Food Chain

Highlights
Today was Fresh Air Friday.  We started the day by visiting with our big buddies. They have been working on a big writing project called "Battle Bunny".  They were very excited to share their stories with us and we really enjoyed hearing them!

After that, we spent our day learning about food chains. We read a great story called Wolf Island that helped us to understand how all animals in a food chain are connected and the importance of keeping all the animals in balance to have a healthy ecosystem. Then we each tried to create our own food chain diagrams using photos of Nose Hill animals that Ms. Boyer had printed for us.  *Ask me to explain the terms herbivore, omnivore, carnivore, and decomposer!

Once we had finished our work and had a good understanding of food chains we went outside to play a food chain game in Whispering Woods. Some of us were herbivores, some of us were omnivores, and some of us were carnivores.  It was a really fun game!

Dates to Remember
March 2 and 3: Karen Gummo storytelling residency
March 4: Stuffy Day
March 6: We would like to go to Nose Hill for Fresh Air Friday. **PLEASE EMAIL MS. BOYER IF YOU CAN VOLUNTEER. WE WILL NEED AT LEAST 3 VOLUNTEERS FOR THIS TRIP**

In-Line Skating

Highlight
This week we are enjoying in-line skating with our Alien In-Line residency. We are learning how to prepare ourselves to skate by putting on our own safety equipment, and doing up our own skates. We are also learning how to skate and fall safely. Here are some of our thoughts about skating:

"I really liked it because I am getting better and better and faster and faster" ~ Marek
"I like doing the tricks." ~ Rane
"I like that we get to try to get better and have fun." ~Chrystal

We will have our last day of in-line skating tomorrow. It has been a great residency.

Dates to Remember
Monday March 2 - Karen Gummo storytelling residency begins
Wednesday March 4 - Stuffy Day

Solar car!

Highlights

On Thursday we were excited to welcome the University of Calgary's Solar Car team! 4 members of the team came and spoke to us about their solar car. The shared some of the design process with us and told us about the races that they will attend. After we listened to their presentation we had a chance to ask some questions. Here are a few of the great questions we asked:

1. Can you drive the car at night?
2. Why are the wheels so skinny?
3. How fast can the car go?

Please ask me to tell you the answers to these questions!


Today we continued our animal research by learning ways that animals survive in the winter. We talked about hibernation, migration, and adapting. After we talked about these ideas we went with our research groups to see what our animals do to survive the winter. We will be adding this information to our animal clue games next week.  Then we got ready to go outside to play camouflage! Before we went Ms. Boyer taught us a new rhyme about predator and prey animals. It is "Eyes in front, ready to hunt. Eyes on the side, ready to hide".  We learned that predator animals will look for movement to help them hunt so their prey have to learn to freeze so that they don't get caught. We used this idea to help us with our game. It was really fun!

Dates to Remember

Tues. Feb 25 Treat Day
Wed. Feb. 26 Art Club
Wed. Feb. 26 Pink Shirt Day
Feb. 24-27 Alien In-Line Skating. *Volunteers needed to help! Please email Ms. Boyer **
In-Line schedule for Room 2:
Monday: No in-line for Room 2
Tuesday: 9:30-10:20 AND 1:00-1:50
Wednesday: 1:50-2:40
Thursday: 8:40-9:30

Highlights

This week is a short week but we have a lot of exciting things going on!

In our writing time we are starting a new project to learn how to tell stories. Today we began by talking about setting. We will be using the shape cities we created before Christmas as the setting for our first story. We had a chance to add some extra details to our cities today to make them even more interesting settings for our stories.  Next we will start thinking about the characters for our stories.

In math we are continuing our pattern centers and we are also learning about a new number pattern each day with our daily mystery patterns. Can you figure out each of these patterns?

Yesterday our mystery pattern was:
0,2,6,12,20,30,42....

Today our mystery pattern was:
6,16,26,36,46...

This afternoon our first 4 groups presented their animal "Guess Who" games. It was exciting to see the work our classmates have done and to play the game! We will keep presenting the games tomorrow.

In gym we are completing the "Jungle Safari" obstacle course this week. It is challenging us to use our gymnastics skills, climbing skills, and problem solving skills.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to a visit from the U of C Solar Car team. They will be giving a presentation about their car and then we will have a chance to look at the car!

Dates to Remember

Tues. Feb 25 Treat Day
Wed. Feb. 26 Art Club
Wed. Feb. 26 Pink Shirt Day
Feb. 24-27 Alien In-Line Skating. *Volunteers needed to help! Please email Ms. Boyer **
In-Line schedule for Room 2:
Monday: No in-line for Room 2
Tuesday: 9:30-10:20 AND 1:00-1:50
Wednesday: 1:50-2:40
Thursday: 8:40-9:30

Happy Friendship Day!

Today was our friendship celebration in room 2! After centres and guided reading we had a chance to work on a really fun Valentine's craft called heartimals. We used coloured construction paper and created animals almost entirely out of heart shapes. They were very cute and made lovely decorations for our Valentine mailbags.  After recess we worked to finish our heartimals and got our mailbags all ready.

This afternoon we started by playing some Valentines bingo. When we got a "bingo" we were invited to choose a prize! We played until everyone had a chance to win and then we started our card exchange. It was really fun to see all the cards and treats that everyone brought. Some were store bought, some were home-made, ALL were lovely!


Then it was time for gym. This week was our week to use the large equipment for gymnastics. Today we focused on trying to keep our bodies strong and in control, just like real gymnasts. At the end of the day we cleaned out our desks (they were getting quite messy!) and got ready for our extra-long weekend!

Our First Animal Field Study!

Highlights

We have been working in groups to research local animals for our Guess Who? games. Today we used the knowledge we have gained from our research to help us conduct our first animal field study! Our field study question was: Could your animal survive in the Whispering Woods? We went outside in our groups and looked for evidence that our animals could (or could not) survive in the Woods. We took notes about habitat, food, sources of water, and signs of predators or enemies.  We will continue this field study next week by adding more information to our field notes and by sharing with our classmates.



After our snack break we got ready to play a new outdoor game called "Find My Family!" We talked about how animals find their families by making their animal call and then listened to some different animal calls we might hear in the Whispering Woods or on Nose Hill. After we listened to the calls we practiced making human versions of those sounds and then got ready to go outside. Once we were outside each player was given a slip of paper with their animal on it. Then everyone hid in the woods until Mrs. Hamby called "Find Your Family!". Then everyone started making their call and tried to find the other players making the same call.  It was really fun to pretend to be animals!

Dates to Remember
Tuesday Feb. 11 - School Council
Thursday Feb. 13 and Friday Feb. 14 - Teacher's Convention (No School)
Monday Feb. 17 - Family Day (No School)

Winter Walk Day!

Highlights

This week we are working to complete our family tradition writing. Most of us are finished and the rest of us are going to try to finish tomorrow. We are excited to put our work up on display for our friends to read!

In math we are working on our pattern centers. Before we started our center Ms. Boyer told us that soon we will be starting to study number patterns. She said that we will start having one number pattern challenge each day before our centers to get us thinking about number patterns. We started with some easy patterns like 2's, 5's, and 10's but then Ms. Boyer gave us a tricky one. Can you figure out this number pattern?
1,2,4,7,11,16

This afternoon we worked on our animal clue games. This week we have used books and videos to find information about our animals. We are getting ready to type up our clues and create our game posters!


After gym today we went on a winter walk. We started by walking with our big buddies and then we walked in the Whispering Woods. We found some neat animal tracks!



Dates to Remember:

Tomorrow - Fun Lunch
Tuesday Feb. 11 - School Council
Thursday Feb. 13 and Friday Feb. 14 - Teacher's Convention (No School)
Monday Feb. 17 - Family Day (No School)