January 31

Hi Parents,

This week in writing we worked on writing character descriptions. We read the story "The Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch. We then brainstormed together how we could describe her on the outside and on the inside. We also did this for the dragon in the story.

We continued practicing our literacy and math skills through literacy and math centers.

In math this week we reviewed our work with part part whole and students were asked to show any number under 20 using the part part whole triangle.

Our words of the week this week were: has, make, want, who
Our words of the week next week are: did, no, out, this 

We were given a new mystery word in making words this week. This time it was a 6 letter word. We were able to make 2 letter, 3 letter, 4 letter and even 5 letter words. We discovered that the mystery word was SPLASH.


In science this week we did an experiment called "Walking Water".  We really enjoyed doing this experiment and it is easy to do at home! It taught us how colours and water can move through certain material, just like plants move water through their roots, and stem to their leaves. For this experiment we had 6 glass cups (the cups need to be clear), 3 were empty and the other 3 were filled with water (about 3/4 full). We also had food colouring (the primary colours: blue, red, yellow) and 6 pieces of paper towel (about half of a full piece). We put the cups in a circle with the empty cups in between the cups with water. Next, we added red, yellow, and blue food colouring to each cup with water, which gave us  red water, yellow water and blue water. We then connected the cups together with the paper towel. Each cup with water had 2 paper towels coming out of it and going into an empty cup. Each student then made a hypothesis about what they thought would happen. We left the cups of water and paper towel over night and then the next day we discussed and drew our observations and explained what happened. We noticed that the paper towel had sucked up the water from the full cups and put it into the empty cup. When the two colours mixed together it created the secondary colours purple, green and orange. We also noticed that now our cups looked like the colour wheel. Check out the pictures below to see how it changed over night.

We also had a special guest from Byblos Bakery come in today and teach us all about nutrition. We learned about the New Canada food guide. We learned healthy foods give us super powers. Fruits and vegetables protect our body, whole grains give us energy and protein makes us strong. We learned that with the new food guide, half our plate should be fruits and vegetables and 1/3 should be protein and the other 1/3 should be whole grains. We also learned that some foods, with lots of sugar, should be saved for special days and we shouldn't be eating them every day. We then got to try a healthy granola bar and make a heathy pita snack. We even got to take home some pita, granola bar and WOW butter if we wanted!!

We finished our gymnastics unit in gym with Mission Impossible this week. The gym was set up in a tricky circuit and we had to be like secret spy and make it through all the obstacles. It was a lot of fun!

We also started a new read aloud in class called "Stanley in Space". We are listening to the story and then drawing a picture and writing a sentences to summarize each chapter as we listen.


Reminders:

If you have not already, please fill in, sign and send back field trip forms for Fort Calgary. They are due back Tuesday February 12th.

There is no school tomorrow (Friday February 1st)

Thursday February 14th and Friday February 15th is Teacher's Convention, No School

Monday February 18th is Family Day-No School

Thursday February 21st is our field trip to Fort Calgary

January 25th

Hi Parents,


This week we started new literacy and math centers. The students really seemed to enjoy our new centers.
For literacy centers we are continuing to work on our sight words through sight word bingo on abcya.com and our word families using magnetic letters. For our listening center students are now drawing and writing about their favourite character in the story. We also introduced two new centers. The first is students are making a Winter Book, where they describe how they know it is winter. The second is a center where students are given pictures out of order. They have to cut these pictures out, put them in order and then colour them. The second time they go to this center they will be writing a story based off of the pictures. This is to help them start to sequence stories together.

For our new math centers students are working on practicing their skills for making 10 and addition. The first center is called Find 10 Go Fish, where students are trying to find cards that make 10 (refer to blog post on January 11th for detailed rules).
The second center is a  game called Make 10, which is an independent game, where students have four cards in front of them and they have to try and make 10 with the cards. If they are able to make 10 they take those cards off and add in more cards to fill the empty spaces. If they can't make 10 with any of the cards they are allowed to switch out one card from the deck.
The third center is a game called Addition Connect Four, where students roll two dice, add them together and then colour in that number on their board. The first student to connect 4 wins.
The fourth center is Number Puzzles.  Students have been given ten frames and 100's charts that have been broken up in different ways. The students have to try and put them together again.
The fifth center is Marble Addition on ABCya.com, where students are given an addition problem to solve. They have marbles that they can use to help them solve the problems, if they need. This game has different levels, which increase in difficulty. Once you pass one level you unlock the next.

Our words of the week this week were: how, now, then, your 
Our words of the week next week will be: has, make, want, who

We also did our first making words lesson. We were given strips of folded paper, on each square we wrote a letter. The letters we were given were a,c,c,h,r,s,t. We worked together as class and learned that these seven letters can help us make two letter, three letter, four letter, and five letter words. We made words such as at, art, star trash, chart. We also discovered that when put in the write order these seven letters can make the mystery word Scratch.

In Science we continued our inquiry of colours. We did a variety of mixing colour experiments. The first one was a continued part of a lesson from last week, where students were given two colours and had to make a hypothesis of what colour would come from mixing them together. We then used paint to find out.
The second experiment was what would happen to the three primary colours when mixed with white. The third experiment was what would happen to the primary colours when we mixed them with black. Students wrote their hypothesis, tested it by mixing paint and then wrote a conclusion of what happened. We also learned that colours mixed with white are called a tint and colours mixed with black are called a shade.
We also read the story "Leon the Chameleon" about a chameleon named Leon who always changed to the opposite colour instead of blending in. For example when he sat on a green leaf, we would change to green's complimentary colour of red. The class really enjoyed this story. We also watched the "Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow" and learned about how colour and light are connected!

We finished our read aloud of "Flat Stanley" and will be starting another Flat Stanley read aloud next week.

We also had the first session of our second club for this year! We were very excited about our new clubs!

We worked really hard this week on getting our assembly ready. Everyone did an amazing job today! Well done Room 80! :)

Reminders:

Wednesday January 30th is Fun Lunch. Don't forget to still pack a snack!

Thursday January 31st Byblos Bakery is coming in to make a presentation about nutrition. Students will also get to make a healthy snack. This is in the afternoon so please still pack a morning snack for your child.

Friday February 1st is No School

Thursday February 14th and Friday February 15th is Teacher's Convention, No School

Monday February 18th is Family Day-No School

Thursday February 21st is our field trip to Fort Calgary

January 18th

Hi Parents,


This week in writing we were given a picture prompt to write a story about. We brainstormed ideas all together and then went and wrote our story about a penguin and a polar bear. We came up with some really creative stories!
We also started to discuss the different parts that make up a story, such as characters and setting. We have been reading the story "Flat Stanley" in class and this week we did a character description of Stanley. We used an outline of Stanley and wrote words that described his outer appearance on the outside of the outline and on the inside we wrote words about who is he as a person, such as caring and fun.

Our words of the week this week were: first, get, here, see
Our words of the week next week are: how, now, then, your 

We also continued to practice our reading and writing skills through literacy centers.

In math this week we continued to learn about numbers that make 10. We also learned about part, part whole. When we add two numbers together we have two "parts". The "whole" is the number of the two parts added together. We show part, part, whole when we write number sentences. We can also show the part, part, whole of three numbers using the triangle. For example, 6+4-=10 can also be written like..                        
                10

6                                   4     

We practice this altogether with the number 5. We then went and tried on our own with the number 7 and then later with the number 10. We were given blocks to break apart to help us see the two different parts.  We also practiced this with dice. We rolled two dice to get our two parts and then added them together to get our whole. 

In Science we continued our learning about colour. We discussed how we see colours all around us. We watched the Storybots "Colour" and then brainstormed things in our world that are red, yellow, and blue. Then we drew and labelled our ideas in our visual journals. 

We also learned about making a "hypothesis". We learned that hypothesis is another word for a best guess. We made hypotheses for what colour would appear when we mixed together the primary colours. We wrote down our hypotheses and then mixed two different paint colours together to see if our hypothesis was correct.  

From: Room 80

Reminders: 

We are still doing gymnastics in gym. Please ensure your child is dressed to safety participate. We recommend wearing sport pants/shorts and shirts with no belts or zippers, pull back long hair and jewelry should be left at home.

We are looking for volunteers to help with swimming. Especially male volunteer. If you have your CBE police clearance and are interested in volunteering, please email me. 

Friday January 25th we will be performing and leading the assembly along with Mrs. Hardie's and Ms. Deobald's classes. Parents are invited to come and watch. The assembly will be from about 9:15-10:00.

January 11th

Hi Parents,

Welcome back!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

This week was another busy week in Room 80!

We started off our week by sharing and writing about what we did over the winter break. It sounds like everyone had a wonderful time with family and friends!

In math we learned about making 10 and how to write number sentences. We did shake and spill with ten frames and double sided counters to help us explore the different ways to make 10. We also learned a new game called Find 10 Go Fish. If you want to play at home all you need is a deck of cards. The rules are below:

Find 10 Go Fish 
A is worth 1
K is worth 0
Queens and Jacks removed
Deal 5 cards to each player
You are NOT looking to match the same cards. You want cards that add up to 10!
10+K
9+A
8+2
7+3
6+4
5+5
4+6
3+7
2+8
A+9

We also learned about writing number sentences. When adding numbers together we write the two numbers we are putting together first using an addition sign. Then we use the equal sign to show how many there are when we add the numbers together.    _____+______=___________ For example: 4+6=10.
We practiced writing number sentence by rolling two dice, adding them together and then writing the corresponding number sentence to match.

Today we took our learning from this week, making 10 and writing number sentences, and combined them together. We used our ten frames and double sided counters to make 10 and then practiced writing all the different addition number sentences for making 10.

This week we reviewed our letter sounds "Sh" and "Ch". We also learned the soft "th" sound, like in the word Thursday and the hard "th" sound, like in the word these.
We also continued our reading and writing through literacy centers.

Our words of the week this week were: by, from, her, if
Our words of the week next week are: first, get, here, see 

In science we started our learning of colours. We learned about the colour wheel and created our own colour wheel for our visual journals. We learned that the three primary colours are blue, red and yellow and that we can use primary colours to make new colours.  blue+red=purple yellow+red=orange yellow+blue=green.
We also learned that warm colours are red, yellow and orange and that cool colours are blue, purple and green.

We started our gymnastics in unit in Gym this week. Please ensure your child is dressed to safely participate over the next two weeks. We recommend wearing sporty pants/shorts and shirts with no belts or zippers, pull back long hair jewelry should be off and left at home.

From: Room 80

Reminders:

If you have not already signed and sent back your child's report card envelope please do so as soon as possible. 

We just received our swim schedule for this year. We will be swimming at Canyon Meadows pool from Monday March 11th to Thursday March 14th. Our swim time is from 1:00-1:45. We will be leaving the school at 12:15 and arriving back at school at 2:30. We are looking for volunteers to help out in the change rooms. We are especially looking for male volunteers! We have three classes going on one bus so volunteers will have to drive themselves to the pool. If you are able to volunteer and have your CBE police clearance please email me if you are able to come help out. If you would like to help out and do not have your police clearance there is still time to get it before we swim, you just need to bring in two pieces of government ID into the office to get the process started. 

Wednesday January 16th is Fun Lunch. Please remember to pack your child a snack

Friday January 25th we will be performing and leading the assembly along with Mrs. Hardie's and Ms. Deobald's class. Parents are welcome to come and watch.  More information to come about the timing of the assembly. However, it is usually from 9:30-10:00. I will make sure to update everyone on the time as soon as we know for sure.