What a Learning Celebration Day!!

Wow! Great job everyone!! We are so proud of all the hard work we did to share so many things about what we have learned about animals, plants and history of Nose hill! Here are a few photos during our rehearsals. Thank you to all the family and friends that came and shared our assembly and our dioramas back in the classroom! Phew! We are all tired and should sleep well tonight!

Tomorrow is our last day with our friend and teacher SaaKokoto. We are excited to hear more stories from him and will miss him. 

Thank you for all the returned Heritage Park and Swimming forms! 

Please sign and return Friday if you haven't yet. 

If you are able to volunteer for JUNE 6th (Heritage Park) or any of our swimming days (June 7/12/14/19/21)- let the office or Mrs. Armour know. Thanks so much!

Wednesday - Ready, Set...ACTION!

This morning we had our "dress rehearsal" and performed for the Kindergarten class because they will be away on a field trip tomorrow. It was great to have a real audience!

We had another practice this afternoon - our songs are sounding great and we can't wait to show you! If we have speaking parts, we are going to practice tonight at home speaking s l o w l y and clearly with expression:) Everyone is working really hard all doing their part to show off our learning!

Remember to wear "animal colours" to school tomorrow for our LEARNING CELEBRATION at 11:00AM! Anything brown, black, grey, white will be great - if you don't have plain (no words on the front) shirts, remember Mrs. Boyer said you can turn it inside out and it will work great - dark jeans are fine as well - Please plan to stay for a little bit after so we can share our dioramas with you!

Just a heads up: A phone message was sent by Mrs. Polski regarding the Aspen grove trees and volunteers needed to help dig the holes on Sunday between 10-1. Please call the school if you can volunteer to help with the digging of the holes in preparation for the 9 aspen trees we have coming to enhance our Nature grounds. 

Looking ahead: 
HERITAGE PARK FIELD TRIP on Wednesday, June 6th - form is coming home today - thank you for signing and returning this right away.

SWIMMING starts in June! 
June 7th/12th/14th/19th/21st  Forms also coming home today - thanks for letting us know what swimming experience your child has and returning them so we can inform the pool. 
Here are the dates if you can volunteer we would love to have you! We will be walking  after lunch to and from the pool, and will need help before and after in the change rooms. Both moms and dads (grandpas and grandmas) with volunteer clearance are welcome!!

Sorry - all the toner in the printers ran out at the same time - so we are just a bit behind with the forms - thanks for signing all the paper during your busy evenings - we really appreciate it!

See you tomorrow!
Mrs. Armour

Monday

We started the morning working on our "Did You Know?" fact sheet on the computers or adding finishing touches to our dioramas while Mrs. Boyer worked with the groups of students with speaking parts in our assembly.

We all met in the gym to practice our songs, dance and transitions and then did a whole "run-through" of the play.
Adding the props and microphones made it much more real and exciting!

Thank you to everyone who has memorized your lines and is practicing at home - speaking slowly and clearly takes a lot of practice even when you know all the words.
(Sometimes we forget that everyone else doesn't know all the words and speak a little quickly).

If you have a cowboy hat or a construction hat at home - please bring it with your name on it tomorrow, so we know who is wearing what and can organize what we need - THANK YOU!

Think about what your animals colors are and set aside those clothes to wear Thursday...(black, brown, white, grey, brown are all good colors for nose hill animals!)

THURSDAY, MAY 31st is our Learning Celebration.

Tomorrow is Library.

Keep reading at home and bringing back your home reading bags to exchange!

Nose Hill Adventure with SaaKokoto

The new Medicine Wheel was made in 2013 - it was modeled after the same kind the Blackfoot people used to make on Nose Hill. SaaKokoto is now the caretaker of it. The number 4 is very special to the Blackfoot people. There are 4 sections to the Medicine Wheel - 4 nations, 4 seasons, 4 directions, 4 parts to the cycle of life, 4 parts of a plant (root, stem, leaves and the flower or berry)....
Ask me what else I remember about the stones of the wheel.

While we were listening to Saakokoto, we saw 12 birds flying in the sky - we thought they might be crows, but SaaKokoto said they were flying very high and they might be eagles! Then he told us the story of Eagle Boy.

We walked up to the top of the hill and then split into 2 groups. One stayed with SaaKokoto and listened to his stories about the Medicine Wheel and we went over further to sketch and look at bugs and insects.

We saw grasshoppers and butterflies that were red and orange. Colin even caught a wasp to observe and then let it go! Solomon pointed out a big black beetle on a buffalo bean flower and found what we think was coyote fur!

We had a great spot to practice our perspective drawing. We sketched buffalo bean flowers in detail, bushes and hills in the middle and far away we sketched the mountains and the city of Calgary skyline.

Have a great weekend - practice your lines and songs for our LEARNING CELEBRATION on THURSDAY, MAY 31st at 11:00AM - all are welcome to come and hear what we have been discovering about the animals and plants of Nose Hill. Our dioramas will be displayed in the Learning Commons after our celebration!

Assembly practice continues...

Our schedule continues to be a bit different over the next couple of weeks until our Learning Celebration! Today Mrs. Boyer worked with different groups to teach them their lines and our dance moves. We had fun! The dance was a part of our gym and then we went outside.

We were together to practice our songs and learn the words - we are trying to show emotion on our faces if the song is happy, a little sad or super exciting! We are learning that actors can show a lot of different emotion but are still in control and listen to the director when they say, "All quiet on the set!" Please check Mrs. Boyer's blog (Room 2) to find the links to our songs so you can practice at home! Mrs. Boyer and Mr. O'Reilly have adapted some of the lyrics to Good Day Sunshine, Somewhere Only We Know by Lily Allen, and Born to be Wild, so it's important to listen and learn the right words. 

We discussed story writing today and how important it is to have a plan before we start writing. This keeps us on track. Our stories will be all about animals on Nose Hill to show what we have learned about their habitat, appearance, food, family, predators and survival. Today we thought about which animals we wanted to write about, an interesting beginning, a problem and how the animal fixes the problem (the middle) and what it learns (the end). Over the next few weeks, we will learn that writing stories takes time! We will add details and edit by ourselves, with a friend or two or three and get some more ideas and make our stories even better!

If we are in the Run 2K Club, we ran again at lunch. It was hot, so we made sure we took a break in the shade and had a drink if we needed to...we are over 200km - hurray!

We had Sketching after lunch. We added some more shading to our sketches and then Ryder taught us about PERSPECTIVE, HORIZON LINE and VANISHING POINT. Ask me what I remember about those words! Then we worked on drawing ONLY WHAT WE SEE by looking at scissors on our desk and drawing without lifting our pencil or looking at our paper. Then we looked at our friend and tried to draw their face without looking at our pencil or paper. It was really tricky!! Ryder told us this was a good way to practice being artists that observe instead of just using our imagination (which is a different kind of drawing.)

Music - we practiced our songs again! Ask me which one is my favorite!

We read a story called Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett. Ask me to tell you about the beginning, middle and end and who the characters were.

Tomorrow Mrs. Armour will be away celebrating her daughter's grade 12 graduation! We are excited that Mr. O will be coming in to teach us!

Thanks to all of you who have returned your Nose Hill Field Trip forms. Please bring them tomorrow if you haven't. 

 Ryder is showing us about perspective - and how to sketch things that are close and far away.

                            Here is a peek at just a couple of our backgrounds we are working on!

Ready, Set, Action!

For the next two weeks, we will be busy like beavers and badgers and foxes and bats and weasels and....well, you get the picture! Our grade 1/2 learning celebration happens on THURSDAY, MAY 31ST (save the date, so you can come and watch us and see our learning!). We will be busy making props, learning our lines and songs. This is so exciting because we are putting all the things we've learned about Nose Hill, the plants and the animals together in a play for you! We are also making finishing touches on our Dioramas and typing up our Did you know? Facts on the computers.

Today we started the day outside with the whole school for our school-wide photo. The photographer was standing high up on the ladder and we were all on and around the playground!

We worked really hard on our Journal writing today - there was so much to write about with the long weekend!

We had gym outside today.

We were all together with the other grade 1/2 classes and listened while Mrs. Boyer, Mrs. Hamby and Mrs. Armour read through the script for our play. We will all find out what parts we are playing tomorrow. Some of us will have speaking parts and some of us singing parts but we will all be an important part!

We worked on our "props" this afternoon. It was so nice we painted outside! Some of us were fixing up the background and some of us painted a huge rock. Sorry if we have extra paint on our fingers or hands - it should all come off with a good scrub!

Green and Pink forms (it doesn't matter which colour - they both are the same!) are coming home today - these are our FIELD TRIP FORMS FOR THIS FRIDAY - because we are going to the Medicine Wheel on Nose Hill, we will be taking a bus instead of walking all the way - that's why we need the forms. Thanks for signing and returning tomorrow or Thursday at the latest! We want everyone to come to hear SaaKokoto's stories!

Reminder that Tomorrow is also 2K Run Club - make sure you dress in cool clothes, wear running shoes and bring your water bottle if you are running!

Dioramas, Sketching and a look back at the Volunteer Tea!

Have a great long weekend - Reminders - WHOLE SCHOOL PHOTO on Tuesday, May 22nd

Field trip to Nose hill on Friday, May 25th (need volunteers:)

Save the date - Learning Assembly on Thursday, May 31st 

As we look forward to the Victoria Day long weekend, we discussed a little about why it is called Victoria Day! Mrs. Armour is pretty excited about the next Royal Wedding happening on May 19th and thought a look back at the Volunteer Tea here at Dr. Coffin would remind us all to say a Royal "Thank You" again to all of you who help make things great around here! We found out a little about the plants and flowers they will be using at the wedding in England - you can find them here!

https://www.royal.uk/royal-wedding-flower-preparations

Madalynn shared not only her favorite movie but a theatre she created!

Our sketch artist was back today! Ask me about the words contour, line drawing and grey scale and how I use the eraser as a sketch tool. We added a pretend sun into our drawings, so we could imagine where the shade and light should be.

Our dioramas are looking just like a miniature version of Nose Hill and we can't wait to share them with you on MAY 31st - at our Learning Celebration - we are now working on our "Did you know?" facts on the computer. 

Wednesday

Hi! Today we did centres and guided reading and then worked on our "All About Our School" timeline...ask me what date the second school (the one we are in today) was opened!

After recess, the grade ones worked at their desks on the word families with Mrs. Babcock and the grade twos worked on the carpet with Mrs. Armour and "ed" endings. Ask me why we add "ed" and if there are any rules! Try adding "ed" to jump, skip and hop and see if anything is different.

During lunch we had our first 2K RUN CLUB! Mrs. Armour and Mrs. Saunders were so proud and excited - together we ran 125 laps!! If we can keep it up we will reach our goal of "running strong to Humboldt" (700km!!) by the end of school! We can join any Wednesday as long we let Mrs. Armour or Mrs. Saunders know and sign up.

After lunch and quiet reading we asked "Did you know?" facts about our animal and then Mr. O'Reilly picked us up for music!

We decided to go into the gym for "gym" and played a game where we had 4 teams and 4 numbers if your number was called you had to go and grab some "food" in the middle - sometimes there was enough and sometimes there wasn't so you had to listen carefully!

Today Madalynn shared a movie theatre she had made - cool! and Tessa shared about her favorite show on Netflix. Thanks!

REMINDERS:

Friday is a non-instructional day - no students. Monday is Victoria Day - Enjoy the long weekend!

Tuesday, May 22nd is a SCHOOL GROUP PHOTO- forms are coming home today if you would like to purchase a photo - please return the form tomorrow if possible. 

Friday, May 25th is our trip with SaaKokoto to Nose Hill and the Medicine Wheel. We will need volunteers as all 3 grade 1/2 classes are going - so if you can come, please let Mrs. Armour know! Thanks so much!

It's Monday!

Hi! We decided last week was a busy week - so even though our helpers wrote notes for the blog, Mrs. Armour only posted a couple days! We will try and get most information on Mondays and Wednesdays and then if anything is really important - we will post it with pictures!

We hope everyone enjoyed their MOTHER'S DAY CARDS! We worked hard to sketch and paint and write for you. Thanks for all you do Mom!

Friday - We had a cool, breezy day of bird watching and listening and learning how to record our sightings on eBird. We will practice again and thanks for all those who are "birding" at home!

Monday - Summer! Calgary weather always is up and down...Thank you for sending us in cool clothes with a sweatshirt for the mornings in our Clubhouse and our water bottles so we stay hydrated.

Our blog helpers this week are Lily, Samantha, Kashia and Georgia. Thank you! We have had some great movie reviews and are looking forward to some more this month. It is great practice to think about how to tell the group a few of your favorite parts without giving the ending away.

WRITING - We wrote in our journals today and then found a buddy to share with to see if they could find the "who, did what, where and when?" in our writing! Grade twos shared their "ing" words and then tried to think of other endings like "ed" Grade ones were finishing up any "in" or "ick" printing.

MATH - We started new math groups today. We will all be working on adding and subtracting whichever group we are in. Ask me which teacher I am with and what we did today!

DIORAMAS - Most of us are finishing up our Dioramas, thinking about all our research we did and trying to include as much detail as we can. We will be writing up "Did you know?" facts on the computer so we will be ready to share with anyone who asks about our animal and it's habitat.

Mrs. Armour is away tomorrow, so Mrs. Lysak will be teaching us tomorrow. We are excited to share our Dioramas with her!

TOMORROW (Tuesday) IS TREAT DAY! Bring 25 cents to buy a treat at recess. Thanks to Room 7!!

Mrs. Kidd is away tomorrow, so we will have Library on Wednesday this week.

Our first Sketching Residency begins this week.  Thanks to a donation of sketching supplies and funds from our School Council, we are able to welcome Ms. Ryder Richards, a sketch artist, who will be working with our students over the next 14 days.

The Victoria Day long weekend is next weekend.  There are no classes for students on Friday, May 18 and Monday, May 21 is the holiday.

Tuesday/Wednesday

Tuesday we had Library and Mrs. Kidd read us a great story about Humpty Dumpty - but not the one you are thinking of...this story is what happens after...ask me about it!

Gym was outside on Tuesday playing running games "Coloured Eggs" and "Deer and Antelope" and relays using skipping ropes, balls, frisbees!
Today we were in the gym with the huge Parachute. We found out it is really important to cooperate when we play "popcorn" and "mushroom" to make the parachute dance or fly! Then we played "cat and mouse" where we learn to to be aware of our bodies and those around us when we can't see very well and stay away from the cat!

Printing - grade ones worked on the "ick" family and the grade twos worked on the "ing" endings. We are finding and noticing more and more of these words now when we read our books!

Today we worked on a special writing and sketching project...that's all we can say because it is a BIG surprise and you will have to wait and see!

We also worked on our Dioramas and animals out of plasticine...we are learning to ask a friend for specific feedback so we can make our projects even better.

Thanks to Colin, Madalynn, Tessa and Malik for helping with Blog this week! Thanks to Ingmar and Georgia for sharing and reviewing their favorite movies!

Mrs. Armour is starting a "RUN FOR FUN 2K Club" on Wednesdays at lunch starting next week running for 6 weeks. There was a meeting today and an information and permission form coming home if your child is interested in joining. Our goal is to increase our stamina, have fun and add up all our km!

Mrs. Armour says she is getting spoiled by all the treats and notes for Teacher Appreciation Week. Thank you everyone!

Monday

New table groups! New jobs! Ask me who I am sitting with now and what my new job for the week will be. Emmaline, Madalynn, Lucas and Colin have shared some of their favorite movies - thank you   for letting us know what parts you like, what characters are interesting and how many stars out of 5 you would give it. We thought we could look in our public library if we were interested in watching them!

Today we wrote in our journals about our weekend. We are trying to edit our work and share with a friend before checking with Mrs. Armour. We are looking for the who, what, where, when, why and how of our story to add more detail!

Some of us needed to finish our math problem and some of us played Race to 100 or other adding and subtracting games like snakes and ladders.

We all sat in a circle on the carpet in a grade one, grade two pattern then we took turns writing "ing" words, or "ick" words - tomorrow we will practice finding words in books with "ing" and "ick" and printing them.

After lunch and quiet reading, we read about "Mickey" the metal bird in our library. It was given to the brand new Dr. E.W. Coffin as a gift in 1968. Ask me where the artist came from and where Mickey was put in the school. We wrote down some facts and added those and the sketch of Mickey to our book bags.

Gym was outside today and we played "Deer and Antelope tag" If Mrs. Armour said "Deer" the deer had to run "home" and the antelope chased them, but if she said, "Antelope" they had to run and the deer would chase them. It was a little confusing, but it teaches us to listen and respond quickly!

LIBRARY TOMORROW and thanks for continuing to do HOME READING - please let Mrs. Armour know if you have lost your Home Reading bag or need more challenging books!

Looking ahead - 

Friday, May 18th and Monday, May 21st Victoria Day - non-instruction days

Fresh Air Friday, May 25th all the grade 1/2 classes will be going to visit the Medicine Wheel on Nose Hill with Saa'Kokoto - if you would like to join us, please let Mrs. Armour know.

Save the date - Thursday, May 31st we are planning to have our Learning Celebration to show off what we have learned in song and skit. Details to follow!

Wednesday, June 6th Heritage Park field trip - we will need volunteers, so if you can save the date to join us, we would love to have you!

Bird Walk Pictures!

Getting our binoculars focused! Vlad and Stephanie were our leaders and bird experts.

 Some of the birds we were hoping to see!

 Off we go!

 Someone found a feather! We are investigating to see which bird it might have come from.

 A maple seed that spins like a helicopter when it falls to the ground.

 Listening in the trees....

 Looking up....

Stephanie was showing us how to record our bird sightings on eBird.

Fresh Air Friday

We had a great morning with CPAWS - Citizen Science - we discovered more about the importance of healthy biodiversity (Ask me if I remember what bio-diversity means?)
We were in the first group so walked to the amphitheater by Whispering Woods and played a few games that helped us learn more about habitat, family and survival.

We played a new version of "rock, paper, scissors" where you add "bird" on the end and if you win, you become the next stage of a bird - we start as an egg then grow to a hatchling then a fledgling then a grown bird. We learned that in real life at each stage, sometimes the bird doesn't make it and sometimes it does depending on getting the essentials of water, food, shelter and space.

We played a new version of "Simon Says" with the words "CPAWS says" using actions for water, food, shelter and space. Ask me what the actions for each are!

Remember the game, "Red, light, green light"? We heard a story about the Peregrin Falcon and how it was on the "at risk" list because of the food cycle of mosquitos eaten by spiders eaten by ducks eaten by peregrine falcons - and how a little bit of chemicals in the mosquitos affected each in the cycle a little bit more. We played the game where we were all wolves working together to get the Falcon's egg - we had to be sneaky because the Falcon has really keen eyesight!!

Then we had a quick break and snack and then it was our turn to go Birding with Vlad - he was our guest who is an expert "birder" and can hear and see birds really well. We had to be in "stealth" mode so we could listen and observe lots of birds.

Here are some of the birds we saw - ask me how many I saw! Robins, Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, Ravens...Mrs. Armour will add pictures of our walk on Monday.

We all gathered in Room 2 to see how to add our list of birds on the eBird website - Mrs. Armour will send home more information on how to do this on Monday. We will share the list with everyone, so you can see all the birds we saw. Stephanie told us tomorrow, May 5th, is Global Big Day so if you want to go on to

www.ebird.org

and submit your findings, you will join with thousands across the whole world who are birding at the same time!


What a beautiful day to go birding!!

Next week we will be continuing on Math word problems, adding and subtracting, the "ick" family for grade ones, the "ing" rules and words grade twos, sketching and writing about "Mickey" our mascot, and working on our dioramas and animals. 

Have a wonderful weekend. Be watching for your focus bird!

Wednesday

Today was "Hats On for Mental Health" Day - We discussed how it is important for us to eat healthy to keep our bodies strong and to think healthy to keep our minds strong. We have mini erasers with positive sayings on them here in the Clubhouse. We sat in a circle and read them out loud and thought about an example of what it would look like if we...

"Choose to smile"
Say "I am strong"
"Learn from my mistakes"
"Always are a friend"
"Choose to be happy"
"Choose to be the best we can be"
"Respect others"
"Choose to be kind"
"Believe in our dreams"
"Never stop learning"

Word Work - grade ones thought of "in" words (our favorites were Colin and Coffin:) How many can you think of? Grade twos tried to find as many "ing" words in their books and decide which rule of "ing" they followed.

Writing - In our All About Me books, we tried to remember when Dr. E.W. Coffin was first built (Do you know?) and added that into our books. Tomorrow we will learn the story of our mascot!

Math - Now that we have practiced a few math problems all together, today we had to solve a new math problem on our own - see pictures below!

Gym  - Today we had played Fruit Salad and King's Gold outside. We all tried to remember how to be a PACE player (Participate, Attitude, Cooperate, Effort) so everyone has fun!

Music today! Ask me what we are working on.

Animal Research - today if we were finished our research "must-haves" we were able to start to create our animals out of plasticine. We could look at our tear art animals on the walls or check an iPad so the colors are accurate.

http://ebird.org/home
This is the eBird website to go to and click "create account" Mrs. Boyer worked with all the grade ones and created their new password "coffin123" so hopefully everything works smoothly. We want to all be ready with our accounts for this Friday when CPAWS return and help us learn how to record our bird sightings!! THANKS FOR RETURNING THE BOTTOM OF THE FORM to Mrs. Armour.

Tomorrow the grade 3/4's are presenting their Learning Celebration at 11:00AM.

Looks like great weather for the next few days! Thanks for bringing water bottles and wearing layers so we can be comfortable!
                                                   
                                                    Here are a few of our dioramas - how many
                                                    Nose Hill plants can you spot?
                                                    Can you guess what season each of
                                                     us chose?

                                                           Grade 1 math problem

                                                              Grade 2 math problem

Tuesday, May 1st

Happy May Day! This morning for Word Work, the grade ones worked on the "ig" family words at their desk with fill in the blank sentences and finding the words with the correct spelling. Mrs. Armour reviewed the "ing" rules with the grade twos then read a page from Old Granny Fox - the grade twos had white boards and had to listen very closely and write down any "ing" words we heard. After that, we tried to guess which "ing" rule applied to each word we found.

We had Library today - ask me what books I checked out or if I need to look for a book at home to return.

Our Math problem today was about apples and animals! Ask me how my group figured it out and how we worked as a group.

This afternoon after "Did you know?" facts, we worked on our Dioramas. We needed to explain each part of our diorama to a friend and ask if we needed to add any more details or plants.

Tomorrow is HATS ON! for Mental Health Day. You can wear a hat to show your support if you would like. We will share what helps calm us and cheer us up when we get worried or upset and how we can help care for our friends who are worried or upset.

A goldenrod sheet is coming home today with instructions on how to get our very own ebird account so we can keep track of all the birds we see! Thanks for sending in the bottom portion so we can log in at school sometimes to count the birds we have seen. 

Friday our friends from CPAWS are back and we will be mini-ornithologists learning how to observe and keep track of the birds we see!