Conversation Hearts

My grade partner and I were talking about how many DAYS there were in February...Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, 100th Day, Family Day, Professional Development Day....

Somehow, with all these days, we still need to fit in a little learning!

The students had a day full of love...as represented by all the hearts, yesterday.  Each student received a little plastic heart filled with some conversation hearts which they then used to do a variety of sorting, graphing, adding and subtracting, and writing activiities.

                               
  The room was abuzz, as part of the fun of the activities was the co-operative nature of the work.

There were two different types of hearts...one for the math activities and another set with longer phrases that could be used for the writing.

It was a sweet, sweet day!

Odd Todd and Even Steven

A HUGE thank you to Cara Carroll, a teacher blogger from Texas who shared with great idea to help children create a visual of what odd and even numbers are.  I loved her idea and created a version for my classroom too!

Here's the book that the names of the characters came from.  The story tells how Steven plants his garden in even numbers, while Todd adds an odd number of cactus to the garden.  What happens?  You can ask your child how it all turned out in the end.

The students have had a great deal of exposure to odd and even numbers this year, but they were more than a little stumped when they tried to identify larger two digit numbers as odd and even.  They could count to 12 and see that each one 'had a partner' so it was an even number, but how could they check if 71 was odd or even? Ask your math whiz how they can identify ANY number as odd or even?  What strategy are they using?  Does it always work?

One of our activities involved creating an Odd and Even Street.  All the even houses looked the same with two windows and the same coloured roofs and doors, The odd houses were different!  They were colourful, sat in different directions and sometimes there were 3 houses with the same number on them!  How odd!

The students worked very hard to complete their little research and opinion writing pieces.  They wrote the facts about groundhogs that they had learned by listening to stories, watching videos and reading a fact book first.  They then decided if, in their opinion, the Groundhog really could predict the weather, and wrote a minimum of four sentences about that opinion.  Some of the students were not quite finished today, so, given that they will be home for four days, they will be finishing their writing at home.  Please return this work to school on Monday. Thanks!

So cute!

A Dreary Day Might Mean....Spring is on its Way!

I love that our newest little boy from way across the seas asked me after the children had written in their agendas last week "What is groundhog?"  How can you explain this long standing tradition to someone who has never heard about it?  You can't!  He needed to see it to believe it!  Here's the whole gang  with our paper version of the groundhog....also known as a woodchuck (trivia!)

He set out in the snow.....

...but there was NO shadow!

Could it be true? Could Spring be on it's way?

The children are going to track the weather for the next few weeks to see how accurate our little weather rodent really is!

Tonight there is a new Weekly Reading Form (found somewhere on the internet...sorry, don't know where) that the children will be using.  It moves the children into metacognition, which is thinking about thinking.  They are to fill this form in for a full week, so the literacy bags will be the fifth book for the week.  Please assist this week as it is new to us all.  The form is due on Monday, but there will only be Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this week's form because of Teacher's Convention on Thursday and Friday.

Jump Rope for Heart - February is Heart Health Month!

A team from the Heart and Stroke Foundation visited us on Thursday to kick off a "Jump Rope For Heart" activity/fundraiser.  You'll see the materials to explain how to be involved in your child's bee binder pouch (if you're interested!)  The students in the school were very excited for this opportunity to try out some skills!

I usually do the skipping unit in March, just before Spring arrives, but it will be moved to February because of this little school initiative.  These gals were demonstrators and were part of my class last year, so they knew most of the tricks being demonstrated.

Here's the school, just in awe of what different things can be done with a skipping rope!

This was one I had never seen before, called the corner, so three long skipping ropes were going at once with 3 gals turning and 6 students skipping!  FUN!!

There was a contest to see if the teachers could skip more times than the students in 60 seconds.  Guess who won?

Thursday, February 12th is our school's special Jump Off date, so packages are due then.

We're forever learning something new and on Thursday we practised trading ten ones for a ten and then ten tens for a hundred.  This is in preparation for adding and subtracting large numbers.

These games always are so popular!  The room is vibrating with excitement.

Report Cards were also sent home on Thursday.  If you have any specific questions, I will gladly meet with you but please make arrangements ahead of time. Thanks!

Later this month we will be celebrating Valentine's Day, 100th Day, and we will have a special visitor to explain life in a different part of Canada as part of our Social Studies curriculum.  That's on top of Family Day, Teacher's Convention and by what I hear, a return to the cold of winter.  I will send home a little sheet explaining things sometimes next week.  Keep your eyes open for it!

So that's how it works....

Our science unit "Hot and Cold Temperature" really has some wonderful experiments that are very 'hands-on' and 'brains-on'.  That means that the connections are made so that the students can understand how something works, why it works, and the importance of it to our everyday lives.

Case in point, the experiment on Monday was all about the properties of insulating materials, how they worked and where we might find them.  Lucky for me, all I had to do was get some leftovers just outside my backdoor, as my husband has built an insulated house for our cats so they can go outside in the winter and be snuggly warm.  

The children made 'in your head' predictions.  Which material would keep an ice cube from melting? Which material would keep hot water, hot?  The materials were:

styrofoam insulation

pink insulation

bendy silver insulation

flannette (like your pyjamas are made out of)

Arctic fleece (like you scarf or hoodie is made from)

knitted gloves

torn up paper

Each material was put into two black plastic containers, one for the ice cube experiment and one for the hot water experiment.  We did this almost first thing in the morning.  Right after lunch, we got to open the containers to see what happened.

I must confess, that I was as excited as the students as each one was opened and the baggies with ice cubes and hot water revealed.  We were half way through the experiment when I remembered to take a couple snap shots!

(Here's my beautiful assistant for the ice cube part!)

What would your predictions be?  What part of the experiment didn't work for us and why?  What 'big idea' can we say that we learned by trying this?  For the answers, ask you child!

In honour of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police man who sadly lost his life, the students and staff will wear red on Monday, January 26, 2015 as this brave man is laid to rest.  May God welcome Constable David Wynn into heaven with open arms. May He send His healing angels to his family, who will always miss him.

Please pray for the swift recovery of the auxiliary policeman who was also wounded.

Literacy Bags

Congratulations to this cutie who has been working hard on a home reading program and was awarded a certificate for moving up to a new level!  Hard work pays off!

Just a quick note about our Friday Literacy Bags....

I do so appreciate when I get a note that something is missing, but please remember that you agreed to ensure that everything in the bag, would be returned.  If you lost something from the bag, I would appreciate you replacing it.  I am now off to buy another book that was torn, buy three toy animals that are missing, another plastic measuring tool and then later I will have to reprint pages because pieces are no longer in bags, laminate them, cut them out and  put them into the correct bags.  That's after phoning four families tonight who hadn't returned bags on Monday.  I understand you all have busy lives.  I love working with your children and put in lots and lots of hours to ensure that your children have many opportunities to try new things.  Please help me out by ensuring that the items are all returned in the bags on Monday.  It will be so much better for our kiddos that way.  Thanks!