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.