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!

Guided Reading begins!

Today we started our guided reading groups! Hurray! Some of us are in the first group with Mrs. Armour at 8:45-9:05, and some of us work at our quiet centres (Literacy games, making bookmarks or word work on iPads), the second group is from 9:10-9:30. Some of us will go to read with Mrs. Hamby or Mrs. Boyer and some of us stay and read with Mrs. Armour. We are all excited to get reading together.

After guided reading it is straight to Gym. We are working on our quiet walking line. It is hard sometimes when we are excited to get to the gym, but we need to be good examples to the Kindergarteners who have gym right before us and are watching us!

It was Library day! Most of us remembered our books this week so we were able to sign out 2 books - we always like reading our new books! All morning we are reading and getting our home reading books exchanged too, so there is a lot going on.

A couple weeks ago we all tried guessing how many marbles were in a small jar and a large jar. Yesterday we discussed estimating and making a "good guess" and we counted the marbles in the small jar. There were 25. Five or six of us came close - Samantha had the best estimate at 21!
Today we talked about a "referent" something that we already know to help us with estimating something we don't know. We used our small jar of 25 as our referent to help us estimate the number of marbles in the large jar. A lot of us guessed 50 because it looked like the small jar was about half the size - but then when we counted, we found out there was about 100 marbles! We decided it was because the large jar was wider. Good mathematical thinking!

We also did our painting for our Primary Colour page. The first colours that make all the other colours are...ask us!

We did a desk clean to get ready for conferences. We hope you are excited to come and see some of our learning. Thanks to all the parents who have already signed up!

Parent/Teacher Conferences are on Thursday 4-8pm and Friday 9-12pm. See you then!

Monday

This morning we came into the Clubhouse and had to find our desks. We are now in 6 groups of 3. Ask us what colour group we are now in and if we can tell you if it is a PRIMARY or SECONDARY colour! We worked on Journal pictures before Gym and journal stories after recess. We are all trying hard to sound out our words and think of more details to make our stories more interesting.

After Gym, we all had white boards or sentence strips and markers and Mrs. Armour wrote seven letters on the board a, c, c, h, r, s, t. Then we put the letters together to make new words...14 of them starting with "at" and ending with "chart". Ask us if we remember what the "Wonder Word" was using ALL the letters. How many words can you make with those seven letters. We are going to try and do this a few times a week to help us learn how letter and sounds go together. We will try and get the "Wonder Word" before Mrs. Armour tells us at the end!

After lunch we had just started working on our Nose Hill posters when there was a fire drill! We did very well and Mrs. Polski said we were even faster than last time. It was a bit chilly, but we were glad it was quite nice outside.

We are starting Guided Reading groups tomorrow! So, our mornings will be busy getting our home reading books into the bucket, and getting to guided reading groups or centres. There will 3 centres that we will each get a turn going to during the week. We will need to look on the board to see where our name is, and figure out where we should be. It might take a few days to remember where to go, but Mrs. Hamby, Mrs. Boyer, and Mrs. Armour will help us and soon we will have it all figured out!

REMINDER: LIBRARY tomorrow. Please remind us to bring back our books.

Please remind us to read our Home Reading books one more time and then put them in our backpacks. Home Reading will be Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Parent/Teacher Conferences on Thursday 4-8pm and Friday 9-12pm. Please book online. 

Remembrance Day - We will remember.

Snowflakes, In Flander's Fields poem (rhyming words) and thinking about Peace

Wednesday

Green group (Birday, Ingmar, Malik, Max and Georgia) is helping with the Blog this week. We are all trying to give two ideas. Please remind us to be thinking of something musical we can bring in and share with the class (an instrument or a song).

We did a lot of cutting this morning to make a mountain of snowflakes - sometimes it is tricky to remember how to fold the paper and cut the right areas but we are getting more creative and independent in making small and large snowflakes to decorate our Clubhouse!

We played tag games in gym and voted on revenge tag (everyone is it and if you both tag at the same time, you play "rock, paper, scissors" to see who sits down) and "T" tag - this is played with 2 teams and if you get caught, you have to stand like a "T" until someone runs under your arms to free you. Some people are really good at tagging, so we have to run hard or in a pattern to get away.

We worked to find all the rhyming words in the poem In Flander's Fields. We worked together so the grade ones could practice printing, while the grade twos found all the rhyming words and highlighted them. Ask us if we remember any of the words that rhymed.

We started writing our own clues for our Guess Who game. The grade 2's are writing 8 clues and the grade 1's are writing 4 - unless they want a challenge and then they can write up to 8 if they want.

It was a MUSIC day today, so we practiced standing on the risers and singing Waltzing Matilda with just the words on the screen. Ask us if we can sing it and explain some of the "Australian" words like coolibah tree, matilda, billabong and jumbuck!

We are working on some POPPY ART for the Remembrance Day assembly. We were inspired by the artist W. Kandinsky so we used black paper for the background and made gradually increasing circles of different shades of red. If you google "Kandinsky circles" you will see our inspiration. You will see our art work up in the gym on Friday.

REMINDER: Home reading books coming home tonight! Please read with us and then send back our book and bag, so we can exchange them tomorrow. Some grade twos will have their books for longer.

Library was switched just for this week and we have it tomorrow - THURSDAY. If you forgot your book, please bring it back in the morning so you can check out some new ones.

Remembrance Day Assembly Friday at 10:45AM. Thank you for reminding us to dress nicely and act respectfully. We are so excited to share our song with you!

Retakes for anyone wanting them first thing Friday morning.

Have a great evening!

Smartie Math and Sharing

Tuesday

This morning the grade ones finished printing "L" and the grade twos worked on printing "In Flander's Fields". We didn't have Library today because there was a special group that was using it. Mrs. Kidd told us we could come on Thursday at 10, so we will be able to change our books. We always enjoy reading, so we still used this time today to read to each other or by ourselves.

After recess, we worked on our Nose Hill posters. We are trying to add extra details and make sure everyone in our group gets a chance to give ideas on what we need to make it better. Then we went in to meet with Room 1/2 to play a "Guess Who?" game. Mrs. Hamby, Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. Armour had all written clues and we took turns reading the clues and then guessing which teacher the clues were about. Some of us thought for sure we knew who it was, but it was tricky when we heard all the clues. We found out how much our teachers have in common. 

We are excited about writing our own clues and having our friends guess which clues are about us. We will try and think of clues that might be about more than one of us, so it will be harder to guess. (Hint: less about what we LOOK like, and more about what we LIKE to do)

We also started on a "PEACE" page in our art journal. We are thinking about what Peace LOOKs, FEELs, SMELLs, TASTEs and SOUNDs like. 

We watched a short video about what a graph is all about and how we can best represent our "data". Ask us about our Smartie Challenge graph.

Samantha shared her Xylophone today- we thought it sounded Peaceful. Birdy shared her favorite song - we ran out of time, so we just listened to it while we got ready for home. 

GREEN group is helping this week. Ingmar, Georgia, Malik and Max will be sharing. Max brought in his favorite book we are looking forward to reading it!

REMINDER: Remembrance Day assembly on FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10th at 10:45. We will be singing "Waltzing Matilda" and have been practicing in class and Mr. O'Reilly. Please remind us this is a solemn assembly and we need to be quiet and respectful. We should be dressed in nice clothes like we would wear if we were going to a nice restaurant or church. (Do not need to be fancy.)

Picture Retakes are also on Friday first thing so we have another reason to dress up:)

Home Reading program is starting Wednesday. Watch for book bags coming home in the next couple of days. If anyone can volunteer T/W/TH mornings, please email Mrs. Armour and she will send more information. THANK YOU!

Musical Sharing and Freeze Dance

Monday

Today is Monday so we started with our Journal pictures and writing. We used the questions, Who? Did What?, Where? and When? to help us add more details. Grade ones did printing "L" and Grade twos are printing out the words to "In Flander's Fields" so we can all learn the poem together.

During Gym time we had a practice lockdown. We all had to walk into the storage room and sit quietly and wait until the Constable came and unlocked the door. It seemed like a long time, but we did very well at being quiet! We know it is a good thing to practice, just like with a fire drill!

We read the book, What does Peace feel like? We are going to try and think about using our senses to explain Peace...how does it smell/taste/sound/look? Ask us what we think Peace is.

Math was fun because we got to use Smarties! We had to figure out how to sort them and show how many of each colour we had through pictures, words and number. We all had different ideas how to represent our Smarties and we all had fun eating them after.

Logan shared his violin with us and played the music from Star Wars! We are looking forward to Samantha and Birdy sharing something musical. We are learning how to be good listeners so we can ask good questions after each of our classmates share.

Thank you for being patient as we figure out what works best for our comings and goings. We are going back to being dismissed FROM THE PORTABLE at the end of the day. Apologies for any confusion. 

REMINDER: Library tomorrow. Please put your books in your backpack so you can choose new books on Tuesday!

There is a meeting for all parents interested in volunteering with the Home Reading Program tomorrow after school from 3:45-4:15. We plan to start this right away and will be reading and exchanging books every Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday. There will be a google calendar that you can connect with and sign up times that work for you. Thank you for all your help whenever it might work.

Thursday

Today was a busy day of putting on and taking off all our snow clothes and boots. We are trying to figure out the best way to go in and out of the Clubhouse when we have Gym, Lunch and Music. We are trying something new at Lunch and the end of the day. The Kindergarten hooks are free as they have all gone home at 11:30 so we will bring our coats, snow pants, boots, hats and mittens with our lunch into the school and hang them at the Kindergarten hooks. We thought it was a bit crazy because we are now in grade 1 and 2 but we are going to give it a try! It will be nice not to have to eat lunch wearing our coats and snow pants. We will get dressed to go outside just like everyone else when the bell rings. At the end of the day, we will put on our backpacks and come into the school to get all our snow clothes on and be dismissed from the Kindergarten doors. Please remind us to dress warm so we can have lots of fun at recess playing in the snow!

REMINDER: Fresh Air Friday tomorrow. We will be going outside so please dress warm with layers and snow pants, hats, mittens, and boots. We will get to have hot chocolate at recess and come inside for a bathroom and warm up break.

We are bringing home our "Lifetouch School Pictures" today. Everyone should have their own pictures and one classroom picture. The deadline to order is NOVEMBER 7th. You are encouraged to order online at www.mylifetouch.ca or send in the paper order with your child. If you would like your child to get RETAKES, they will be first thing NOVEMBER 10th.

Today we worked again on our Nose Hill posters. Ask us how we are working together as a group to share all our ideas. 

Shape Projects

Ask us about all the different kind of shapes we used. 

Ask us what faces, edges and vertices are.

Ask us about what we created.

Please notice all the details! 

Ak

A New Month - November 1st

Today we discussed bringing things to share and chose categories of what to bring. Logan threw the ball and hit "instruments/songs" so Emmaline and Gavin will bring something musical to share tomorrow and then Samantha and Logan will bring something to share on Friday because Navy is the special group this week. Next week, we will choose names from Green group.

During Word Work, Mrs. Armour wrote the start of a Topic sentence on the board...The day after Halloween is...then we worked as a whole class to come up with 3 detail and 1 closing sentence.

This was our last day to work on our Shape reflection, so we are bringing our shape projects home today and tomorrow. Ask us all about them and what shapes we used.

We worked on our Nose Hill posters - Mrs. Boyer printed all our groups pictures and we are remembering what we saw and some details about each picture. This is very good practice to work as a group and remember to listen to everyone's ideas.

We had music today and Gavin, Jared, Lucas are helping Mr. O'Reilly with the guitar part for the project, so they will go to the Music Room tomorrow after they eat lunch to practice. We realized there are only 3 more days of music before our Remembrance Day assembly on November 10th! So we will be listening to our song in the Clubhouse too during clean up and transition times to help us get in some extra practice!

November is here and with it came the cold! Please help us remember to dress warm with coat, hat, mittens/gloves and boots these days. If we have an extra sweater or sweatshirt to leave at school, that would help us stay warm when we go from the Clubhouse into the school for Gym, Library and Music so we don't have to take the time to put on our big coats.

Stay cozy!