Argentina

Today, a friend of Ms. Griffith's came to visit us. Ms. Montani is from Argentina and she shared with us how people in Argentina celebrate Christmas. Caroline learned that it is hot in Argentina and they have no snow at Christmas!  Lucas learned that they open presents on Christmas Eve!  Atley and Makayla remembered that they celebrate with fireworks at midnight all over Argentina!  We made our own fireworks!!!

Gingerbread!

We have travelled to Germany -so of course we had to make gingerbread cookies! The students rolled out and baked their cookies in the morning. We then decorated and ate them in the afternoon!

Philippines

Today we traveled to the Philippines. There is no snow here and it is very hot! Zeida, who was born in the Philippines, taught us how to say Merry Christmas in Tagalog (the language spoken in the Philippines).  Maligayang Pasko! We also made a special holiday decoration called a parol!

Wassailing!

Today we learned about wassailing, which is a tradition in England.  People go to houses and sing Christmas carols to spread Christmas cheer. In class we made wassail - an apple cider type drink, and then went wassailing to different classrooms! We spread a lot of cheer!

Winter Concert Preparation

The children are busy preparing for our upcoming winter concert.  Some children have asked for the lyrics to practice at home.  Here are the lyrics for our two songs.

Halloween Measurement

On Friday morning, we had Halloween measurement Centers! We got to measure in many different ways.

We measured:

How far we could throw a pumpkin Pom Pom

How far we could blow pumpkin seeds

How many jack o lanterns tall we were

We had fun!

Creepy Kids

In the spirit of Halloween, we decided to turn ourselves into scary Halloween creatures using an app called Photo Booth. The children then wrote about themselves and had to meet the following criteria:

Tell what you are

Explain what you eat

Tell where you live

Tell what you can do

Have a spooky ending

Leave finger spaces so the reader can enjoy your story

Here are a few pages to enjoy. You can look at the rest of the book when you visit for conferences.

Happy Halloween

Here are a few pictures from our Halloween party on Friday. We participated in the annual parade in the gym and enjoyed looking at all the wonderful costumes. We watched some very funny videos and danced to the Monster Mash.  Thank you to the families for sending in food and drinks to the party.

Our Brain!

Today we made our class brain! Each student made a piece of our brain and then put a flag in it with his/her strongest smart. Julie likes how it shows how smart we are! Robert likes how the brain looks!  Griffin likes how it shows each person's smart!

Word Work

At school, we study five common words each week to grow as spellers. On some days, we learn how to write our words the "grade 1 way" which means using lowercase letters, leaving finger spaces between words and making each letter the correct size. On other days, we play spelling games and use wiki stixs to master our words. With practice at home and school, the children will learn to spell many common words correctly.

Different Kinds of Smart

We know that we are all smart! We have been learning about the different kinds of smart (Gardner's Multiple Intelligences) and what our kind of smart is. We all have smooth roads- things that are easy and bumpy roads- things that are tricky. Ask your child what kind of smart he/she is. What kind of smart are you?

Signs of Fall

With our Gr 4/5 buddies and an iPad in hand, the children recorded signs of fall on our playground. They used the app PicCollage to creatively display these images. Happy fall!

Growing Tree Books

Today at library, Mrs. Branco showed us 10 new books that were donated by students in our class last year during the Growing Tree campaign.  We listened to the story that Griffin donated to the school called "I Don't Want to be a Frog!" Thank you for your generosity! We love enjoying books.

Buddies

We are so fortunate to have Gr 4/5 buddies from Room 16. Ms. Vincent's class came to meet our class. First we read and then we enjoyed a quick play with our new friend.

Fall Celebration

Today we celebrated the first day of fall. The children brainstormed signs of fall in nature and enjoyed some wonderful autumn stories. They studied their leaves and made rubbings in the morning and leaf prints with paint in the afternoon. We ended our day with the story of the hidden star within each apple and an apple taste testing. Be sure to ask which apple your child enjoyed the most. Happy fall!!!

Room 8

We have had a great and busy start to Grade 1! We worked together to decide what we need to make Room 8 a great learning place.

We have been working hard to learn our Math and Daily 5 routines.

We have also been working together and playing together during choice time.

Our Chick!

We are very happy to announce that one of our eggs has hatched! Little Stevie arrived yesterday at about 5:15 after school. The students had heard him cheeping
in his egg during the day and were so excited to meet him this morning!