"SNOW" Much Fun!

Can you guess what we spent the morning doing?

Three guesses...and yes we were outside.....

                                                     Correct!  We built snowmen!!

 I firmly believe that students do a better job of writing when they have the experience to hinge their learning onto.  In this case, we were making compound words that have the word 'snow' in them, then wrote lists of what materials would be needed in order to make a snowman, and finally...

we all went out and co-operatively built the real things!

Okay...this is really a snow alien with a tail, but he counted as a snow creation!

The students got a little creative in how they dressed their snowman.

We spent the rest of the morning using those bags of rice...to weigh down our new little snowmen friends.  The students also added batting to the socks, chose a pompom for the top of the hat, and two buttons, which were added along with the eyes, nose, snowflake and ribbon scarf.

I wonder what you call a large group of snowmen?  Maybe they would be a 

"slip of snowmen" or could it be a "slide of snowmen"?

Our art project was based on looking at these snowmen from varying perspectives,

starting with straight on, or as we called it "looking nose to nose",

 then the students could turn the snowmen to the right or left, with more or less angle, and even look at the snowman from behind.

Each angle was sketched,

and then the three sketches were 'framed' as a grouping.

A huge thank you goes out to Reagan Tunstall, who shared the idea of the sock snowmen on her blog.

The students were thrilled to do the project, and sad to have had to leave them at school for the weekend.

Banana Split Math

In mathematics, the students are reviewing addition facts up to 20 and subtracting from 20, both objectives that were part of the Grade Two curriculum.  This is in preparation for work in adding and subtracting double and triple digit numbers.  The students have reviewed the different strategies that they would have learned both in Gr. 1 and Gr. 2.

If you think you are seeing a new face, you are right!  God blessed our class with the addition of a young lady, who started in the New Year.

All that pink?  We are supporting the "Hair Massacure" nearing our school goal of raising $5000.00

The cosmetology class from Archbishop Jordan High School joined us to 'pink' us up!

Reviewing the basic facts is something the students can continue to do at home.  Are they practising multiplication facts as well?  Busy, busy kids!

Welcome back!

A very happy new year to you all!  When we looked at vocabulary relating to New Year's yesterday, we had a few a-ha moments.  First, most didn't know who Father Time was, so we had to looked that up along with introducing the idea that the New Year is portrayed as a baby.  Then they couldn't figure out why 'toast' was a New Year's word...thinking of course as toast being a noun and not in the context of it being a verb, as in making 'a toast'!  So funny!

Today we were able to get right back on track with Daily Five.  The students really do  love the "Listening to Reading" component and readily share the iPads with their peers.

Tomorrow's our 'shopping day'!  We are going to spend time during math class trying to see what we can purchase in the iTunes store with the generous gifts to our classroom that we received for Christmas.  Everyone is sooooo excited and they are ready to spend that money!  Thank you to all of the parents who have given us this wonderful opportunity to learn about purchasing within a budget!

The focus lessons this month are on the parts of speech that we have already learned, nouns and adjectives and the new one, verbs.  This will assist in our work towards creating interesting sentences so that when we write we can "show, not tell."

Jesus is the Reason for the Season

May the love of the little babe, who came to save us all, be the joy and inspiration of all your Christmas wishes.  God bless.....

The season for learning

Just couldn't resist one more Grinch picture!   This might seem like a 'fun' project (and it was) but the real reason that it was done was to continue to work on fine motor and planning skills.  There was a lot of cutting, then placing and planning before glue was applied.  Each turns out a little different as each child puts their own spin on how the Grinch will look!  Thanks to the "Glyph Girls" for sharing this wonderful pattern with me!

We tried a 'hands on' approach to remembering the way the three different rocks are created in the earth.  The first is igneous, which is created by heat.  Using the heat of our hands, we tried to melt the mineral bits, into a new rock form.

Once it was cooled, a new 'rock' was formed.

We tried this with three different types of 'mineral bits'.  We noticed that some of the mineral bits seemed to be easier to melt than others.  Some stayed a bit more crumbly, like the rocks we may find underground.  It was an opportunity to find out that depending on the composition of the minerals, the rocks would have different qualities.

 Sedimentary Rocks are recognized because they appear in layers.  If the students put the three different 'rocks' that they created one on top of the other, they could see the layers as they formed.

Here are the sheets they will be using to create their own little geological guide for the three rock types.  We are going to do a 'hands on' tomorrow for metamorphic,  the root of which is morph which means to change.  Heat, time and pressure are needed to change rocks.  One example  would be limestone which is a sedimentary rock that becomes marble under the right conditions.

The notes that we referred to on the whiteboard...you might note the Power Rangers reference, as they morph into their new characters!

Mr. Grinch

We are using the Dr. Seuss story of 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' to learn some new concepts.

Using the song from the animated version of the story that is shown on television every Christmas, we distinguished between metaphors and similes.  In a metaphor one thing is said to be another.  Here's a wonderful example where the Grinch is told "You really are a heel."

Similes are a bit easier to spot, because the word like or as is used in the comparison.

"You're as cuddly as a cactus."

The BEST quote from the story became an art project last Friday.

The students also learned that synonyms are words that mean almost the same thing.  They brainstormed for synonyms of the word smile, then brainstormed again for ideas of what makes someone smile at Christmas.  Using that information they wrote a letter to the Grinch persuading  him to smile (or grin, or beam)  This letter explained to the Grinch that "You will feel better and you might even smile when you're drinking hot chocolate and eating Christmas cookies."

I love this one "You should smile because Jesus saved our lives and also other people will like to be friends with you."

The students are also practising making connections with the text.  That means that as they are reading, they are thinking about what they read and think about how it relates to an aspect of their own life, or reminds them of something else that they have read or they remember something in the world around them that is similar to the text they have read.  In this assignment, they used the three coloured hearts to write the connections that they made.

Silence for Sandy Hook Elementary