Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

Hello families of the Clubhouse!

Our Clubhouse has been a bit like Santa's workshop this last week and we've hardly had time to sit down - but here is a quick look at what we've been doing. Have a wonderful, joyful, restful holiday and we will see you in 2018!! Enjoy the outdoors and lots of reading and family time!

Mrs. Armour for us all.

Coloured coffee filters and our Amaryllis growth

Monday

We realized we only have 3 and a half days to finish up our Festive trees and poems so we started right into our word work after Mrs. Armour read the book Cold Snap. It had a lot of great describing words in it like ears tingled, frosty cheeks, and dangling icicle. We discussed nouns being things we can see and touch like ears, cheeks and icicles. Describing words, or adjectives are those words that show us instead of just telling us about the noun. We brainstormed nouns for Winter/Christmas words for taste, smell and feel and then worked on our "special sentences" for our Winter Poem.

Remind us to look for describing words in our stories that we read and listen to.

Today in gym we played ringette. Girls played on one side, boys on the other. We put benches in the middle so the ring didn’t go to the other side. Hockey has the blade on the stick and ringette only has a straight pole.

This afternoon we continued tracing our hands to make a paper tree. We are using our poems about winter and Christmas to make ornaments, like “I hear Santa’s bells on the roof” or “I smell hot chocolate.” We are working on using interesting words to describe the noun.

Green group is helping with blog this week. Our amaryllis plant grew 10cm over the weekend!! We think having a south facing window is a good thing for plants.

Tomorrow is Christmas/Festive Hat day and Library and Home reading

Predator or Prey Game

Fresh Air Friday - Food Chain

Today we started with centres and watched a short video on herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. Then we joined Room 1/2 to compare our amaryllis plants. They are both growing like crazy, but ours is a bit behind. Some of us are predicting that Room 1/2's plant will bloom next week! We left our amaryllis plant in the Room 1's south facing window, so hoping it will be a good growing weekend!

Together we brainstormed about what kind of animals live on Nose Hill and then discussed what herbivores, omnivores and carnivores need to eat to survive and which animals would be in which category. Then Mrs. Boyer, Mrs. Hamby and Mrs. Armour went over how to play the predator/prey game and handed out red, yellow and green pinnies. Ask us what colour we were and what we could "eat."

After indoor recess, we all went outside to play. The three teachers were "Mother Nature" and we had to look for the "food/water" (pennies) stations hidden in Whispering Woods. It was really fun. Some of us learned being an animal (especially a herbivore) is hard work! We learned that being "stealth" is really important in survival.

A couple more people achieved 6 stars and were able to choose something from the Star box. Our marble jar is almost full - we are shining stars!

We are still collecting things for "Fill a Sock" campaign until Wednesday - please check the school website for more details

Have a great weekend!

REMINDERS for next week:
Monday - Lego club at lunch
Tuesday - Festive Hat day 
Wednesday - Dress like an elf 
Thursday - Polar Express Day (wear your pjs) HALF DAY - done at noon

Hands into Trees...

Thursday

Today the grade one’s finished printing the letters of the alphabet, X and Z and we had a celebration clap!

In music we are working on rhythm, pitches and melody using our hands and voices.

We played hockey in the gym. Girls played on one side of the gym, boys on the other side. We used new hockey sticks and cones.

We wrote a letter to Mrs. Polski to ask her to come and listen to our survey results. Jared and Georgia delivered the letter but Mrs. Polski wasn’t available so we left it with Mrs. Rennie. We hope she will be available to come to the Clubhouse next week.

We are making our trees with our hands. We discovered if we fold the paper and cut out our hands it looks like a butterfly!

All three yellow group members are away so we all helped with the blog today!

Tomorrow we will be playing the game "Predator/Prey" in the Whispering Woods discovering the needs of plants and animals, herbivores and carnivores. Even though the weather has been unseasonably warm, please remind us to dress warm in layers with hats, coats, mitts and boots.

Wednesday

Today we started with our Festive centres and guided reading. Some of us made snowmen with buttons, yarn and carrot noses - very cute and fun!

In gym we practiced our "puck control" with floor hockey sticks moving the "soft puck" around the cones, with a goal at the end to try and score. We had teams of 3 or 4. 

We did a Wonder Word today with the letters A, A, Y, S, W, L. Can you guess what the word is that uses all the letters? A lot of us are guessing it and coming up with words before Mrs. Armour gives us clues now! We discussed how the letters "ay" can make a lot of words and also sound the same as "eigh" but there are only a few words that have the 4 letter A sound like neigh, weigh and eight!

Most of the grade ones have only two letters left to print! X and Z and then we will be done the whole alphabet. The grade twos are reading Winter and Christmas books and writing about the beginning, middle and end, or favorite part of the story.

We started making our Hand Pine/Christmas Trees today. Ask us how we are making them and what colour background we chose. 

Reminders: We are hoping to walk to Nose Hill for Fresh Air Friday, but we need at least 3 volunteers so we can be safe. If you are available please email Mrs. Armour or let the office know. Thank you!

Looking ahead to next week: Fun Festive Days - Tuesday 19th Wear a Festive Hat (Santa, reindeer, red or green) Wednesday 20th Dress like an Elf (red, green, white) Thursday 21st is a HALF DAY and Polar Express Day (wear your PJ's and come drink hot chocolate!)

Treat Tuesday

Thank you so much to all who brought treats to share with Dr. Coffin family today! I apologize if there was any confusion around bringing a treat for Treat Day and bringing a "taste of home" to share with our class and talk about how this food is important to your family. The timing was a little confusing! We are all enjoying the snacks whenever they come.

Today grade 1's continued working on printing. We are almost done the whole alphabet and are excited to move on to combing letters into families and more words. Did you know that the sentence,
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.  has all 26 letters of the alphabet? This is a great sentence to practice at home to see which letters are easy and which are tricky and need more work.

Grade 2's have been printing days of the week, months of the year and number words one to twenty. We have been trying to print them from memory and are doing well. We want to be able to write the date independently in our journals and writing. 

For math grade 2's are working with Ms. Boyer on the computers learning to how make a graph and discover how to read the data.
Grade 1's are taking our surveys and discovering who would like to have our information. What was the purpose of our questions? We are writing a letter to see if we can meet with the recess supervisors and let them know what we found out. We are also learning to read graphs and getting information from them. Today we read a graph about "favorite winter sports". Guess which one was the favorite?

Our new centres are festive for the next 2 weeks! We can create and write cards, make a snowman or do a Santa picture puzzle.

We are making decorations with coffee filters by coloring them with markers and then adding just a bit of water - they are looking quite beautiful!

We are also working on "stretching our sentences" to make super descriptive sense sentences about winter. "I see snow." becomes "I see glittery snow falling on a sparkly, friendly snowman."

Tuesday afternoons are a bit long without music, so we are scheduling some computer "Mathletics" time - this is time to work on our numbers and patterns. We might need some reminders that we can work on our avatars and "live mathletics" at home.

There is so much going on it is hard to sit down to write a blog and get our regular jobs done. Sorry we have missed a few days again.

Today was library and home reading. Thank you for reminding us to read with you every night and then sending our home reading back tomorrow.

We are looking forward to Music Wednesday and Thursday.

We are hoping to go to NOSE HILL for FRESH AIR FRIDAY. If you are available to volunteer - please send Mrs. Armour an email. We will be starting around 9 and plan to be back around 11:30-11:45.

Thank you!!

Here is a picture of the book we read today, along with a sample of our "colour match challenge".

Keep observing the colors all around you! Have a great weekend!

Thursday

Wow - it is the end of the week already! We are looking forward to FESTIVE EVENING tonight from 6-8pm to share fun time of music, crafts, food and visiting. We are excited to share our song Winter Fun! with everyone too.

Mrs. Armour was away on Wednesday, so Mr. Ogilvie came to teach us again. We worked hard practicing graphs with dice and tallying. Mr. O always has great ideas to help us learn!

Today we started hockey games during gym time. We will use soft "q-tip" sticks while we practice passing and controlling the ball so everyone can be a part and have fun.

We used all the things we know about colour today to "create a match" from a "paint chip" Mrs. Armour read us a book called, SKY COLOUR, which was about a girl who wanted to paint the sky blue, but there was no more blue paint. She wondered and wondered and watched the sky (two GREAT things to do as artists and scientists - wonder and observe!) and then figured out the sky can be many other colors besides blue! Then Mrs. Armour gave us each a paint chip and we had to try and mix the right colors to match it. It was fun to try and decide what colour to add and mix. Most of us tried 3 or 4 colors.

Next week we will finish our portraits and do another colour experiment.

Please remind us to read our HOME READING books and return on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so we can get new ones.

Thank you to Colin and Lily for sharing food with us this week! Next week is GREEN group's turn. (Malik, Max and Lucas) Thank you for sharing a NUT FREE taste of something important to your family.

Reminder: PD day tomorrow for teachers only. HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Monday

Today we worked on Journals during Guided reading and after Gym. It is a good thing to talk about what we did on the weekend for some of us because that helps us remember. We are trying to write more and think about one topic with added details.

During Gym, we practiced all the things we have learned during basketball unit. We had 4 stations - dribbling high and low (control), chest pass against wall (focus passing and catching), shooting hoops (aim), and "boxing out" keeping our ball from opponents. Tomorrow we will play some mini games to practice all of these at once! We have all improved at controlling those basketballs!

After Lunch, Mrs. Armour showed us a brown paper bag that we are going to use for a book to show so many different things about ourselves. Our portraits will be the cover. Today we discussed what is important ABOUT us (things we can't change) like what we look like, where we were born, our family...and what is important TO us (things we like, our favorites) like our hobbies, pets, food, celebrations. We printed them and created "bubbles" around them and then glued them beside our practice portrait in our art journal. This will help remind us what we want to include in our book.

This week Orange group (Jared, Carmen and Madalynn) are helping with Blog, Red group is organizing shelves, Yellow group is responsible for the Book bins, Green group is recording our Amaryllis growth, Blue group is cleaning desks and Purple is cleaning floors at the end of the day.
Thank you for doing your jobs and helping keep our Clubhouse tidy!

We forgot to choose our "Share Category" on Friday, so Tessa threw the ball and it hit on FOOD. So...this month everyone can bring in something that is special to your family to share (nut free please and thank you! If your special food includes nuts - just share that with us - "usually this has nuts in it, but we left them out to share")
Because there is only 3 weeks in December, we will have one group sharing each week and then everyone can have a chance to bring something for our celebration on the 20th/21st.

Purple group (Georgia, Lily, Colin) can bring something to share this week. Thank you for sending something that is SPECIAL to your family. You just need to bring a "taste" for everyone. Be ready to SHARE why the food is important to your family.

TUESDAY IS LIBRARY

TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY home reading books.

THURSDAY is FESTIVE EVENING - thank you to those who have for returned your forms.

Fresh Air Friday - Searching for Animal Clues

On Friday we were Photographers, Cartographers (Maps), Statisticians (Tallying) searching for, keeping track and mapping where we found animal clues of their homes, their scat, their tracks and any fur/feathers/bones.

Winter Fun Song for Festive Evening - Please sing along!

Shining and Caring...

We are working towards a celebration party by "Shining and Caring" See our stars hanging in the classroom and how we can make our stars shine brighter! Once our stars are shining bright with 6 colour stars...time for a celebration! We will do a survey about what kind of snack to bring. We are hoping we can have this celebration on December 20th or 21st!

Amaryllis report, sharing songs and Lego challenge

Thursday - Last day of November!

This morning we did guided reading and went to the centre we hadn't done yet. A lot of us liked the "Lego challenge" Ask us what we built. In guided reading we usually read our books together one day, then by ourselves or with a partner another day. If we have guided reading for four days in a row, we then have a couple of days to write and draw the important ideas in the book. Ask us about our books that we are reading and what new words we have learned to read and write.

We had a short gym time today because of the Coffin Cares assembly. We sang the school song and then Mrs. Polski had some students stand who have been showing the qualities of a good citizen - respecting yourself, respecting others and respecting the environment. Some of the older students did a little skit about remembering to put our "one use snack wrappers" in a special box - not in the landfill or blue boxes. We need to decorate a box for the Clubhouse, so we put our trash in the right place. Some of us thought the assembly was a little long, but we sat and listened well.

The grade ones tried to get caught up on their printing with the letters "p" "r" and "n" Ask us some if we can remember some words that start with those letters or have those letters in the word. Colin thought of "backscratcher" for the letter "r" because he sounded it out and heard two "r" sounds!

We worked on making a graph from our survey questions and tried to get all the steps of numbers, categories and title in the right place. We learned that the numbers go on the "Y" axis and the categories on the "X" axis.

We decided it would use too much brain power to work on our portraits, so we did our "shade" colour adding just a little bit of black. Then we started a page in our Art Journal called "what we know about colour".

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday! Remind us to dress in layers - we will be outside investigation signs of animals. We will be in teams as photographers, cartographers and statisticians.

Quite a few of us forgot our home reading today, but we still had a chance to read. Please remind us to put our home reading in our backpacks, so we can choose one or two new books for the weekend.

Tuesday Treat Day

Today was Treat Day! Thanks to Room 2 for supplying the yummy snacks. We started the day with guided reading and centres. The new centres are "Making Words", Lego challenge, and iPads (math or word work). We can also make a "Word Spacer" which will help us with our printing. Ask us how to make one using popsicle sticks and googly eyes!

We practiced controlling the basketball in Gym. We practiced dribbling high and low with a "spider" hand vs. a flat hand. A few of us got bounced in the nose - those basketballs hurt! A few of us got to share our skills. When we wait respectfully, there is more time for sharing.

For math, we learned what an "opinion survey question" is. We brainstormed ideas of what would be a meaningful question and came up with a few like "snack choices for a party or treat day" "activities for free choice" and "lunch ideas for Fun Lunch". Then we had to write FOUR choices and ASK everyone and keep track of who we asked by writing their name on our sheet. There are a lot of steps! Wednesday and Thursday we will ask our survey question, then transfer our data to a graph.

We drew our good copy portraits. We took our time and looked in mirrors. It's fun to see all the different faces. Then we colored them with realistic colors of our skin and eyes and hair.

Thanks to LUCAS and MADALYNN for sharing their songs today.

Tessa, Gavin and Arthur helped with the blog today - thank you!

Today we had free choice if we had finished our printing, survey questions and portraits. Mrs. Babcock gave us a very cool snakes and ladders from India made of cloth and leather.

Thursday is COFFIN CARES assembly at 10:00 am. We will focus on what it looks like when we care for each other.

NEXT THURSDAY DECEMBER 7th from 6-8pm is our FESTIVE EVENING. A sign up information sheet came home today. 

Monday

This morning Mrs. Armour had an appointment so Mr. O was in to help us. We did guided and reading and journals first because it was Monday. Randy Bottle (Saa'Kokoto) came to tell us another story about being respectful and treating everyone with kindness.

We had mirrors to look at ourselves closely and practice sketching eyes, noses and mouths today. Tomorrow we will work on our good copy self portrait. We learned about TINT and how we add just a little black to make colors shades darker and white to make colors shades lighter. We don't need to add much black or everything turns black!

Arthur, Tessa and Gavin will be helping with the blog this week.

Ingmar, Malik, Jared, Madalynn and Lucas can share something musical this week.

REMINDER: Tuesday is LIBRARY and TREAT DAY. Please return books and bring 25 cents if you would like to buy a snack at recess.

 Save the evening of December 7th 6:00-8:00pm for our Festive Evening. A notice is coming home tomorrow with all the details.

Fresh Air Friday

What a beautiful day for Fresh Air Friday! We were honoured to have Elder Randy Bottle return to Dr. EW Coffin today and excited to have Saa'Kokoto (Randy's Blackfoot name - ask us how to say it!) come to the Clubhouse and share stories with us. We learned that his people, the Blackfoot, are called the Wolf people and they call the Milky Way, the Wolf trail. Animals and colours are also very important to them. Animals like the horse, buffalo, eagle and primary colours plus black and white are painted on their Teepees.

We also went outside and played Camouflage in Whispering Woods. We realized that wearing colours like black, grey and brown helped us blend in better than pinks and reds!

We learned that there is still a lot of colour to find even in winter. We played Rainbow chip hunt. Mrs. Armour had a bag of paint chips that she gave us and then we had to go and find something that closely matched that colour. 

When we went back inside we read the story Snow Tree. At first, the animals thought the whole world of colour was covered in white then all the animals brought something colourful from nature that reminded them of something else (red berries reminded them of all the flowers and fruits).

Have a great weekend!

REMINDERS: Home reading books can be enjoyed all weekend. We exchange them on T/W/TH.

Lego club for grades 1 and 2 is Mondays at Lunch time recess.

Tuesday, November 28th is TREAT DAY. Bring 25 cents to buy a snack at recess.

Tuesday is also LIBRARY DAY. Remind us to bring back our books so we can choose new ones.

Ingmar, Madalynn, Lucas and Jared are welcome to bring something musical to share with us any day next week. They can also share a picture or youtube song.

Please reserve Thursday, December 7th from 6-8pm for Dr. Coffin's FESTIVE evening. For more info go to the school website.

Colour and portraits

Chinook brings warm winds...

Wednesday and Thursday have been busy, full afternoons with practicing and recording for Mr. O'Reilly and the CBC music contest. We have learned what real life musicians go through when they are rehearsing and recording and filming. It is a lot of waiting and we did really well practicing patience and singing and playing along.

Thanks to those who have shared musically with us this week. Trinity, Tessa and Carmen shared their harmonicas and Colin sang a song - "Star light, Star bright." We just have next week left to share something musical, so if you haven't shared and want to, please do that next week.

We painted our colour wheels today with the TERTIARY colors. Did you know that the primary colour comes first when you combine a primary and a secondary colour? (Red-purple, or yellow-orange). Ask us about the other colors.

We also worked on our self-portraits and most of us are done our practice portrait. We will discuss our features and get ready for our good copy next week.

Today, we read the book Thunder Boy Jr. about a boy and his name. Ask us to finish the sentence "I once.....so maybe my name should be....." If you know a story about our name or why you gave us our names, please tell us so we can share with the class next week.

Tomorrow is FRESH AIR FRIDAY. Please remind us to dress for the weather. Some of us had lots of fun outside, but got pretty wet and dirty. Thank you to everyone who washes our clothes!!

Tuesday

Today we worked on our surveys, asking everyone our questions with four choices, and then we used the colored cubes to show that we understand our tally marks. Tomorrow we will work on our graphs to show our new data.

Grade 1's printed the letter Y with a "short slide" and a "long slide" line. Some of our "Y" words were yacht, yoyo, yay and yogurt.

In gym, we are starting into the basketball-type games, so practicing our "chest pass" and catching. We stood inside hoops to give us a target and a focus point. We all stood in a circle. It was hard and fun. We also threw our balls against the wall and tried to catch them. This is really good practice for catching!

We learned how to draw self-portraits in pencil today. We folded our paper in half long ways and then sideways. Then we drew our eyes on each side of the middle line. When we divided up the bottom half, our mouth was on that line. This is our practice portrait before we work on our good draft next week. Ask us to look in the mirror and carefully observe our eyes, nose and mouth.

Monday, November 20th

Did you know that it was International Children's Day today? Here in the Clubhouse we did our guided reading groups and journals. The time goes by fast, so we needed time to work on our journals again at the end of the day. Some of us thought it was a long time to write!

Today in Gym we played a game called Hoop Ball. It helps us work on our accuracy for throwing and catching. Everyone stands close to a hula hoop and someone else tries to throw it in the hoop and then you have to try and catch it. It was fun.

We did some more work on our graphs, reviewing how to use a ruler and follow the squares to make our graphs nice and clear and neat. We will be coming up with new survey questions that have four choices tomorrow.

We painted our secondary colors today with our fingers. First, we put a dab of red on our page and then a dab of blue beside it and then we put a dab of blue beside that and mixed it with red and it changed to purple! So it looks a bit like a number sentence...red + blue = purple. Ask us what other colors we mixed.

We had a special treat today. Mrs. Polski came in and brought us some books. We all got one that is coming home in our backpacks. Mrs. Polski read the first half, but we are excited to read the rest of it. Please read with us tonight. This is a special project from the TD Bank group and Canadian Children's Book Centre. It is called Good Morning, Canada. Some of us looked on the back cover and discovered there are three more books in the series. Maybe we can find them in the library.

Tomorrow is Home reading and LIBRARY. Please remind us to read tonight and then put our bags and books into our back pack, so we can exchange them tomorrow. Thank you!

REMINDER: Wear a mustache for Movember on Wednesday. This is optional but a fun event put on by our Spirit Club.
Fun Lunch Thursday.

Colour, Counting and Cupcakes!

                  Thanks for sharing the cupcakes and Happy Birthday to Georgia today!

Wednesday

Today we did new centres - they were fun! We are enjoying making bookmarks with tassels, letters and stickers, playing literacy games and word work on the iPads before and after guided reading.

We played Bench Ball in gym - it is a little bit like dodge ball in reverse! You are trying to pass the ball to players on your bench while the other team is deflecting the balls. If your players catch the ball that you passed, you get to go join them on the bench. You are trying to be the first team with all your players on the bench. It took a little while to explain the rules, but once we started it was really fun and we had good practice throwing and catching.

For math, we discussed how to ask a "yes/no" question - ask us what our question was. Then we wrote our question on our sheet and went around the class asking and keeping a "tally". Ask us to show you how to count 3, 8, and 11 with tally marks. Tomorrow we will turn our tally marks (our data) into a graph. Ingmar said he enjoyed this activity because he likes to ask questions over and over again!

After lunch we wrote our title for Secondary Colours in our art journal. Tomorrow we are hoping to paint. Mrs. Armour had 6 bottles and mixed all the primary colors to make the three secondary colors. It was exciting!

Ingmar, Lily, Tessa and Trinity helped with the blog today. Most of us thought our day was good.

This week has been busy and we have forgotten about our musical sharing. Next week, Tessa, Trinity, Carmen and Colin are invited to bring something musical to share with us!

Tomorrow afternoon we will be getting all our learning pieces together to share with you during interviews. We are looking forward to it!

REMINDER: Please read with me my Home Reading book tonight and send it tomorrow for a new one for the long weekend.

Parent/Teacher conferences Thursday 4-8pm and Friday 9-12pm. There is no school Friday for students. Thank you to all the parents that have signed up online!