Flakes!

Our dress rehearsal went well! Here's a sneak peek of our concert! Remember ....our class performs tonight at 7:30 p.m. Students should plan to arrive at their classrooms no sooner than 6:30 pm so we can get in our special stage order! We hope you enjoy the show!

Elves at Work

Back in early November, I signed our class up to be a part of of a holiday card exchange project.  We had to agree to make thirty cards which would be mailed to thirty places somewhere in North America.  In exchange, we will get thirty cards back from various places in North America.  Needless to say, we have been very busy in Grade 2 making thirty Holiday Greeting Cards.  We pretended our class was a card factory.  The theme of the project this year was 'SNOW'...so we decided to make snowman cards.  We made each card in stages.  We made the Snowman head first by tearing bits of white paper.  Next, we added a carrot nose, eyes and a mouth.  Last, we added the required information about our school/class and a holiday greeting.  It really was a team effort!  All thirty cards are ready to go.  I addressed all of the envelopes and will be dropping them into the mail tomorrow morning.  Now we patiently wait for our holiday cards to begin arriving at Little Falls.  We are very excited.  We wonder where they will come from.  We wonder whether some of the cards will  be in a different language.  We can't wait to find the different places that the cards come from on a map of North America. Each card will also tell us about the average temperature in the place where it came from, so it will be interesting to see if we get cards from hot places or places that have weather similar to ours.  Lots of potential learning in the upcoming days/weeks.
Great job, Elves!

Zumba

Special thanks to Callan's mom, Julie Eaton  for coming into our class during October and November to teach us some Zumba moves and dances.  Zumba is a fun, aerobic fitness program featuring movements that are inspired by various styles of dance and choreographed to Latin American, jazz, African and pop music.  Mrs. Eaton taught us the zumba moves we would need to know one at a time and then put them all together into dances that went along with music that the students already knew. We learned how to stomp to the beat, move like robots and kitty cats, clean the windows and drive a car....just to name a few moves!  The children really appreciated your visits, Mrs. Eaton.  We hope you enjoyed the letters we wrote to you about Zumba.  We will keep practicing.  Thanks again for coming!

Super Skaters!

Our first trip to the Pyramid Center was successful.  It was a wet, rainy walk to actually get there, but it was certainly worth it.  Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to skate!  It was amazing exercise (especially considering that we were unable to go outside for recess due to the rain).

Thank you so much to the parents and grandparents (and Mr. Stacey) who came to assist with tying/untying skates, snapping/unsnapping  helmets and helping both on and off the ice.  I certainly couldn't do it without you.

Our next skating date is this Friday, December 4th.  If you are able to help us either on or off the ice, please let me know! I would really appreciate the extra hands and eyes.  Many hands to tie skates enables us to get on the ice faster!  Thanks again!

Appreciating The Beauty of Nature

Today as part of our 'Safe and Mentally Healthy School Initiative', everyone was asked to wear the colour green and practice letting go of the noises or negative thoughts that may invade our mind.

During the middle block of learning, our class joined with our 'Forest School Partners' from Mrs. Douglas's class and went outside to find a 'sit spot' by a tree where we could quietly reflect on and notice the details around us.  We used our senses to look, listen, smell and touch the beauty in nature and recorded these observations about our school yard on our clipboards.  It was interesting to see what captured the senses of different children.  We all enjoyed the feelings of calm that being in the outdoors brought to us!

We also enjoyed meeting and working with a new friend from Mrs. Douglas's class and look forward to more opportunities to engage in learning together both inside and outside of our classrooms.

Geometry is Great!

Geometry is Great!

We have been exploring 2D shapes in our classroom using a variety of math materials.
Students have been especially focused on the geometric attributes of each shapes - the number of sides and the number of vertices (corners) that each shape has.

We have noticed different kinds of triangles, but they ALL have 3 sides and 3 corners.
We were surprised by how many different shapes have 4 sides and 4 corners.  We learned that these shapes have specific names (square, rectangle, rhombus, trapezoid, parallelogram) but that they are ALL called 'quadrilaterals' because they have 4 sides/corners.
We also learned the properties of pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, nonagons and decagons.

As always, we are playing a lot of games to reinforce new vocabulary and to provide practice identifying, creating, comparing and thinking about the 2D shapes.