Week 3 (a little late)

First of all, thank you to all the families who came out for the meet and greet interviews, and told me so many wonderful things about your children!  I feel like we are going to have the best year!

Last week was so busy, and everyone is getting a cold, that I didn't get a chance to do the blog!  Here are some highlights on our learning, and what we are focusing on.

We had a lovely picnic on Tuesday, and are we glad that we changed the day!  The weather was so much better than the original day we planned for!

Our community walk to collect items from nature for our art creations was also a success!  Thank you to the volunteers who made it possible for us to make it to the pond!  The students found so many different items to use for their art, and created some pretty amazing pieces!

We also took some lovely group pictures, but I do not have consent to post all the students, so you will have to come in and see it!  I will print and hang pictures of our class in our classroom!

In math we have continued measuring.  Mrs. Tuff came and visited our class again, but unfortunately I did not have my camera handy when they were helping her measure herself again in our class!  We are also starting to learn some card games!  Did you know that all card games are math games??  We were surprised to learn this as well!  Ask your student about the games War and Battle!  They may not remember both of them, but they should be able to show you one of them.

We are continuing our inquiry on small crawling and flying critters.  All students have now chosen their critters and we are beginning to collect information to put into our books.  It is looking like a very exciting project!

In music we have been exploring different instruments.  Ms. Thomas has so much information for us on different artists from the past!  We love to groove to her music, and usually end up dancing down the hall back to our room after music class.

Library has been successful so far.  We need to get into the habit of remembering to bring back our books on Thursday, so that we can all get out new books.  We will try again this week.

We have read so many books!!!  We just love all books, and wish we could read them all day, every day!  We continue to read Charlotte's Web, and have been having great conversations about friendships, farms, and life in general.  Ask your child about Charlotte and Wilbur!

We have been focusing on vowels right now, and how they can make long and short sounds.  We have done an 'A' hunt around the classroom, and this week we will do 'E', and maybe 'I'.  See if you can find long and short vowel sounds at home, or in your reading books.

This week is already shaping up to be a good one!  We have the Terry Fox run on Thursday afternoon at 1:00.  If you are able to volunteer please contact the front desk.  We will also be collecting Toonies for Terri (or any amount you are able to offer).  Please send in your donations all week.

Box of Cards Fundraiser began today.  Your child has brought home a box today.  please ask family and friends if they are interested.  It is only $33 for 33 cards!  If you are unable to sell any boxes, and you do not want to purchase the box, please send it back to the school.

Have a good week!

Week 2!

Wow, it has been such an incredible 2 weeks!  The students have shown amazing community skills, and have been very kind and helpful to each other.  They have also shown a passion for learning new things, and have been willing to try different learning techniques that I present to them!  I think we are going to have a pretty great year!  Here are some highlights from the last week:

We started out the year by building a time capsule in our visual journals.  Each student has recorded some information about themselves that they will review at the end of the year.  We have written a poem and involved some measurement as well!

We have started a Classroom Sharing Circle that we are using to build empathy and community in our classroom. We have practiced this a few times, and we hope to get better and better at it.

We started library sign out this week.  Each child is allowed to sign out 2 books to bring home and share.  Students chose all sorts of books, from craft books to dragons to beginner chapter books.  Check out your child's book they have brought home!

In gym we have been learning cooperative games and how to play safely on the playground.

Books we have read:

Scholastic was sent home yesterday!  All orders are due by Monday September 18th.

We have been doing all sorts of cross curriculum art for math, inquiry, and just for fun!  Check out the video we used to draw a bee:

In math we have been focusing on measurement.  We were lucky enough to have Mrs. Tuff and Mr. Scout visit us while we were doing height measurements, and they let us measure them!  We hope they will come back at the end of the year so we can see if they grew over the year (or shrunk)!

We have been learning snack etiquette.  During snack time we pretend that our room is a restaurant (we haven't named it yet) and we practice how we would act if we were eating in a restaurant!  The kids have been building their skills around manners and voice levels.

We have been going over the rules for buddy reading.  Students practiced using a whisper voice and sitting elbow to elbow, knee to knee, to show that they can read quietly with a friend.

The students have been showing great independence so far this year!  We have a star student every day who leads our class in Calendar, gets a special chair for lessons, and is the line leader when we head out to different places around the school.  We also have end of day jobs that the students are responsible to complete at the end of the day.  They have been so wonderful at keeping our classroom organized and clean!

Please check out the right hand column of the blog to see upcoming events and due dates for our class.

First Day!

Welcome back to all families!!!  I hope you had a great summer!  We had an amazing first day, with a few hiccups, but all in all great!  It looks like it is going to be an awesome year!

We started out with a discussion about our feelings, and how to honor own feelings as well as others. We read a book about the first day, and how not only the students can be nervous on the first day:

The students drew a picture of themselves on an oval, then put it on our feelings graph.

Then we did it again at the end of the day:

I think the picture says it all!  We are very excited for Grade 2, and all the adventures we are going to have!

We also discussed some essentials, such as emergency procedures, classroom rules, location of the bathroom, and restaurant etiquette.  We did a scavenger hunt, went outside, had snacks, and started an art project for the first page of our Visual Journals!  I would say it was a full day.  I know I am tired!

I am looking forward to this year with all of you!  See you in the morning!