We completed our emotion monsters! We worked hard on what monsters look like, as well as showing different emotions through the colours we used and the expressions on our monsters faces. As part of this art work, we walked over to Nelson Mandela high school to meet with our buddies. We were able to put our completed monsters with the collage that the Grade 10 and 11's have been working on. These are some examples of how the work looked! We continue to work on looking at different parts of a story, focusing on the characters, the problem and solution. We have read some familiar stories (Little Red Riding Hood), news stories (SHH! We have a Plan), books with no words (The Lion and the Mouse), and now we are working on writing our own stories. When reading stories at home, it's great to talk about all of these different things. We are doing a Grade One reading challenge!! For every 10 minutes we read we earn a star. After we have read 1000 minutes (& earned 100 stars) we are going to have a movie day to celebrate!! Make sure to read on Raz kids at home every night to help us reach our goal! Just click the link below: www.raz-kids.com/ Teacher login: jcarey26 In Math we have been working on placed value - that means using 10's and 1's blocks to create and identify numbers. We are really starting to get the hang of it.
We have also been working on our measurement unit. This means measuring things by length, size and weight. We have been working on the words 'long, longer, longest; short, shorter and shortest". We will continue to measure things around our school and classroom to see what kinds of patterns we can find. What a busy two weeks! With the long weekend, nice weather and a field trip we have been going, going, going. We have worked on showing feelings through art. Because of our Art Project with the students from Nelson Mandela High School, we are looking at how art can make us feel. We worked on showing happy, sad and angry through colors and shapes. We talked about how bright colors are happy, and shown through fluid lines, while angry is through colours like red and black and shown through jagged, or messy lines. We will continue to explore different feelings as we continue on with this project. We are going to meet with us buddies at Nelson Mandela High School on June 7th. We have also worked on using our senses to explore our courtyard area. We listened to the birds chirping and the wind in the trees. We felt the hot from the sun and the cool from the concrete. We saw buds on our trees and dandelions growing in the ground. We took some time to be mindful and notice all of these things. We also did some detailed sketches about the things that we saw. We are continuing to work on expanding our Math thinking. We have looked at questions that require us to practice our skip counting, and add multiple numbers together. We are also practicing our doubles addition, especially numbers 5 and up (6+6, 7+7, 8+8, 9+9 and 10+10). We transplanted some of our lettuce and pumpkin plants as their roots were outgrowing the peat pots they were in. We are definitely becoming experts about plants and gardening. We enjoyed a WONDERFUL field trip to the Calgary International Children's Festival. We got to watch an incredible drumming show and wander around the grounds. We all got to explore different parts of the festival including making origami, going through a maze, getting our faces painted, building lego and making creations with art supplies. We even got to see the Calgary tower up close and personal.
Thank you SO much to our volunteers who came with us. We know it was a long, hot day, but we couldn't have done it without you! The festival runs from May 23rd-May26th, if you have time to go with your family you should! There are amazing things to see and experience for the whole family. Manmeet Singh Bhullar School is having a used book sale, and tomorrow it's our turn to go! On Wednesday, May 16th, students will have the opportunity to go during the lunch hour.
Books cost $1.00 each. If you spend $5.00 you get a free book. Students who go home for lunch will have a chance to go right at the beginning of the lunch hour - before they go home to eat. This is a great opportunity to get some books students can practice reading at home. Byblos bakery came to talk to us about healthy eating. We learned about the super powers the different foods can give us, like strong muscles, bones and teeth, and even lots of energy. Talk to your child about the kinds of foods they should be eating to grow big and strong! Please send only healthy snacks to school and ensure students get lots of sleep, as this can have a huge impact on their learning! What different super powers do these foods give me? This week we transplanted our marigolds. We are so excited to share them with our families, and are so proud of the hard work we have done as gardeners. We hope you care for them and are able to keep them alive! They can be transplanted to a garden after May long weekend, or will be happy to continue to grow in a pot either inside or outside. Marigolds have a special power - they help keep bugs away! They do this by being a bit of a stinky plant. Remember, they need lots of sun and water to stay happy and healthy. In conjunction with our learning about 3D shapes, we created some 3D cities! We talked about perspective and optical illusions (how they look 3D even though they aren't). We are very proud of this work! We have also been looking at the different signs of Spring we are seeing all around. We have noticed that the plants are starting to grow, the trees are getting buds and the birds are chirping again. We did some work in the courtyard this week, getting rid of plants from last fall, and pulling some weeds to make room for new plants.
We have talked a lot about the importance of Bees this week. We learned about how bees help our fruits and vegetables grow. We started our Art project with some students from Nelson Mandela High School. This art is about emotions; how pictures and paintings can make us feel. We started by talking about famous paintings, and explaining how they made us feel and why. Then we started to paint our own backgrounds based on the emotions that we felt. We will meet with our buddies again at the end of the month. We have been learning about 3D shapes this week. We have learned about cubes, pyramids, rectangular prisms, spheres, cylinders and triangular prisms. We have been looking for examples of these shapes all around our school. We even built some of these shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks. Ask me what kinds of shapes I was able to make. We did a building challenge in the Learning Commons this week with Mrs. Di Mambros class. We had to build a bridge that was big enough for a toy car to drive across, 30cm long (as long as a ruler), and 10cm tall. We did an awesome job.
This week has been so busy! We have spent lots of time getting ready for our Grand Opening. We did an AMAZING job! We are so proud of our school, and our community. We feel very lucky to have someone as inspiring as Manmeet Singh Bhullar as our namesake. This week we also got a new friend on our class.. A Betta Fish named Chase. We love watching him swim around. We've learned some really important things about taking care of a pet, such as: They need to be fed everyday. We cannot put our hands or anything else in the water as it can make Chase really sick. We need to clean his water about once a week. Fish need oxygen (air) just like people and plants. Also, he can't get too much sun; that's bad for him. We have been so responsible with Chase this week. We can't wait to learn more about him! We have done some pictures of Chase and some writing. We continue to work on adding details to our writing, such as 'who', 'what', 'when', 'where' and 'why'. In Math we have been working on addition and subtraction mental math strategies. We have also been looking at 2D Shapes. 2D means that the shape is flat. We know a lot of different shapes. We have been looking at the properties of shapes, such as the sides and vertices (corners).
Can you tell me the name of these shapes? How many sides do they have? How many vertices? We continued to work on our Literacy Groups this week. You can support all this work by reading with us on Raz kids. All students levels have been adjusted to their "just right" reading level. Be sure to ask questions about what they have read. Comprehension is an important skill for reading. www.raz-kids.com/ We are working on improving our writing. We have been answering "who", "what", "why" and "where" questions then creating sentences. It is important that we are adding more detail to our writing to make it more interesting for our audience! In Math we have been working on those bigger thinking questions. We were even experts and got to explain how to solve a problem with more than one answer to Mrs. Di Mambros class. We are really starting to understand how they work. We tried the challenge of having 10 bunnies and 3 gardens this week. That was a lot of thinking! Our answers looked like this : __+__+__=__ ; or, 1 + 4 + 5 = 10 We made butter this week!! First: you put whipping cream in a jar, be sure to put the lid on! Then you have to shake, shake, shake it!! After a while it will start to sound like there's no liquid left, that means its turned into actual whipped cream. You keep shaking until the buttermilk comes out and you start to get a big ball of butter in the jar. Next drain off the butter milk. Last you can eat it! We ate ours on crackers. It was delicious!! We love all of the seeds you have been sending in to our class!! We planted some carrot seeds this week. We are so amazed at how our garden continues to grow! This Sunday, April 22nd, is Earth Day! We have talked about how important our Earth is. We brainstormed ideas of things that we could do to help our Earth feel happy and healthy. We thought we could plant more trees, not litter, keep our water clean and using our recycling and composting bins. We decided to do our part by helping to clean up our school yard. We found so much garbage around our school. What can you do to celebrate Earth Day? Check out the link below for some ideas. www.conserve-energy-future.com/different-ways-to-celebrate-earth-day.php Don't forget:
Our Grand Opening is on Friday, April 27th. Families are invited to attend!! Please continue to practice our school song over the weekend. Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their long Spring Break. This week we started literacy groups. All Grade One students are broken up into groups based on their reading skills and levels. Students then have the opportunity to work with material and books at their "just right" reading level. We are using these groups to increase reading skills such as comprehension, fluency and decoding. We continued our study of Eric Carle's books and art this week. Each student picked something from one of his books to recreate. We had to make our backgrounds, paint the textured paper and cut out all the shapes. The final products are being displayed in the Learning Commons! In Math we have started working on some 'bigger thinking' questions. That means, instead of answering an addition question, students are working on extending their understanding and coming up with as many answers as they can.
The question we worked on this week was: You have 12 bunnies and 2 gardens. How many different ways can you put the bunnies into the gardens? When working with questions like this it's important and helpful for students to use manipulatives (counting chips, 2 gardens), and to document their different answers to deepen understanding. Answers for this question include but are not limited to: 1 bunny in garden 1 and 11 bunnies in garden 2, or, 1+11=12 2 bunnies in garden 1 and 10 bunnies in garden 2, or 2+10=12 Speaking of gardens: Our Grade One Garden has done some serious growing over our spring break!! We have actual blooms and flowers on our nastrutiums, our marigolds and our pumpkin plants!! We also continue to see a lot of changes in our parsley, lettuce and tomatoes! As we continue to learn about our communities, we learned more about the roles of community helpers. We had a fireman come and visit us. He talked about all kinds of fire safety, like checking to see if a door is hot before opening it if the fire alarm is going, and shouting out the window for help in an emergency. At school we practice fire drills and practice being safe, silent and serious to keep us safe. Be sure to talk to your kids about what to do in an emergency situation at home! We also had a radio host come and talk to us! She shared how the radio stations work, and what kinds of cool things she gets to do at her job; like interviewing music artists, and meeting different people from all over Calgary. We learned that she is a community helper because she shares important information to Calgarians, and also, by helping people enjoy their day through different music. We also had our field trip to Heritage Park! We learned so much about how life used to be in Calgary. We got to go into all kinds of cool builds, like the old Police Station, Flett's Blacksmith, the Post Office, the Wainwright and the Journalism Office. We really like checking out all the different artifacts. Ask me about things they used back then that are different from things that we use today. What kind of different artifacts did they use in your culture? Don't forget, you can visit Heritage Park in the summer with your family! We have started an inquiry on Eric Carle. We have read many of his books (some of our favorites include: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug and The Mixed Up Chameleon). We started by studying the images in his books, and then decided to try some art of our own. Then we needed to make some paper in different colours to help create our pictures. We did some splatter painting for our backgrounds. This was LOTS of fun, and VERY messy. Finally we cut out shapes to make the pictures. Our final pictures look amazing!! Our beans have grown like crazy!! I was happy to send them home - don't forget to give them water and sunlight to keep them happy. You could also transplant them to a bigger container soon as their roots continue to grow. In a couple of days you should be able to eat your beans too!! Our Grade One Garden looks amazing. We have worked so hard planting, exploring and observing these plants. We look forward to doing more amazing things with them when we come back!! And finally, enjoy your SPRING BREAK!! Be sure to spend time playing outside, reading books from the library or raz kids, and practicing your sight words! Parents, don't forget that 5-10 minutes of practice a day is lots. I look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday, April 10th at 8:00am!! Reminder our Field Trip to Heritage Park is
Wednesday March 21st. Students must arrive at school for the bell and get picked up at the regular time, 2:30pm. |
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