On Saturday, we await our treasure....

The students had an amazing time creating their treasure boxes.

They loved each and every detail, from the gold foil paper,

to adding the jewels inside.

They loved the sparkles, the glitter glue and the gold ribbon.

What was the reason for creating treasure boxes?

What was inside?

They are the gifts of the spirit that each child will receive when they spend time with Father on Saturday and make their first confession.  They are the treasures of Reconciliation.

                                Increases my treasures in heaven

                                       Helps me say no to sin

                                    Makes my soul more beautiful

                                        Takes away my sins

                                     Restores grace to my soul

                                          Helps me to be good

I couldn't resist sharing this lovely image....totally engaged with the lesson!

How are those puppies doing?

Our students, the puppies that Rocket invited into our class, are working hard this week!

They are practising their word work and learning to spell words using magnets

and alphabet stamps.

They are listening to reading, using our iPads and scanning the QR codes to hear stories about puppies.

Their favourite activity, so far, has been to cuddle up with their teacher, as a story is read to them!

Good work puppies!  Soon you will be reading to the teachers!

How Rocket Learned to Read

Tad Hill's book "How Rocket Learned to Read" will be our jumping off point for focusing on all aspects of the Daily Five for the next month.  Thank you to a librarian known as Swersty, who shared this wonderful idea with me!

In the story, Rocket's teacher is a little yellow bird.  Here in our classroom, Rocket brought all of his friends to school today and the students are going to be these little puppies' teachers.

Today the students started the puppies' lessons by demonstrating how to spell some words, and then showed them how to read the colour words.

In the story, the little yellow bird put a name tag around Rocket's neck.  Each child was able to choose a name for their student puppy and now all of the puppies have a name tag around their neck!

The purpose of having the students learn different strategies in mathematics is for them to be able to use them easily and efficiently, making the adding, and subtracting of numbers be something that they do not find difficult.  The strategy the students practised today is known as 'doubles plus one.'  If you know your doubles, then a neighbour number can be easy to figure out.

Here's an example:

I know 6 add 6 is 12, so then 6 add 7 will be one more, 13!

In pairs, the students practised this skill with a fun game.

This afternoon, both Grade Two classes listened to a safety presentation offered through the County of Strathcona.  The presentation focused on fire safety, making a plan to be safe in our homes and knowing when to ask an adult to phone 911.  The children have 'talking homework' tonight, to explain the three things that they felt was the most important that Evelyn taught them today.

This bookmark will be coming home.  Please check out this cool idea that the County has set up as a free service to its residents.  When you sign up through www.strathcona.ca/scalerts you will get messages about severe weather, fire and water bans, significant traffic disruptions and other important information through cell phones and/or e-mails.  Check it out!

The wonder of a child and snow

This little sweetie came to live in Canada on August 6th.  Imagine his delight in seeing and playing in snow for the first time on Monday morning!  I just had to capture his excitement!

Snow must still be on his mind because he handed me this drawing today!

Shake and rattle those bones!

We watched this great little video on SchoolTube to add to our scheme about skeletons.

Click on the words to view it yourself.

Using a little plastic skeleton found at the Halloween section at Dollarama, the students shared what they knew about skeletons already.

When they share together, it is possible that the students are sharing new knowledge for their peers.

Using some little colourful 'bones', the students had a chance to create and then read their own graph. Using the 'more than' and 'less than' symbols was new for them this year.

Many years ago this cute little project was one that I found in a magazine.  Imagine using Q-tips to create a skeleton.  It was a fun way to review the names of the bones that we had learned in the morning, such as clavicle, spine, skull and femur.

Each one has its own personality!

Meet our friend Frankie!

We read a cute little book about a new boy at school, then made pictures of him.  His name was Frankie!

This was an activity where the students were given the necessary materials, watched and listened to the directions and then tried it on their own.  There were no tracers involved!

Once Frankie was made, we tried to describe him using adjectives.  Adjectives are the words that add interest to what we are talking or writing about.  They describe things we can touch or label.  Those words are nouns.  The students wrote their adjectives using their red pens (oh joy!) and the nouns with their pencils.

A mini version of Frankie (thanks to an American blogger who shared this cute pattern) came home tonight to add some interest to Read to Someone.  After reading, the students are to draw what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the book.  They can also challenge themselves and write a sentence as well for each section.

It's a wonder we got anything done with all the excitement of going to our first swimming lesson of the year.  Look at the happy faces!

Here's a little boy who hasn't taken lessons before!  I can't even put my face in the water and here he is doing it on the first lesson!  Congrats!

The students really enjoyed their time at the pool!

After the tragedy of losing a member of our military on home soil yesterday, I would like to encourage all of my little ones to consider wearing red on Fridays, starting tomorrow and continuing throughout November.  They may not know the sad reason, but just showing that we are proud to be Canadians is a fine thing to know!