to come up with survey questions that will help Dr. Coffin School. Ask me about my question. 

This afternoon Ms. Boyer was away at a meeting so Mrs. Wilkens worked with us. We continued our colour study by learning about tints and shades. We used white and one color to paint different tints of the color. Then we had music. Mr. O'Reilly was away so Ms. Stephure was here to teach us. 

Tomorrow our helper is: Leander

This morning we had guided reading and journals. Today the goal was to do hamburger paragraphs. In a hamburger paragraph you need to have: 1 topic sentence, 3 detail sentences, and 1 wrapping up sentence.

After recess we finished our 4 choice graphs. If we finished early we got to play mathletics.

After lunch Mrs. Polski came to read a story to us. It was a story about Canada and each of us got a copy to bring home!! Then we did our finish up time.

After that we had another visit with Saa'Kokoto. Today he taught us about the Medicine Wheel on Nose Hill. He taught us that the Medicine Wheel has 4 quarters. In each quarter there is a symbol for people. The 4 people symbols show the 4 tribes of the Blackfoot nation.  We also talked about the plants, trees, and birds on Nose Hill. He told us that you can even get medicine from some of the plants.  He taught us that when we go to Nose Hill and wish to take something from the Hill we should give back an offering. This is a way of giving back to Na'a (Mother Earth) and showing respect.  Today was our last visit with Saa'Kokoto until the spring. We are sad that we won't see him for a while but we are looking forward to the spring!

After our visit we had some outside gym time before the end of the day.

Tomorrow is Treat Day! If you are bringing treats please drop them off at the table in the front hall.  Don't forget you 25 cents!

Our helper tomorrow is: Shawn

Visit with Saa-Kokoto

This morning we started by meeting with the portable to examine our two amaryllis plants. When we got together we shared our observations and measurements. When we shared our measurements we discovered that our classes had been measuring differently and that meant we had very different results. We had been measuring from the soil and the portable had been measuring from the start of the new growth. We decided that next week we will both measure from the dirt so that it will be easier to compare our plant growth.

Then it was time for our first outside activity of the day. We began by talking about the words prey and predator. We learned a little rhyme to help us remember a way to tell if an animal is a prey animal or a predator animal: Eyes on the side, ready to hide. Eyes up front, ready to hunt. We talked about the strategies that prey animals use to hide from their predators. Some of the strategies we knew were that animals will have fur that matches their surroundings, that animals will stay really still so their predator's eyes aren't attracted by movement, and animals will stay very quiet so their predators won't hear them. This includes keeping themselves quiet and also moving through their environment without making loud noises. After we had talked about these strategies we went outside and gave them a try by playing a game of Camouflage. Ms. Boyer was the predator and stood at the edge of the Whispering Woods. We were the prey who went to hide. When Ms. Boyer yelled "Camouflage" we had to try to stay really still and quiet so that she wouldn't see us. If Ms. Boyer saw us she would call our name and we would go join her at the predator spot. We really enjoyed the game and discovered that the designs of boys snowsuits are much better for Camouflage than girl snow suits...all those pinks and purples were tricky to camouflage!!

After that we had our recess break inside and then we did our next outdoor activity. This activity was called the rainbow chip walk. Ms. Boyer brought out a big bag of paint chips and our job was to see how many of the colours we could find in nature. The job was challenging since lots of the world is covered in snow right now, but once we started looking closely it was amazing how many colours we were able to find.

When we were finished outside we came in to have our time with Saa'Kokoto (Randy Bottle). Today he was here to help us learn more about colour and the importance of colour to the Blackfoot People. We learned that all colours come from the earth and that we can even made paints from natural materials found in the earth like stones, clay, berries, and grasses. For the Blackfoot there are 5 important colours: red, yellow, blue, white, and black. He showed us some pictures of his great grandfather White Clay who was dressed all in white. This is because white is a very important colour. He also told us that we can still see some very old painting that is done in the red ochre paint at Writing on Stone provincial park. These paintings are called petroglyphs and were made by mixing the red ochre powder with buffalo fat. He told us how colours would be used to paint a Moyiss (lodge/tipi). He told us that blue is used to represent mountains and yellow can mean the sun or fire. Black is used to show the dark night sky and sometimes brown is used to show the earth.  He also told us a story how the horse was given its name in Blackfoot (Ponookomita) and how the Blackfoot people were introduced to horses. Saa-Kokoto told us this story and he has also published the story as a graphic novel which he gave us as a gift. The story is called Ponookomita. On Monday we will get to visit with Saa'Kokoto again.

Our helper on Monday is: Joachim

Lights, Camera, Action!

This morning we started working on our big version of our self-portraits. We are making them on very special watercolour paper. Today we started by sketching our portraits with very light pencil lines. Next week we will use watercolour paints to add the colour.

After recess we did graphs to go with our 4 choices surveys. We needed to have 4 towers in our bar graph this time to show how many people wanted each of our choices. Today's graphs were a bit more challenging because we used smaller graph paper and had to write our numbers and labels very carefully to fit them in the correct spaces.

This afternoon we had our recording session for our CBC music class project. Ashton's dad came to help video our performance. We learned that you have to be really quite when the recording is about to start because the microphones are really sensitive and will pick up any tiny sounds we are making. We also learned that it is important to work as a team and to play in unison so that the beat and the melody are really clear.  We got really good at listening for Mr. O'Reilly to call "Lights, Camera, Action!". Those words meant we were ready to record.

 When we were finished recording we had gym outside.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be working with Randy Bottle, our friend and Blackfoot Elder for part of the morning and we will be spending time in the Whispering Woods. Please dress for the weather (waterproof clothing recommended for the slush!). 

Our helper on Monday is: Joachim

Dress Rehearsal!

Mustache Day was a great success today! We had lots of kids wearing fantastic store bought and home made mustaches and even some mustache themed clothing!

This afternoon was our dress rehearsal for our CBC music project. We rehearsed in the gym because the music room it too small to fit everyone. The singers and the piano were on the stage and everyone else was on the gym floor. Mr. O'Reilly told us where we will be sitting and we need to remember our spots for tomorrow. We were great. The music sounded good. At first, the drums were too loud, but once the drums played quieter they sounded really good.  Tomorrow afternoon is the big recording day! We will be doing our recording right after lunch.

Tomorrow our helper is: Senna

Parents: Please remember our class is hosting treat day next Tuesday. If you need any information about what that means please contact me or our room parent for details. 

Self-Portraits

This morning after centers and guided reading we moved on to the beginning of our All About Me project. The first step is creating self-portraits. A self-portrait is a picture of your head and your shoulders that you make of yourself. The first step was to fold your paper so that you could center your head on the page. We had to work hard to try to make our head shape on the paper match our head shape in real life. Some of us have oval faces, some have round faces, some have pointy chins, some have round chins. Then we focused on drawing our eyes and ears. We learned that our eye are in the center of our head, not up at the top. Before we started our portraits Ms. Boyer also showed us a fun thing on the internet for making ourselves and that sort of helped get our brains warmed up for portraits. It is called Peanutize Me and turns you into a peanuts cartoon character! Here is our version of Cedar:

Cedar Goes Peanuts!

Here is the link if you want to try it at home: http://www.peanutizeme.com/

After recess the grade 1's worked on a review page for printing and the grade 2's started practicing their three sets of spelling words (days of the week, months, and number words to 20). The grade 2's used whiteboards to practice writing their words and then had a friend test them if they felt confident with one of the word sets. We will be practicing for the next two weeks and then Ms. Boyer will give us a little quiz on the words.

After that we started working on a 4 choice survey in math. We each needed to come up with a survey question where our survey participants would be given 4 choices. Several of us chose to ask about favourite hockey teams and asked questions like: Do you like the Flames, Oilers, Penguins, or Golden Knights? Tomorrow we will conduct our surveys.

This afternoon we finished up our colour wheels by adding in the tertiary colours. We needed to mix the paints to get these colours: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, red-purple, and blue-purple. Here are a few examples of our colour wheels:

Please remember that tomorrow is Mustache Day! It is also library day tomorrow. We are bringing home our school photos today! 

Parents: Our class is hosting Treat Day next Tuesday Nov. 28. Please see the email sent by our Room Parent for more details about this. 

Tomorrow our helper is: Ashton

Colour!

This morning we started with journals and guided reading. Today Ms. Boyer showed us how to make a hamburger paragraphs.  In a hamburger paragraph, the top bun is for our topic sentence. The tomatoes are our first details sentence. The lettuce is the next detail sentence. The pattie is the last detail sentence. The bottom bun is the wrap it up sentence. The grade 2's (and some grade 1's) then tried to make hamburger paragraphs in our journals.

After recess we had printing and book time. Today's letter was "N".  Then it was time for math. Today we got to try mathletics! If you are working on mathletics at home the two strands we are focusing on are the shapes strand and the statistics (gr. 2) strand. You could also be doing mathletics live to practice your basic facts.

This afternoon we continued our colour study by looking at the colour wheel.  The colour wheel includes all the colours in the colour spectrum. Before we started the colour wheel we learned about the next set of colours. They are called tertiary colours and are made by mixing a primary colour with a secondary colour (1+2=3).  Then we started painting our own colour wheels. Today we painted the primary and secondary colours. After that we watched a short video about colours and learned something new at the end of the video. Here is the video:

Then it was time for gym. We are starting to practice basketball skills.

Our helper tomorrow is: Cedar

Ready Set Go!

This morning after guided reading we were finally ready to play our Guess Who game! Here are some pictures of us playing the game. It was really fun! We will have our bags here to share with you tonight and then we will be using some of our ideas to start our big All About Me project.

After recess we met with Room 1 and the Portable to learn about a new friendly competition we will be having from now until our winter break. Room 1-2 and the Portable will each be trying to grow an amaryllis plant. An amaryllis plant grows from a bulb and grows very quickly. It should take about 6 weeks to have a blossom at the top of the plant and the plant will get very tall. We will be measuring our plant everyday to see which plant is growing faster and then we will wait to see which plant blooms first. Which ever plant blooms first wins! Ready, Set, Go!

After lunch we finished up the final part of our secondary colours page and then we got ready for Parent Teacher Conferences. After that it was time for gym and music.

Ms. Boyer is looking forward to seeing everyone at conferences tonight and tomorrow. Please try to arrive a few minutes early so that you have time to look through your work with your parents before it is time to meet with Ms. Boyer.

Our helper on Monday is: Katie

Graphs and Secondary Colours

This morning we started with guided reading and centers. Then we worked on our Guess Who Game. When we were finished our clues we went with some friends and started practicing reading our clues so we will be ready to play the game.

After recess we started making graphs to show the results of our Yes/No surveys. We started by setting up the page and tomorrow we will try to add our towers and get the graphs finished.  Ask me about the important pieces that a graph needs to have!

This afternoon we worked on our secondary colours page. We mixed the primary colours together to make the three secondary colours. We are showing the ways to make secondary colours by making colour equations on our page. Ask me about making secondary colours!

After our painting activity Jasper shared his favourite book. Then it was time for gym. We did our small equipment stations again. When we finished gym we had our finish up or free choice time. We have been really focused this week so everyone had earned free choice time! Lots of us chose to do iPads.

Tomorrow our helper is: Aiden

Guided Reading!

Today was our first day of guided reading! First we had to meet at the carpet so we could find out our groups from Ms. Boyer. Then we took turns going to guided reading and got our folders and books ready to go. When it isn't our turn for guided reading we do our new centers. This week the centers are: word work on ipads, bookmark making, and literacy games.

After guided reading we worked on finishing our Guess Who clues. We were really focused and lots of us got 10 clues finished!

In math we conducted our Yes/No surveys. We used tally marks in bundles of 5 to record our results. Some of us are realizing that learning to count by 5's will make this type of work even easier!

This afternoon we continued our colour study by looking at secondary colours. We learned that the secondary colours are: green, purple, and orange.  They are called secondary colours because they are made by adding two primary colours together (and 1+1=2!).

Then it was time for gym. In gym we did small equipment stations. They were balls, scoops, skipping, and hula hoops. After that we went to music. We got to start using the instruments for our music project!

Thank you for all the food donations that have been brought in. Tomorrow is the last day to bring in donations. 

This morning we started with journals. After we finished our pictures Ms. Boyer showed us her journal entry and we had to decide what she had done well and what she needed to fix. We noticed that she did a good job with her finger spaces between her words, she didn't have any popcorn letters, and she remembered to make the word "I" an uppercase no matter where it was. But, we noticed that she forgot to put the periods in her writing and forgot to put capital letters at the beginning of her sentences. We helped Ms. Boyer fix these things in her journal and then we went to write our own entries.

After recess we did word work and printing. The grade 1's worked on the letter J (Josie was very excited, she has been waiting for a long time to finally get to J!). The grade 2's started practicing spelling number words correctly. So far the grade 2's have focused on spelling days of the week and months of the year correctly and now we are adding in numbers to 20. These spelling words would be a great thing to keep practicing at home!

Then it was time for math. Today we needed to decide on our question for the "Yes or No" surveys we are going to be conducting. We spent some time talking about how to make a Yes or No question and then we each went and wrote our own. After that we talked about tally marks. We learned that tally marks are a great way to record the results of your survey because they can help to keep your work organized and make it less likely that you will make a mistake when you are counting up your totals at the end. To make sure we are all comfortable with tally marks we did a little review practice to finish our math time. Tomorrow we will conduct our surveys and record our results using tally marks.

After lunch we finished up our Nose Hill posters. We will be putting these up on display for you to see when you come for parent-teacher conferences.  Then we had gym and our finish up/free choice time.

At the end of the day all the grade 1-2's met together to talk about guided reading. We will be starting guided reading tomorrow morning at 8:45. We will be finding out our groups tomorrow and we will begin our new centers routine that will happen along with guided reading. Please make sure you are on-time for school so you don't miss anything!

Our helper tomorrow is: Lawrence

Remembrance Day

Today was our Remembrance Day assembly. Our class did a great job of showing respect during the assembly and our performance of Waltzing Matilda was awesome! Between the dress rehearsal and the real thing, the assembly took up most of our morning. We had a bit of time for centers and watched a few remembrance day videos at the end of the day. Here is a great video that explains the purpose of wearing poppies. The video is from Scotland, but the information is very applicable for Canada.

Our helper on Monday is: Abdul Ahad

Getting ready for Remembrance Day

Today we spent the first part our our morning finishing up our Remembrance Day artwork for tomorrow's assembly. We have created poppy artwork that is inspired by Kandinsky's Circles. The project required a lot us to use lots of stamina to stick with it, even when we through we couldn't possibly cut one more circle!! The final products look amazing and will be a beautiful addition to tomorrow's assembly.

After recess we practiced our song for tomorrow and then we worked on our Guess Who games. We are trying to write at least 5 clues (and hopefully more) about ourselves and then we will get to try out our games next week. These games are a warm up for a big project we will be starting about ourselves and our families.

After lunch we completed our primary colours page in our art journals using paint. We had to be careful not to let our red, yellow, and blue paints mix or our primary colours page would have looked more like a secondary colours page!

When we were finished our primary colours page we went to the music room to practice our song with all the other grade 1's and 2's. We sound really great as a big group! Then we had gym and music. At the end of the day some of our grade 2's performed the poem In Flander's Field for us. They have been learning the poem during word work.

Tomorrow is the Remembrance Day Assembly and it is also picture re-takes day. Due to these special events we will be staying indoors for the morning. Students are invited to wear black, white, and red (and maybe something a bit fancier than usual) for the assembly.  Please also remember to bring donations for the Veteran's food bank if you haven't already (our bin is still pretty empty).

Today we are bringing home a special red card that has all of our log-in information for our CBE account, mathletics, and raz-kids. Mathletics and Raz-kids are great ways to reenforce the skills we are learning at school. Our Raz-kids accounts have been set to our current reading levels. In mathletics, the sections about shapes and data (graphing) would be great places to start. 

Our helper on Monday is: Abdul Ahad

Home Reading!

Today was our first day of home reading! That means that your child will be coming home with their first home reading book today.   In your child's home reading bag you will find a book, a recording book to help keep track of their reading, and some information about learning to read.

Here's what you can expect from home reading this year:

Home reading is in place to help developing readers practice important skills associated with literacy. Some of these skills include comprehension strategies, fluency, vocabulary, sight word and high frequency word recognition, phonemic awareness, and decoding. The leveled books are at the student's independent reading level. This means they can read the book fairly independently with minimal support. 

In guided reading with a teacher at school, the students will work to read books at their instructional level. Here they are learning reading strategies, which they then practice at home through their home reading books. 

At Home:
Your child will bring home a new home reading book on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Please have your child practice their book a few times with an adult or older sibling. Once the book has been read please fill out the recording booklet, sign it, and return it along with the home reading book each Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Supervised daily reading practice is important to ensure success and supports your child's reading development. 

At School:
Each day (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) a volunteer will be here to help with the home reading program. Your child will re-read their home reading book to the volunteer and then choose a new book to bring home and practice. Your child will bring home a new book each time unless they are reading a chapter book. Those students who are reading chapter books do not need to bring their books back each day and should instead keep reading at home and just bring their books back when they need to exchange them. 

Happy Home Reading!