March 22

Happy Unbirthday!

We had a great afternoon full of puzzles, games, making and of course... eating!

We made special secret cards for each other and exchanged them with each other this afternoon.  Each student made a card that was unique to the recipient.  It was heartwarming when students exchanged the cards and had the chance to see and read the cards.  We all loved receiving a special card.

We also started some fun unbirthday stations.  We did a birthday graph, built a birthday dream cake our of pattern blocks, made words out the word "unbirthday" and solved some subtraction questions to reveal a secret picture.  Here are a few pictures of our afternoon:

At the end of the day we had some time to play one of our favourite games: Wax Museum.  At the end, I was the security guard and no matter what I did, I couldn't make some of our students laugh.  I was amazed by their focus... and ability to ignore me! hhaha

I hope everyone has a fantastic spring break! I look forward to seeing everyone on April 3rd!

March 20

After a cold winter, I am sure we can all relate to Snoopy... Happy First Day of Spring! Along with spring, comes Spring Break!  Students will start their spring break this Thursday and we will see them again on April 3.  I hope everyone has a relaxing and restful break :)

This Wednesday afternoon, we will be celebrating our school unbirthday.  This idea comes from Alice in Wonderland.  Because not all students have the chance to celebrate their birthday during the school year, we have decided to celebrate EVERYONE’s birthday together! We will enjoy some  sing Happy (Un)Birthday, play games, and even trade birthday cards. Students are also welcome to bring in a special treat for their afternoon snack for this celebration. It could be a piece of cake or any other snack that they enjoy. 

In class we have been learning about the First Nation's people of the Prairies.  Today we talked about their homes and how tipis are made.  We also started a discussion about how important the buffalo was and how much it provided the people of the Prairies.  We will continue to talk about this and soon we will introduce the Ukrainian Pioneers who settled in the Prairies. 

Coming Up:

• Unbirthday Wednesday
• Trolls Movie Night Wednesday at school
• Spring Break starts Thursday

March 17

Happy St. Patrick's Day!   A little leprechaun came and decorated our classroom with some four leaf clovers and shiny gold this morning!

We had a busy week with inline skating but the class was so excited each day for it!  In just three days, their abilities sky rocketed.  They learned some basic skills like how to crash drop, catch your balance if you feel like you are falling, and use their heel break to stop quickly.  We also had some fun by playing freeze tag and capture the flag.

The teachers even joined in on this fun for the last day.  The students were shocked that we knew how to skate ;)

We had so much fun, some of us were in denial it was over and refused to take off their helmets! hahah!

In science today, we had the chance to become Walruses!  We used vegetable lard as an insulator and learned about how insulation works with animals, humans and even our homes. We put one hand in the lard to act as blubber and we put our other hand in just a plastic bag. When then put both hands in cold water and it was very obvious that the blubber insulates very well.  We will be talking more about how as humans we often imitate animals to insulate ourselves. 

Coming Up:

• Short week next week: Spring Break starts Thursday for Students!
• Unbirthday Wednesday - watch Monday for a post 

March 14

A few updates on some school events:

Inline starts tomorrow! We watched this video today but you are welcome to watch it as a family as there is lots of helpful information to get us ready for tomorrow!   http://alieninline.com/program-orientation-video/

We have a new weather station at our school. If you would like to check the weather for the school you can go to our school website and look for this link on the left hand side:

Lastly a couple reminder about some events from School Council:

Coming Up:

1. Inline tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday

2. Early Dismissal Friday

3. School Spirit Day Friday: Wear green for St. Patrick's Day

4. Unbirthday next Wednesday (more information to come!)

5. Spring Break March 23 - April 2 (Back to School April 3)

March 13

This week we are all really excited about starting our Inline Skating!  We will start Wednesday and go until Friday for an hour each day.
Alien Inline provides all equipment, but if you have helmets, pads or even inline skates you are welcome to send them in and we will keep them safe here at school for those three days.

Today we started creating our digital title page for our Pourquoi stories using "Little Bird Tales".  This website allows us to type our stories, record our voices for each page and draw digital pictures to go with the story. We can't wait to show you!

We have also been working on creating engaging beginnings for our stories. Below are a few that we have come up with.  Our focus right now has been to use a sound effect to grab our reader's attention. What do you think of these?

• Woosh whoosh, the grass moved as the coyote very quietly snuck up on the cute bunny eating juicy green grass
• Crunch, Crunch, the owl was stomping down the spooky forest
• Yaaawn! The big polar bear woke up from its den
• Scratch, scratch, went the owl's feet as he crunched in the prairie grass looking for food.

Next we will be working on another way to start a story, through an action.

Coming Up:

• School Spirit Day Friday - Wear Green for St. Patricks Day!
• Inline Skating Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
• Early dismissal Friday

March 9

Today we had the chance to come together as a whole grade 2 team!  We have been hard at work planning our Pourquoi stories and today we came together to learn about how we show our feelings so that we can apply these ideas to our stories.  Today we brainstormed some different feelings and then in small groups we acted these out.

We paid careful attention to how the body and face looks and what actions we see. For example, if someone is angry we can tell they are angry because their fists are clenched, their face turns red, and their eyes squint.  If someone is excited they raise their hands wide, open their eyes wide and have a big smile.

We are hoping to have students start to brainstorm these exact types of features so that rather than tell how a character in their story is feeling, they can describe them to show how they are feeling.


In math, we have been working on an open-ended addition problem with multiple entry points.  They all have the same basic reasoning behind them, but allow students to complete a question they feel most comfortable with.

Option 1: Students roll a die 4 times and record the numbers.
They then arrange these numbers into double digit numbers to make a number as close as possible to 50.

Option 2: Students roll a die 4 times and record the numbers.
They then arrange these numbers into double digit numbers to make a number as close as possible to 100 but not over.

Option 3:  Students roll a die 6 times and record the numbers.
They then arrange these numbers into double digit numbers to make a number as close as possible to 100 but not over.

If a student rolled 3, 5, 7, 1 they could add: 35+17, 53+17, 51+ 37 etc.
They manipulate the numbers until they find one as close to their given number as possible.  You can try this at home!  Some guiding questions might be:

• How do you know this is as close to 50/100 as possible?
• What is your strategy for arranging numbers?
• How can you make a smaller/bigger number using the numbers you have?

Coming up:

• Inline Skating March 15, 16, 17. No volunteers needed!
• Early Dismissal Friday March 17 

March 7

Our field trip was a great success today!  Although chilly, the only complaint I heard from students was that our time at the Bird Sanctuary was too short...

Getting ready to go!

We are off!

We made our way down to the Bird Sanctuary first thing this morning. We arrived right on time and we were first in the classroom.  Here we reviewed some key words like adapt and migrate and talked about how we as humans adapt to the environment. Here are a few of our students showing how they adapt:

mittens, rubber boots, sunglasses, and windbreakers...

We then had the chance to do a few different stations to learn about how animals keep warm and cool in the different seasons and how they have adapted. We had the chance to touch replicas of bird and coyote skulls, coyote, rabbit, and muskrat pelts and use magnifying glasses to take a closer look at feathers.  We also learned about how animals blood helps them survive in the winter.  Ask your child how frog's blood is different from human's blood.

 

 

Next, we headed outside for a short walk.  We were all a little reluctant as we knew it was chilly, but we had dressed for the weather and the sun was shining just right which made it an enjoyable walk.  We stopped along the way to see the chickadees and magpies, look at the animal tracks, and see a beaver dam.  This led to many wonderings that we hope to answer through our science and social studies investigations.

It was a busy morning that left many of us sleepy and hungry.  I hope you all sleep well and come back refreshed tomorrow!  Thank you to all the parents who were able to volunteer today. We always appreciate you giving up your time for us :)

Coming Up:

• Fun Lunch tomorrow
• Book exchange tomorrow
• Early Dismissal next Friday - March 17

March 6

Don't forget... tomorrow is our 2nd field trip of the year to the Bird Sanctuary.  We are all so excited for the morning. We will be leaving the school right after 8:00 in order to get to the Bird Sanctuary in time, so please ensure that all students are on time tomorrow!

Here is the approximate schedule for the day:

½ of group at ‘Surviving the Seasons’ program ½ of group on ‘Nature Walk’	9:00 – 9:45 am
½ of group at ‘Surviving the Seasons’ program ½ of group on ‘Nature Walk’	9:45 – 10:30 am
Departure from Bird Sanctuary to School	10:45am
Arrive back at Ken Taylor School	11:15am

We will be outside for part of the morning on a walk of the sanctuary.  As the walk is an important part of our morning, we will still participate in it, but we will watch the temperature carefully and if it is too cold, we will cut our walk shorter.  Keeping this in mind, please ensure that students are dressed very warmly tomorrow with good boots, snow pants, mittens, hats etc.

On another note, you may notice that the blog will not be updated each day anymore.  We have noticed that traffic has slowed on our blogs, which indicates too many posts!  I will post 2 - 3 days a week, including key information and new learnings in our class.  Be sure to check a couple times a week to keep up to date with all of our class information!

Coming up:

• Field trip tomorrow
• Fun lunch Wednesday

March 3

I hope you all had a great week! Looks like a great day today to get out for a walk and enjoy that sunshine!

Yesterday we started to learn about another culture of Canada, the Acadians. We talked about how people from all over the world, came to our country in hopes of a better life.  We made some connections between the land they arrived to and the homes and transportation that they developed.  The students were shocked to learn that there were no lights, no ipads, and even no indoor bathrooms.  We used the laptops to research about the homes of the Acadians using this site: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Acadie/000_e.html.   We will be looking closer at the Acadians and their culture and comparing them with our own lives, and those of the Inuit people of the past.

This afternoon we spent some time in small groups completing a small engineering challenge.  The challenge was to create the tallest tower using only tape, scissors, and 10 straws.  It requires students to use their skills of collaboration, problem solving, flexibility and growth mindset.  We will continue to work on this challenge next week and build upon the skills each week. Eventually this will lead to students building their own stable boats during our science unit on Boat and Buoyancy (We will start this April).  It was interesting listening to their conversations, hearing them verbalize their thinking and wonderings, and helping each other to create their structures. Here are a few pictures of the process so far:

Coming up:

• Alien Inline forms due back ASAP. 
• Bird Sanctuary Field Trip Tuesday morning. Dress warmly as we are outside!
• Mrs. Jordan's mum coming for a visit Friday, March 10