Thursday

Today we honored the Humboldt Broncos and their families by wearing our Jerseys or Coffin Cares shirts. Some of us brought hockey sticks that the "WE team" set up outside of the front door. We had the Logo on our Smart board in our classroom.

At the Coffin Cares assembly our students were recognized for being Respectful to self, others and the environment. The team did a couple of skits to give us an idea of what being respectful would look like in the classroom and around our school.

We worked on our spelling words today - ask me WHICH words WERE tricky and if THERE were any that we needed to work on with OUR pencils:)

Fun Lunch is always FUN! Thanks to Logan's dad for volunteering today!

Samantha and Logan shared some great drawings they have done - thank you!
Emmaline and Lily can bring their art to share on Monday. Tessa and Max can bring art to share on Tuesday. Getting up in front of the group and sharing gives us practice speaking clearly with a speaker voice and thinking about how to share interesting facts. Our friends that are listening are practicing asking interesting questions about how something was made or maybe adding a fact that connects with what they just heard.

The sun is supposed to come out tomorrow but it will be wet and slushy, so please come dressed ready to be outside to explore our birds with our binoculars! Rubber boots and rain (splash) pants are a great idea if you have them.

Thanks for those who sent back the purple forms for our field trip to Inglewood. We have 3 parent volunteers so they will find another form to sign and send back. THANK YOU!

A blue form is coming home today for the FAMILY DANCE and SPRING CARNIVAL coming on Friday April 27th from 6-8pm. 

Wednesday

We are enjoying our new centres - we think researching animals of our choice (scientist) and performer are the most popular right now. During guided reading some of us read about Origami and making a frog - a few of us enjoyed it so much we wanted to make more of them and teach others how to make them! Trinity, Tessa and Lily shared a "frog play" today for us.


Most of us finished our Picasso portraits and other secret project for the volunteers (shhhh!) Today we used black sharpie to outline and it really makes our painting stand out. Our faces look funny and stretched out with different shapes - but that's all part of "painting like Picasso!"

We really enjoyed the book Mrs. Armour read called Skippyjon Jones - about a cat who likes to pretend he is a Chihuahua so he speaks in a Spanish accent! The author is Judy Schachner if we wanted to look for more books in the library.

In gym we had another day of relays using rackets and puff balls, volleyballs and hoops. Ask me how we used them.

Colin shared his art today - a beautiful, colorful peacock out of feathers - we realized it was symmetrical - not like asymmetrical like our Picasso paintings. Do you know what this means?

Tomorrow is Coffin Cares Assembly and Jersey Day to honor and remember the Humboldt Broncos. We can wear our own jerseys or green and yellow or Coffin Cares T-shirts and hoodies. We can also bring hockey sticks to put outside the classroom door (or mini sticks to have on our desks). We want to show our support and care to those who are hurting. Thanks for caring with us!

A purple field trip form is coming home today for INGLEWOOD BIRD SANCTUARY on Monday, April 23. Thanks for signing and returning this form. If you can volunteer you can tear off the bottom slip and send that in as well. Mrs. Armour will  send another volunteer form home for you to sign.
THANK YOU!

Tuesday

CENTRES
Today we were excited to choose from the new centres - we are busy doing more research on animals of our choice, or book reviews or sharing a "reader's theatre" poem or reading.

LIBRARY
Today Mrs. Kidd showed us her new special pillows she bought at a craft fair this weekend. They connect with our focus on art this month as they are all printed from a real painting. Jared's favorites were the snake and the badger. Ask me what my favorite was or check out the artist's website

www.KayPopArt.com

SPELLING
We checked our words with the word list and practiced printing out the challenging words for us. We will keep working on these words for a few days. We can also practice checking with a buddy or write with markers and white boards to make it a little more exciting!

GYM
Relays today were with hockey sticks, pucks, and bouncy balls. We are all practicing PACE (participation, attitude, cooperation and effort) Today's groups who got "stars" were Logan, Malik, Jared, Colin, Samantha, Lily and Madalynn. Great PACE everyone!!

ALL ABOUT ME
This afternoon Mrs. Armour gave us a challenge to have focus and accomplish our goals for typing all our "all about me bubble clues" and getting them printed. We worked so hard and everyone is done typing. Well done everyone!! Thanks to Mrs. Russell and Mr. O for their help!

We got to go on Mathletics or ABCya if we finished up early.

Today Malik shared a cool sketch he had drawn from National Geographic book and Arthur shared an origami green frog he created during Guided reading.
COLIN, LUCAS, can bring art to share Wednesday or Thursday. LOGAN and EMMALINE can share next Monday or Tuesday. 

THURSDAY we are going to show our support for Humboldt Broncos by wearing a team jersey or Green and gold. It is also Coffin Cares Assembly so you can also choose to wear your Coffin Cares clothing. 

Fun Lunch Thursday for any parents who would like to volunteer you can let Marike know (Ingmar's mom is our classroom parent. Thank you!

Thanks to those students who have brought in SHOE BOXES for our dioramas that we will be starting on next week for the animal we researched. Please keep looking and bring in a shoe box so you have it for next week!

Monday - Picasso!

This morning the Simon Fraser band performed for us in the gym. The conductor had some of the musicians to stand and play so we could hear all the different types of instruments. Ask me which was my favorite! Max was chosen to be the guest conductor - he did a great job!

We did our last group of spelling words to #100. For the next couple of weeks we will practice the words that were challenging for us.

In gym today we ran some different relays with cones, scoops, balls and hoops. Ask me what different tasks our group had to do.

This afternoon we learned about the artist Pablo Picasso. Ask me what I remember about him and what different kinds of art he did. Did you know he lived from 1881-1973? Then we drew and painted a "Picasso-inspired" portrait. Really the only rule was that your face had to be "asymmetrical" and colorful! Mrs. Armour showed us how one side could look like your "profile" and the other side was "face forward"

This week Lily, Logan, Jared, Colin and Samantha are helping with blog. Thank you!

Sharing this month is ART - bring your drawing, painting or any kind of art you love to share with us! This week Malik, Colin, Lucas, Arthur can share their art with us.

Tomorrow is Library. 

Thursday is Coffin Cares Assembly and Fun Lunch!

April 19/20 is face to face conferences. 

April 23 is a field trip to Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.

Fresh Air Friday Pictures

We had so much fun learning from the Citizen Science ladies who came to our school today. Ask me what picture was on my back for the game and what were some of my clues?! We learned the word BIO(life) DIVERSITY (different) and did a big web out of string to show how we are all connected.

They gave us journals and we went on a "biodiversity quest" in Whispering Woods to see how many different things we could see, hear, smell and touch. Some of us heard and saw Waxwings and Chickadees. We saw lichen on trees, big thistles and smelled the fresh air.

Ask us about the bird, fledgling, hatchling game we played (it reminded us of "Duck, duck, goose")

Citizen Science will be back on May 4th. They gave us homework! We are going to be looking at these different websites and blogs to discover how to track our sightings of birds around our school. Check them out at home with us when you have time!

cpaws.org
http://yycsyoungcitizenscientists.blogspot.ca
ebird.org
birdscalgary.com

Thursday

This week has gone by fast! Sorry we didn't get the blog posted until now...this is what we've been working on...

New Centres
We have 5 new centres to work on in the morning if we are not at Guided reading. Ask me about my job to be a writer, poet, scientist, performer and mathematician.

Writing
Top 100 Spelling List - some of the words are getting challenging...grade ones only have to go to 50, but we are all trying to challenge ourselves to give all 100 words at try! We are at #75 and will finish on Monday. Then we will have a week to practice our "challenge words"

Math
What does 100 look like? Using graph paper we are writing numbers to 100 different ways, by 10s, 1's, 2's, 5's and even 7's. Some of our paper strips are getting very long!
We are also doing a "Math Check" to know what is easy and challenging for us when we count. We have to think about what number comes BEFORE and AFTER as well as counting by 2's, 5's, 10's and even 25's!

Animal Research 
We are working at discovering interesting facts about our animal that might not fit into any other category and adding details and illustrations. Ask me what fact I found out today. Did you know a porcupine can live up to 18 years?

Gym
Relays - we are having fun using scooters, skipping ropes, basketballs, cones, and cheering on our team. Ask me what my favorite part of the relay was today or yesterday!

Read Aloud - Ask me about Old Granny Fox trying to teach Reddy Fox how to catch Quaker the duck. (Old Granny Fox)
Ask me what the Hedgehog had on his head and what happened to all the other animals at the end of the book? (The Hat)

FRESH AIR FRIDAY - the weather forecast looks quite "fresh" so dress warm with snow pants (we will be sitting down and observing birds) hats, mitts and warm coats. We are looking forward to having Citizen Science here to show us new ways of observing and studying birds all around us.

Looking ahead

APRIL 23 we are going on a field trip to INGLEWOOD BIRD SANCTUARY - let us know if you are available to volunteer for the day. (9:00-3:00)

APRIL 26 at 2:00-3:30pm VOLUNTEER TEA - we would love you to come so we can say Thank you!!

Keep hunting for SHOE BOXES for our animal dioramas. 

Welcome Back!

Even though it still looks like winter outside, we know Spring is really on the way! We all had a chance to share a sentence or two about our break and tried to use at least one WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE word. Most of us find it easier to write our ideas in our journals if we talk about them first.

After guided reading and journals, we had library. Most of us remembered our books, which was great so we could check out 2 more of our favorites to read.

We have moved our Gym time to 11:15-12:15, so we have more time for writing before recess when our brains are fresh! We were all so excited about our final Medal count for Mathlympics that Mrs. Armour forgot to stop for gym! We will do a final tally for our whole class tomorrow. We got all cleaned up and ready to go and then did relay games outside today. We are all getting back into the swing of routine again.

We started on a big 100 word spelling list today! We printed 25 today and will work through the list this week. This will give us a good idea of where we are with our most used words and which ones we need to practice. Most of us found the first 25 pretty easy and are waiting for the challenging ones ahead!

We didn't get to do Mathletics today because we were working on our "Bubble words" for our All About Me books. Most of the computers had been unplugged over Spring break so it took longer to log in and get started.

Tomorrow we will get back to our Animal research and try to get the "must haves" written down.
These are four words you can ask us about.

1. Hibernate
2. Migrate
3. Adapt
4. Predator

Once we are done our animal research writing, we will be doing a diorama to show our learning. We can start looking for SHOE BOXES at home. Once we find one we like, we can write our name on it and bring it to school. 

Friday is our Citizen Science program here at school. We will be outside learning about bird observation. Please remind us to dress warm and wear snow pants because we will be sitting on the ground and looking up! Thanks for everyone who has returned the photo release form.

If you didn't get a chance to read the blog over the break, please go back and check out the pictures of our jungle safari and sharing times.