Monday

Happy Monday! A little sun, a little rain and everything is turning green for May! Thank you for sharing your beautiful and special art for the month of April! Look at the pictures below to see some of our art!
 We are now going to be sharing (talking about) movies we have seen like we are Movie Reviewers - what we thought was interesting, our favorite part, characters (who all the people or animals are), setting (where and when it takes place) and how many stars out of five we would give it (Yes! Loved it! 4 or 5 stars, It was okay 2 or 3 stars). It is always helpful to practice speaking at home with our families and they can give us tips about what to add and how to say it clearly with our "speaker voice". Ingmar, Kasia, Madalynn and Lucas's group can be ready to share this week. (If it doesn't work this week, we can always find another time!)
We got our new jobs today - Ingmar, Kasia, Madalynn and Lucas are helping with blog this week! Ask me what my new job is and what I need to do at the end of the day to help keep our classroom neat and tidy.

We wrote in our journals today and Mrs. Armour reminded us that we are almost in grade 2 and 3! so we should be challenging ourselves to write more with exciting details and description. Grade 2's should be 8-10 sentences and grade 1's 4-5 sentences. Editing our work is really important so we try to read out loud to a buddy to see if it makes sense and we can add anything else.

We had a new math problem with wheels and legs. Ask me how I figured it out and if I had any problem spots. We need to show pictures, number and word sentences. If we just show the answer, we can't "see" how our brains are working as well.

We did more relays in gym today using bean bags to balance and throw into hoops. Ask me how my frog jump looked and how my balance was! We are hoping to be outside for gym whenever the weather is warm now!

We added more details to our animal research books (we are learning interesting facts about everyones animals as we all share "Did you know?" facts about habitat, food, family, appearance, predators...and then we could work on our dioramas. Tomorrow we will start to work on our animal out of plasticine!

TOMORROW IS LIBRARY 

WEDNESDAY IS HATS ON FOR MENTAL HEALTH - wear your hat if you have one!

FRIDAY, MAY 25th all the grade 1/2's will be going to Nose Hill with Sakokoto. If there are any parents available to volunteer, we would love to have you!

Fresh Air Friday

What a beautiful day! We enjoyed a special all school visit from Sakokoto in the learning commons this morning. Ms. Boyer thanked him for coming back to Dr. Coffin school for the next five Fridays and presented him with a gift of tobacco and a feather thanking him for sharing his wisdom. Sakokoto shared a old story about the ice melting in the Elbow and Bow river during another late spring in May. Ask me if I remember what he said the ice looked like as it stood upright in the river and what it sounded like!

We added colour to our school sketch and some of us found a timeline on the sign and wrote down some of the facts to help us later. A few of us were weeding the garden learning the difference between grass and plants - everything looks green right now!

After indoor recess we watched a short video about bird songs and how to identify them. It was called "Bird Song Hero" and you can find the link at www.allaboutbirds.org

We then got our binoculars and citizen science books and went for a bird exploration hike. Ask me if I heard or saw any birds. We were very excited to see so many butterflies! So many signs of spring!

Mrs Armour went for a walk by her house the other day and found some animal evidence! What do you think might have happened?

Kasia shared special art that her sister had painted for her when she was little. Thanks Kasia!

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the Spring Dance and Carnival!

Thursday

Today was a beautiful day for our volunteer tea! Thank you volunteers! If you weren't able to make it, please check out this link to our performance of "All You Need is Love!" We all think we did pretty great! Mrs. Armour will post some pictures soon.

https://youtu.be/gYDUBT_-NP4

If for some reason the link does not work, you can check out Room 2 (Ms. Boyer's) blog where it is posted.

Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday and we are excited that Sakokoto (Randy Bottle) is returning to tell us some more stories! We also will get to use the binoculars again and see how many birds we can see and identify. We are hoping to discover how to focus on the wing size, length of leg, colour and beak.

We did some more word work with "ig" and "ing" and tried to add some more details and labels in our animal research booklet.

Today it was so nice we went outside quite a bit. We learned a little more about the school and how to do a timeline. Then we went outside the front of the school and made a little sketch. We had gym outside and played soccer, basketball and fruit salad. After our great performance for the volunteers we had some more outdoor time - it feels like we skipped spring and jumped right into summer!

Thanks to Georgia, Carmen, Trinity and Malik for helping with blog. We had tea today with Mrs. Armour.

Friday is SPRING CARNIVAL and FAMILY DANCE from 6-8pm.

Next Friday, May 4th our friends from CPAWS are returning and we will be going for a bird walk. IF YOU ARE AVAILABLE TO VOLUNTEER (9-11:30) to join us on our walk - please let Mrs. Armour or the office know, we would love to have you!

Windy Wednesday!

Hi! We are loving this warm, spring weather - but it changes quickly so thank you for sending us with a coat or sweater. We did have a fire drill yesterday and did fantastic - we all made it out of the school quickly and quietly in under 60 seconds! Well done everyone!

This morning we worked on PRINTING- the grade ones printed "ig" words and some "no excuse words" ( at, be, this, have). Grade twos worked on "ing" endings. We had to decide which rule to follow - does it have an "e"? Drop it then add "ing" Does it follow the CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant pattern like the word jog or let?) Then we double the last "c" and add "ing" No e? No cvc? Just add the "ing"! We tried to make rhymes to help us remember!

We had an assembly today hosted by the green team.  Everyone on the compost, recycle, landfill and one-use wrappers had a little commercial to remind us what to do with our food and wrappers after we eat them. Ask me where we put our banana peels, granola bar wrappers and yogurt containers!

We were all excited to hear Dr. E.W. Coffin has been one of five schools chosen to get SOLAR PANELS! A man from the company called Sky Fire Energy told us all about solar panels - ask me what I remember and where they put them. You can check out their website below.

http://www.skyfireenergy.com

MATH - we are working on math problems - little stories that have a problem with numbers that we have to solve. First, it was the hunter and the animals. Yesterday we had one about the Bird Sanctuary Ask me about how many wings and legs we had to find. Today we did a new math problem. Some of us finished and some of us did not but we had fun. It was all about bears and wheels. The three things we have to show is 1. pictures 2. math sentence (4+4+4=12). word sentence (There was one deer, one muskrat and 2 chickadees. Altogether there was twelve legs.)

In gym we have 5 teams and ran relays with dice, hoops, poof balls and rackets. We thought of new ways to move every time.

After lunch we had quiet reading or finish up time, practiced our song for tomorrow's tea and then had MUSIC.

After music we worked on our dioramas. We are trying to include plants, shrubs and trees that grow on Nose hill like buck brush, rose hip, wild sage, willow, aspen. We are thinking of what our focus animal's habitat would look like.

TOMORROW IS VOLUNTEER TEA 2-3:30PM in the Learning Commons. We thought it would be nice if we wear spring colored clothes, but we do not need to be fancy!

FRIDAY, APRIL 27th from 6-8pm is FAMILY DANCE and SPRING CARNIVAL. 

Looking ahead - Citizen Science will be back to work with us on Friday, May 4th, for Fresh Air Friday. 

Friday, May 18 is a non- instruction day and Monday, May 21 is Victoria Day. There is no school Friday or Monday for students. 

Wednesday, June 6th is our Heritage Park field trip.

Inglewood Bird Sanctuary in Pictures

                                             Gathering to hear instructions for our day

Schedule for the day

Muskrats and Beavers - do you know the difference?

                                   Birds, birds, birds - Ask me what facts I learned today!

                                       All about wild cats and dogs - what did you discover?

 Ungulates - did you know this means "hooves" Do you know the difference between horns and antlers?

                                   What did you discover about Polar, Black and Grizzly Bears?

 Our task was to draw an animal or bird (we could imagine our own!) and write about its adaptations.

 Off on our adventure through the Bird Sanctuary? Did you know Sanctuary means "safe place"?

                                                                   A magpie nest!

                                                            Evidence of a beaver!

We almost missed Mama Goose on her nest on the right! 

                      We discovered a "kill site" Evidence of of some predator and it's prey.

 We were hoping to observe a red-winged blackbird around this wetland and cattails but didn't spot one this time!

Sunny Wednesday

Today a few of us were writers and performers and wanted to share our "Emoji stories" or perform our songs after centres. We are learning to create and write stories using little pictures for ideas. Ask me what centre I chose to work at today!

For Math, Mrs. Armour read the story "1 Hunter" and then our challenge was to find out how many animals there were altogether. We had to add 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 and then -1 because the Hunter ran away at the end! Ask me if I got the answer and how I figured it out.

Dioramas - We painted our shoe boxes yesterday to show the background of Nose Hill and some of us finished up today. Everyone has a shoe box now - thank you to those who brought extras! We will be adding details over the next few weeks and keep playing, "Did you know?" (facts about our animals) to make sure we have all the details in our research and become experts of Nose Hill plants and animals!

We went on a "stealth search" in the school to see if we could find a match for a picture Mrs. Armour handed out. Ask me who we found and if I remember anything about him! (See picture below for a clue!) We were so busy writing about the man, we forgot about our gym time - we have been trying out the Bouldering wall and yesterday played a game where we had to try and touch all the "puff balls" Mrs. Armour had put on the hand holds. Ask me if I remember 3 rules for the wall.

We played "Did you know?" before Music and then cleaned up and went outside for our Gym time today at the end of the day. 

Just a reminder FRIDAY is a NON-INSTRUCTION DAY. If you haven't signed for Face to Face conferences Thursday 4-8pm or Friday 8-12pm, please do so we can share all our learning with you!

An idea for Friday - free family play at NOSEHILL LIBRARY at 4:30pm performed by Calgary Young People's Theatre. You can check this website for more information www.cypt.ca

Inglewood Bird Sanctuary field trip on Monday, April 23rd. Thanks so much! Everyone has sent back their forms!!

Volunteer Appreciation Tea on April 26 from 2 pm to 3:30 pm

 Starting to paint our backgrounds for our Dioramas

 Madalynn sharing her painted horse in beautiful Lavender!

 Arthur sharing his origami frog that turns into a bird, and a snake with fangs!

 Lily sharing her art - a feathered unicorn!

 Here is our Math challenge - can you figure it out? Don't forget to subtract the hunter - he ran away!

 Some of us needed to see all the animals and double check our answer.

 After we completed the challenge - we played "race to 100" to practice our addition

 Some of us showed our learning with colored cubes

 The yellow cube represents the hunter running away!

 Do you recognize this man?

 We found him!

 Now we are adding some facts about him in our "All About Me" book.

How many of these facts did you know?