Fresh Air Friday

Today was Fresh Air Friday. We did 2 outdoor activities today. Our first activity was a surveying activity. We went to Barrett Park and sat beside 52 avenue to do a traffic study. Our goal was to record all the cars, trucks, buses, and construction/delivery vehicles that drove by. We recorded our results using tally marks. We discovered that 52 avenue is a busy place, but most of the traffic is car traffic. We only saw 1 bus and a a few construction/delivery vehicles.


After recess we did our second set of activities. The two activities were: creating the title pages for our recipe books, and planting bulbs in the garden. Our goal was to create title pages that had interesting, informative titles and detailed pictures. The bulbs we planted will grow in the spring and it will be exciting to see all these new flowers blooming later in our school year! Thank you to the Embry family for donating the bulbs!


Next week we will begin fundraising for our Terry Fox campaign. Students are invited to bring donations and we will be running our Terry Fox run on Friday October 5.  Last year our school broke our previous fundraising record with a total of $2631.65, an amazing fundraising amount for our tiny school! 

Please remember to hand in your "My Name" homework on Monday if you haven't done so already. 

More SOGO and some guests

Today was our third day of SOGO! Ms. Boyer was away today and we had 2 guest teachers. We had Ms. Yoon in the morning and Mrs. Bigelow in the afternoon.

This morning we started working on a fall poetry project. In this project we are writing about the changes that happen at this time of year. We will look forward to bringing these poems home to share with you in a few weeks.

After recess we had SOGO. Please remember that tomorrow we will be going up to Nose Hill with SOGO. It will be VERY important that everyone is dressed appropriately for the weather and for running. It might also be a good idea to bring a snack that you can tuck into your pocket so you can re-fuel part way through the morning. We will be leaving for Nose Hill just after 9:00am and returning to the school just before noon. 

This afternoon started with some time to finish up our recipes and then we worked to finish our still-life paintings by focusing on the backgrounds. After that we had some time to play our new math game: Race to 100.

SOGO Day 2!

This morning we started by working on our recipe books. Today our goal was to finish our three recipes. We were working on highlighting or circling the important words in each recipe and decorating them with detailed, coloured pictures.

After that we learned to play a math game called Race to 100. This games helps us to practice our basic adding facts and recording accurately using tally marks. To play this game you need some paper and a pencil (or a whiteboard and markers) and 2 dice. This is a great game to play at home!

After recess we did our book time and then we had SOGO. Today in SOGO we did an orienteering station where we used maps to find 12 different checkpoints. Then we did an endurance station in the Whispering Woods. We tried to run 5 laps without stopping.


This afternoon we worked on painting our harvest still lifes. Our focus today was on main parts of our painting like the basket and the vegetables. Tomorrow we will paint the background.

After that we had music with Mr. O'Reilly.

Important: On Thursday morning we had scheduled to go to Nose Hill with SOGO. But, we need at least 2 parent volunteers to come with us. If you are available please email Ms. Boyer!

SOGO!

This morning we started with our usual journals routine. We started by focusing on detailed pictures the rubric we learned about last week. Then we tried write our sentences keeping in mind the writing checklist we learned about last week.

After recess was our first day of SOGO! We used time chips to see how fast we were at two different activities. The first activity had 10 checkpoints. We had to try to get to all 10 as fast as we could. Then we went to see the parent volunteer to get a print out of our time. This station was to build our speed. The next station was for endurance. At that station we ran a course through Whispering Woods and checked our time with coach Ben after each lap. You will notice our lap times written on our arms!
This afternoon was our last harvesting day. We did 3 carrot stations. Our station was in the kitchen. We baked carrot cookies with Ms. Boyer. The most surprising ingredient in the cookies was the raisins. Ms. Boyer mentioned that if some of us aren't too fond of raisins we can trying making them without at home. The next station was recipe making with Mrs. Armour. Our last station was our still life paintings with Mrs. Hamby.


We are looking for SOGO volunteers. Our class has SOGO tomorrow and Wednesday from 11:00-12:00 here at the school. On Thursday we have SOGO all morning up at Nose Hill! To go to Nose Hill our class needs at least 3 adults. Please email Ms. Boyer if you are able to help. 

Zucchini day!

This morning we did three stations, just like yesterday. But today the stations were about zucchini. At Ms. Boyer's station we baked our zucchini bread. With Mrs. Armour we worked on our own zucchini bread recipes. With Mrs. Hamby we continued working on our still life paintings. These stations took a bit longer than yesterday and went for almost the whole morning.

After lunch we had our computer time where we went to abcya.com and worked on some graphing and sorting games. Then we went outside for gym. In gym we practiced for the Terry Fox Run and then we got to eat our zucchini bread. Then it was time for library. Today we didn't take out new books. Instead we got to do some window shopping at the bookfair! After that we went to see Mr. O'Reilly for music. We are starting a musical research project.

Ms. Boyer is looking forward to seeing many of our Room 2 families today and tomorrow for parent teacher conferences. Have a great long weekend!

Cooking day!

This morning we did 3 special stations. We rotated between the three stations with our class. The three stations were cooking, art, and recipe making. We cooked the potatoes we harvested into potato and corn chowder! At the art station, Mrs. Hamby taught us about still life painting and we started our sketches. At the recipe station we made our own copies of the corn and potato chowder recipe.

After recess, book time, and printing we got together with all the grade 1-2 classes. We came together to figure out our total vegetable count from our garden harvest. Here are our results:

This afternoon we had a special big buddy time. We started by practicing for the Terry Fox run by doing two big laps with our buddies and then we shared our soup with them! The soup was really good. It made our big buddies feel really special to be invited to share our soup! 

Please remember that tomorrow is our library day. Due to the scholastic book fair we will be returning our books but not signing out new ones. Instead, we will have a chance to preview the book fair. Parents and students are invited to purchase books from the book fair after school tomorrow or when they come for parent teacher conferences. 

Our first special guest!

Today we had a special guest visit our classroom. Her name is Ms. Carpentier and she is an occupational therapist. She will be working in our school to help us learn some important skills that we need to become great learners. Sometimes she will work with our whole class and sometimes she will work with small groups of students to help with specific skills. Today she spoke to our class about something called "Whole Body Listening". Learning to listen with our whole bodies will make it easier for us to stay focused during group learning times and to hear and understand all the instructions we need to know for our work. Ms. Carpentier taught us that there are 8 ways that our body needs to listen. Ask me to tell you the 8 ways my body needs to listen so I can do my best learning. 

Today we also worked on our harvest graphs and got ready for our harvest mural picture graph. We also tallied up all the vegetables our class counted to get our class totals. Here is our class chart:

Tomorrow we will begin creating the mural and we will look forward to sharing it with you at parent teacher conferences. If you have not already registered for conferences, please do so before Thursday. 

Harvest math

This morning we started with journals. We are working on creating detailed pictures to go with our writing. To help us, Ms. Boyer showed us a rubric we can use to help us decide if our picture is finished. Here it is:



We also talked about re-reading our writing before we share it with Ms. Boyer. She showed us a checklist we can use to help us check our work before we share it. This checklist is a "must do" for our grade 2 friends, and Ms. Boyer is helping the grade 1's to do this if they aren't quite sure about it yet.



In math each table group got a bin with some of our harvested vegetables in it. We had to sort them, count them, and make a graph of them. Once we are finished in our groups we will get together and add up all our numbers to get our total count for the harvest.

This afternoon we had finish up time, gym, and worked to finish up our portraits. They are looking so amazing!

We are coming home with a Parent Viewpoint Form. 

Harvesting

Today we harvested the garden! But, before that we had big buddies! We got to meet our big buddies and we read some books with them.

For gardening we worked in shifts and we divided up the job. Each class took one shift. The room 1 shift was in charge of carrots, and the portable was in charge of zucchinis. Our class had the potato shift. The jobs for our shifts were pickers who dug up the potatoes, runners who delivered the potatoes, and washers and dryers in the staffroom who made sure the potatoes were clean. Next week we are going to count the potatoes to see how many we have. Our estimate is: 100 potatoes!

When it wasn't our turn to garden we had a chance to finish up our insect centers. Lots of people were working to finish their puzzles and word searches.

Next week we will be doing some counting, graphing, and cooking with our vegetables!

It was a fun day!

First day of library!

This morning we had a chance to go to our last two insect centers. Tomorrow we will have some time to go back to centers we didn't finish and work on them. We will also be meeting our big buddies and harvesting the garden!!!

After recess and book time we spent some time reviewing and practicing recording numbers using tally marks. During our first two surveys Ms. Boyer had noticed that some of us weren't quite sure how to record using tally marks and some of us were making errors by either adding too many sticks to each bundle or making messy bundles that were difficult to count. Today we worked in partners to roll numbers on dice and practice recording them in tally marks. This will be an important skill to have for our next survey where we will be collecting even more data!

If you would like some more tally mark practice at home here are a few games Ms. Boyer found online:
https://www.turtlediary.com/game/tally-marks.html
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/data-handling

This afternoon was a bit different from our schedule the rest of the week. Our Thursday afternoons are our day to have computers and library. In computers we made sure everyone was able to log-in and we had a chance to explore the math games on abcya.com. In library Mrs. Kidd explained the expectations for library time and we had a chance to choose books. Our library day will always be on Thursdays so we need to remember to have our books returned by then.  This afternoon we also had music and gym. In gym we did some training for the Terry Fox Run and we played another round of hoop hop showdown. Here is a video of part of the game.

* Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be spending part of our morning outdoors. Please make sure you are dressed for the weather! If you would like to join us to harvest the garden please plan to arrive at about 10am. 

Insect centers, pictographs, and portraits

This is a reminder that the Welcome Back Bbq will take place on Thursday, September 13th, from 5pm - 7pm.  Due to the impending bad weather, this event will take place indoors. There are still many volunteer spots that need to be filled to make this event a success.  If you are able to commit to one of the tasks and /or shifts, please email Saya. Her contact information can be found in the BBQ email Mrs. Rennie sent out to all families today. 

Today we had insect centers. During sharing Senna shared the answer to Eli's question from yesterday! She did extra research at home to find the answer:

Eli's question: Why do drone bees die after they mate with the queen?
Senna's answer:


After Senna shared her answer we discovered that we had even more questions. Lawrence wondered why the endophallus would fall off and what they were giving to the queen? We also noticed that this is similar to what happens when a bee stings and its stinger stays behind and causes the bee to die.

Ms. Boyer was really impressed that we were doing such a great job researching, listening to our classmates, and then asking questions based on what we had found. She said that is exactly how real scientists learn and do their research.

In math today we used the data we gathered from our insect surveys to make an insect pictograph. A pictograph is a graph where you use pictures to show your information instead of lines or towers.

This afternoon we had some finish up time. We had to make sure our pictographs were finished to earn free choice. Lots of us were very excited because we were allowed to go on the iPads for our free choice. After that we had gym. We played a new game called Hoop Hop Showdown! Ask me to explain this game.

After gym we worked on our portraits. Today we focused on our eyes, noses, and mouths. We are really excited to share them with you at Parent-Teacher conferences!!

Centers!

This morning was our first day of our morning centers routine. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays we will always start the morning with centers. Often these centers will focus on literacy skills but this week they are all insect and bug centers. There are 5 centers: bug facts, bug puzzles, bug drawing, bug books, and bug wordsearch. We will have a chance to visit all the centers this week and learn about bugs in lots of different ways.

After we finished centers we shared some of the new things we had learned with our classmates. Cedar shared the fact that after drone bees mate with the queen bee they die.  Eli wondered why this happens? None of us know the answer yet, but there were a few theories. Aiden thought the drones were just so excited to become kings that they died from over-excitement! If anyone is able to find the answer they are invited to share it with the class!

After recess we did practiced our solo book time and then we moved on to math. In math we conducted our second survey. This survey was an "or" survey where we gave our participants two choices. This time we asked them to choose between 2 different insects. Tomorrow we will finish our surveys and graph our results.

This afternoon we continued to work on our portraits. Some of us were ready to move on to creating our eyes and noses. Ms. Boyer showed us some ideas for creating eyes and showed some of us how to make 3D noses!

Today was also a music day. Ask me to share what we learned today with Mr. O'Reilly!

If you have not yet returned your set of school forms that went home last week. Please do so ASAP. 

Week 2: Getting into our routines

This morning was our first Monday of the school year so we had a chance to try out some of our Monday routines that will happen all year. The first part of that routine is journals. Each Monday we will start the day by writing about our weekends. To make the job easier, it is always a great idea to have a conversation on the way to school about the weekend so that our ideas are fresh in our minds.

After recess we started another routine: book time. During book time we have a chance to look at books by ourselves and we work hard to build our reading stamina. For the grade 1's we talked about doing a word hunt for any small words you know and then using the pictures to tell the story. This means that we can "read" books even if we can't quite read all the words yet. For the grade 2's who are ready for chapter books they are invited to choose a book from our classroom library or may bring a book from home if they would like.

Then we had math. We created bar graphs to show the information we gathered in our hobby surveys last week. We made sure our graphs had labels, a title, and accurate towers that matched the information we gathered.

This afternoon we started with finish up time. This is the time for us to make sure our journals are completely finished and to finish any other work that we didn't finish last week. If we have all of our work finished we get to have some free time. Then it was time for gym. Our gym time is at 1:30 this year.

After gym we worked on our portraits. The goal for today was to finish our shirts and then start working on our hair if we had time. We used yarn, pipe cleaners, raffia, easter grass, and foam strips for our hair.

At the end of the day we talked about our classroom jobs. These are jobs we do at the end of the day to make sure our classroom is clean and ready for tomorrow. Each table group is in charge of one job. The jobs are: floors, desks, games carpet, supplies, and library.

Here is an important message from Mrs. Armour and Mrs. Saunders about running club:

Run Club is back! Starting this Wednesday, September 12th Mrs. Saunders and Mrs. Armour and any students between grade 1 - 6 are welcome to sign up. We will be running every Wednesday around the "Terry Fox loop" (one km). We will try and increase our stamina each week to get ready for the Terry Fox whole school run on Friday, September 28th. We will meet between 12:00-12:10 at the picnic tables with our lunches (time to go to the washroom and get a drink) to sign in and start running. We will eat together AFTER we run. We will stop running by 12:40 to make sure everyone has a chance to eat and cool down before the bell. Recording our laps will be a fun motivator to see how far we can run altogether.

Let's go run!

Fresh Air Friday: Entomology Study

Today was Fresh Air Friday. Today we started our Entomology study. Entomology is the study of bugs and insects. Today we did 3 different activities. We observed the anthills in the Whispering Woods, we caught bugs in the Natureground, and we did some insect stations in the learning commons.  Here are some of the things we discovered today:

Lawrence - If you disturb an anthill they move out of the anthill.
Leander - Some ants sleep 7 hours per day.
Aiden - Did you know that most grasshoppers have 5 eyes?
Liam - Did you know that ants have 6 legs, 3 body parts, and 2 eyes?
Nooray - Sometimes ants eat grass, but sometimes they don't.
Josie - Did you know that some ant colonies don't have a hill?
Taylor - When a grasshopper is picked up it spits a brown liquid that is commonly called "tobacco juice".
Inaya - I caught an ant in my bug jar
Lily - Worker bees are the smallest bees in the colony.
Kais - Dragon Flies are very fast.
Aadhya - Anthills are very big hills.
Karthik - Did you know that spiders have 8 legs?
Joachim - Did you know that spiders have an exoskeleton?
Senna - Did you know that queen bees are the largest bees?
Cedar - Did you know that once drone bees mate with the queen they die?
Jeffrey - Did you know that insects always have 6 legs?
Aksel - Did you know that ants work for 40 to 60 days?
Eli - Ants have burrows or tunnels like worms dig.


Have a great weekend!

Learning about our hobbies

This morning we spent some time drawing, writing, and sharing about our hobbies. We started by drawing a picture of our favourite hobby and then we played a game of hobby charades to learn about each other's hobbies. After that we each made a list of the hobbies we like to do and added it to our journals.

We also had our welcome back assembly. We acknowledged the land where our school sits, sang O Canada, sang our school song, and Mrs. Polski introduced all the teachers in our school. She also showed us a booklet of important information we will be bringing home for you today. 

After recess we finished up our hobbies list and then we did a hobby survey. We each chose our favourite hobby and surveyed our classmates to see how many other people like that hobby too. *Ask me about my survey question and my results*

After lunch we continued working on our collage portraits. Today we used fabric to make our shirts. There were lots of different fabrics to choose from and we are all looking very spiffy in our original designs! (Stay tuned for pictures once we are a little further along in the project)

Day 2: Getting to know each other

This morning we started by drawing a new picture for our journals. Today our picture was about our summer holiday. Then we wrote about our summer. The grade 1's tried to write 2 ideas and the grade 2's tried to write 5 ideas. Ms. Boyer was really impressed that the grade 1's were remembering to put finger spaces between all their words and were trying really hard to keep their work neat! She was also really impressed that the grade 2's were sounding out their words independently and were remembering to put periods at the end of each sentence!

After recess we had some book time and then we made a birthday graph. It is important for us to have a birthday graph in our classroom so we remember to celebrate everybody's birthday!

This afternoon we started a new project. We are making collage portraits. The first step was to choose our skin colour and cut out the shape of our head, neck, and shoulders.

Today we are coming home with an invitation to the Dr. Coffin Welcome Back BBQ! Please return your RSVP as soon as you can. 

A Great First Day!

We had a great first day of school! It is amazing to see how much some of us have grown over the summer (including Ms. Boyer)!

This morning we started by drawing pictures of ourselves as the beginning of our first journal entries of the year.  Here are a few examples of our great detailed drawing!!


After that we played a game to help us get to know our new classmates. In the game we had a chance to walk around the room while music was playing and then when the music stopped we had to find a dot to stand on with a partner. Then Mrs. Hamby read out something we needed to share with our partner. Some of the things we shared were: our names, our favourite ice cream flavours, our favourite sports, our favourite colours etc. Each time the music stopped we had to try to be on a dot with a different partner so that we had a chance to share with lots of different classmates.

After that it was time for recess. **Parent note: A few of our grade 1's weren't quite sure what parts of our lunch we should eat for snack and what parts we should save. If you could point that out for tomorrow it would make recess decisions a little bit easier**

After recess we had some book time with a friend, a story, and then we worked on starting to add some writing to go with our journal pictures. We brainstormed categories we might use when we write about ourselves like our name, age, favourite things, our families, and our pet. Once we had the categories the grade 2's went to try to write their sentences by themselves. The grade 1's stayed with Ms. Boyer and we came up with some sentences together that we can copy. We didn't have enough time to finish this writing so we will work on it again tomorrow.

This afternoon we made name tags to go at our coat hooks and then we had gym. For today we had a chance to do free choice during gym so we could visit with some of our friends in Mrs. Armour's class. Then we had music. It was great to see Mr. O'Reilly!

What a busy first day!!