Monday

Brrrr....it was really cold this morning, but so glad it warmed up for snowshoeing this afternoon!

Instead of journals, we worked on decorating our Friendship bags. Some of us put hearts on them. Mostly everyone finished. These will be for our Friendship celebration on Wednesday afternoon. We will be creating and writing friendship notes too.

Later we wrote in our journals about what friendship means instead of quiet reading. Friends celebrate with you! Friends are kind and loyal.

We did snowshoeing around the Terry Fox trail. The snow was really deep, it took a lot of work
Mrs. Armour read a book about the actual size of some animals, we saw a picture of a giant squid's eye and an elephants foot and they were really big! We then researched what size (length and height) our animals are in inches. Tomorrow we are going to figure out how to create a life size poster of our animal.

Lucas and Ingmar shared their favorite books with us today. This helps introduce us to new books we might not have seen before. Thank you for sharing!


Tomorrow is Library.

Tomorrow is our make up Yoga day.

Friday

Today we had "check ups" in Math and Word Work. The grade ones had a "check up" of no excuse words while the grade twos had a "check up" of homophones. We will bring them home next week so you can see what we know and what we can still be working on. For Math, it was a check up of our repeating and growing patterns.

Some of us are still working on our Animal Art to fill in all the spaces and some of us are done and got free choice.

We voted on how we wanted our desks and then moved our desks into 4 rows in a pattern of girl, boy, girl, boy. We discovered when we do group work we can have different partners by going "vertical" "horizontal" or "diagonal".

Unfortunately, it was just too cold to go snowshoeing, so we are hoping for Monday next week! Remember to wear all your snow gear even if it feels like spring!

Only three days of school next week, so we will be having "Friendship card making" centres in the morning. You can put your poem learning into practice to create a card to share with friends.

Monday: Coffin Cares assembly at 10AM, parents welcome - wear blue or green shirts, Home reading, snowshoeing

Tuesday: Yoga (make up day from Thursday), Library

Wednesday: Music day, Friendship celebration in the afternoon, wear pink and red if you would like

Thursday/Friday: No school it's Teacher Convention

Monday February19th is FAMILY DAY - no school

Wednesday, February 28th Field trip to LEIGHTON ART CENTRE - thanks for getting your forms signed and back to Mrs. Armour

SNOW and Thursday

Today was a snow day for sure out there! Our Yoga instructor didn't make it because of the roads, so she has re-scheduled our last day for next Tuesday. We all tried to create a winter poem from Mrs. Armour's example or we could just create our own. 

                                            

                                                 WINTER

                    Snow (noun - something we can see and touch)

            floating, swirling (verb - an action I can do)

            white, fluffy (adjective - a describing word using colour, shape, size)

                 Snowflakes (another noun that is similar to the first word)

We used the time to work on our family writing.

We had indoor recess today in the Learning Commons. Some of our grade 5/6 buddies came and played games and colored with us.

At lunch, we had the choice to join the "polar bear club" if we had all the proper winter clothes and wanted to go outside to play! The rest of us went to the Learning Commons for games.

After lunch we worked on our Animal Art and had Music.

Because we didn't have Yoga this morning, we bundled up and went outside for the last half hour of the day. We were "secret sweepers" and then played in the snow!

Wednesday Winter Walk and a few other happenings....

A day in pictures....

 So long to our Amaryllis...we planted it on November 16th, it bloomed January 9th and kept blooming until this week! We think we got our money's worth and learned to become botanists observing and recording.

 We put our "patchwork quilt" of patterns together - keep watching for patterns all around you!

 The grade 5/6's have been working hard on Science projects - we visited their Science Fair today. Ask us what we found out.

 We are working on the details of our Animal Art and adding habitat if we are finished our animal.

 Carmen and Lily shared their favorite books today! Thank you!

 Off for our Winter Walk...we did the big loop that we ran for the Terry Fox Run.

Some of us took a walking break to slide down the hill!

REMINDERS:

Home reading - it was a bit of a busy day with yoga and science fair, winter walk and music - so most of the home reading books are still here in the bins - please read another book tonight at home and we will get back on track tomorrow for the weekend! Thanks for your understanding.


Field Trip form coming home today for FEBRUARY 28th to Leighton Art Centre. We can only take two volunteers per class because of the bus restrictions, but any parents wanting to come are welcome to drive out and meet us there. (Its just under an hour to get there.) We are excited to explore the Art gallery and walk around beautiful natural grounds.

February 14th - Friendship celebration: A class list will be coming home tomorrow so you can begin to make or purchase cards. This is entirely optional, but we ask that if you participate, we ask that you include everyone in your child's class. Of course, your child may make more for their friends in Room 1/2 if they would like.

Fresh Air Friday - February 9th - We are hoping to go snowshoeing! Please continue to dress warm with snow pants, coats, mitts, hats and boots. If any parents are available to help with putting on and taking off snowshoes that morning between 9-12, that would be greatly appreciated as all 3 classes will be going at different times throughout the morning.

Monday - Yoga

Today was Journal Day. We are trying to add more interesting details to our writing and connect what we are learning in Word Work in our spelling...grade ones our "word families" and grade twos, our rules for vowels and homophones.

We started Yoga with our instructor Vivianne. She reminded us we are learning to control our bodies, breathing and "sit strong" (using our muscles). We did downward dog and then laid down like a "wet noodle."

We are finishing up our Math centres this week and going to design our own pattern squares - "mini quilts" to show what we know about repeating and growing patterns. Some of us wanted to start right away!

Ingmar and Trinity shared their guided reading projects on Elephants - great pictures and facts! Ask us what we remember about the two kinds of elephants. Madalynn shared about a family holiday and Lucas chose FAVORITE BOOK as our next category to share with the class this month.

Malik, Samantha, Emmaline can bring their favorite book to share tomorrow or Wednesday.
Carmen, Lily, Logan can bring their favorite book to share Wednesday or Thursday.

Lucas, Jared, Colin and Logan are helping with the blog this week.

Tomorrow is LIBRARY. Mrs. Armour will be away Tuesday. Mrs. Bigelow will be our guest teacher. 

WEDNESDAY is WINTER WALK DAY. We will be going for a little walk in Whispering Woods so thanks for continuing to dress warm for the chilly weather!

HOME READING is happening Monday-Thursday. Thanks to all our volunteers.

Groundhog day and Very Fresh Friday

Well, we don't think "Balzac Billy" the groundhog saw his shadow, so we are hopeful it will be an early Spring?!

We started this morning in the Learning Commons with our Big Buddies. We played "Race to 100" and used tally marks to count - ask us if we got to 100 first! Then we showed our Big Buddies our "Who Am I" posters to see if they could guess our animal from our clues.

We joined Room 1/2 to talk about our Animal that we have chosen to research. As zoologists, we need to study and observe carefully and one of the ways to do this is to draw pictures of our animal. Artists need to observe SHAPE and COLOUR, so we can show details. We are going to make a big sketch of our animal and then use colored paper to tear into small pieces to create texture.

We had indoor recess and read the book, In the Snow: Who's Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George
We also had hot chocolate (Thank you volunteers!!) and read another chapter of Old Man Coyote. We are still waiting to see if Prickly Porky is going to use his spines as a defense against Old Man Coyote or if they will both agree to live together in the Green Meadows peaceably.

Thanks to Carmen who shared about her family trip!

Lucas and Madalynn can still share next week and we will choose our next topic to share for February Monday.

We ended with a quick game of Animal Sounds Hide and Seek outside. Ask us which animal we were and what sound we made and if we found our family group. It was cold, so we just played two quick games and then it was time to come in and get our backpacks.

Have a great weekend! Stay warm!
REMINDERS: 
Home Reading is now Monday-Thursday, so remember to bring book bags back.

Yoga residency all next week. Dress in comfy clothes.

Library Tuesday. 

Thursday, February 1st

It's a brand new month. Happy February! We added some hearts to our snowflakes around the classroom and changed the calendar. It was a chilly day, but the sun came out, so we went outside for recess and after lunch. It is supposed to be about the same tomorrow, so dress warm for FRESH AIR FRIDAY.

Gymnastics - we all performed our routine of Balance, Travel and Shape today. It was interesting to see all the different ways our bodies can move and bend and twist. Next week we will be having a YOGA residency, so we are excited to discover some new ideas of how to move and relax our bodies. Please come in your comfortable clothes all week for yoga.

Word Work - grade ones played "snap" with Mrs. Babcock using some of our "no excuse" word cards like if, it, is, the, he, she, and. Ask us how many cards we read and how our sportsmanship was.
                  - grade twos worked on the homophones, their, there and they're. Our clue words to remind us which is which are: belong (the "i" in their reminds us), place (the "here" in there reminds us) and they're is actually two words, so the sentence has to make sense if you break it apart and say "they are."

Most of us are working on our editing or good copies of our family writing. Most of us have been to all the five math centres and are trying to record 3-5 different patterns in our journals. We think the shape tub is the most popular.

We chose our animal today for our animal research project and found a good picture to go on the front of our research notes next week. Ask me which animal I have decided on.

Thanks to Tessa who shared her family vacation picture book today!

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day and Fresh Air Friday. Do you know what kind of animal Balzac Billy is? I wonder if he will see his shadow? If you have time, maybe you can do some research tonight to see what Groundhog day is all about!