Swimming Lessons

Our friends in grade three started swimming lessons in November. They took lessons for five weeks. Here are some pictures!

Of course the grade two's can hardly wait for next year! Some of the grade three's will be continuing their lessons on their own! It was a really good time!

My Lips Are Sealed

We worked with a visiting performance artist who taught us about communicating without using our voice.

The Challenge

Mrs. Hauta put three bathroom mats on the floor. She divided us up evenly and told us to stand on the mats. She challenged us to turn the mats over without touching the floor. It took us a long time to figure out how to get the job done! You should try it!

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day is a very important day to honour those who have died to ensure our freedom. We read some stories about what Remembrance Day means. We made an art project that had a poppy on it.

  Our Art Project

We painted coffee filters with red, orange and a hint of purple paint. Then while they were drying, we painted our backgrounds grey. We cut out flower petals from the filters to make poppies. We added a stem and at least one leaf out of construction paper. We are very proud of our art!

Our Remembrance Day Ceremony

We went to the gym and sang Oh Canada and our choirs sang some songs. We watched others who sang and listened to poems. We had a wreath ceremony where two students from each room put poppies on a wreath.  We had a moment of silence while the trumpet was played. This is the only assembly we have where we don't clap our hands after songs or poems.

Upcoming Dates

Here are some important dates to be aware of:

November:

• Thursday, Nov. 26, - Term 1 Student Led Conferences (4:30-7:00pm)
• Friday, Nov. 27, - Term 1 Student Led Conferences (9:00-11:30am)

December:

• Wednesday, Dec. 2 - Winter Concert @ Stevenson 
• K-5 all - 1:30 pm
• K-3 only - 6:00-6:30pm
• Grade 4/5 only 7:00-7:30pm
• Monday, Dec. 21 - Sunday, Jan. 3 - Winter Break so no school!

A Very Busy Week!!!

We had a guest from the Nature Conservancy of Canada visit us in our classroom. She brought some interesting artifacts with her. She brought the animal hides of a black bear, a beaver and a wolf. We were able to see the differences between the skulls of a deer, a wood pecker, and a wolf. She came to teach us how plants and animals need each other. She knew a lot!

A big highlight of our week is that we received letters from our pen pals in Illinois! Some of us cannot read handwriting so we asked our reading buddies in Mrs. Beasley's class to read them with us. Now we need to write back!

Another exciting happening was that our Kidney bean plants are starting to sprout. We can see the roots growing on the side of the cups! It is very cool! When we planted them a few of them had already started to sprout.

Today is our Halloween Parade Day. We get to wear our costumes all day! We all go down the gym to have a parade and talk about safety. Then we get to have a giant dance party! After recess we do activities in our classes until home time! We LOVE HALLOWEEN!

We hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween!

We Love Reading Buddies!

We are always very excited to read with our buddies from room 3.  They are in grades 4/5 and are very helpful. We read our books to them. And...

... some of them even read to us!

You will have to check back next week to see what we are up to with "The Year of Billy Miller"!

Increasing Our Stamina

This week we have been working on increasing our stamina. We have been working in our Daily 5 Activities and trying hard to be independent. Mrs. Hauta needs to work with smaller groups and she needs to know we will do our jobs. Here is what our Daily 5 looks like!

We are also listening to Mrs. Hauta read aloud "The Year of Billy Miller" for the Global Read Aloud 2015. We have found a grade 3 classroom in Illinois to share ideas, questions and comments with. It is pretty exciting! They asked if we thought Billy's papa would ever get his big breakthrough? Here is what we thought!

We can hardly wait to hear more of the story!

Math Is Fun

Here is what our classmates want to share with all our readers!

Carlitos: "We love learning Math!"

Nathalie: "We have been learning some math games."

Denise: "We have been playing addition war."

Geoffrey: "We like learning math games because it makes us smarter!"

Olivia: "We play Even Steven and Odd Todd. We need erasers for two players. We roll dice and if it is an even number, then Even Steven gets to move. If it is odd, Odd Todd gets to move."

Daily Five

Daily five is fun and interesting to do, according to Gianna. Carlitos explains that we have reading groups meeting during Daily Five. Alex says our reading groups are fun because we learn so many new words. We can listen to stories on our i-pads with our headphones, shares Oliver. Krystal reports that we can read to each other during read to someone. Finally,  Nathalie adds that we can also read to ourselves.

OUR BIG NEWS!

We have joined the Global Read Aloud!!! We are reading "The Year of Billy Miller" by Kevin Henkes. If you look closely you can see some of our thoughts on thought or speech bubbles!

If you are reading our book too, be sure to leave us your thoughts or questions! We would LOVE to hear from you!

Another Great Week!

We met for our first Choir class. It was our first look at all the grade two and three students in one spot! Don't they look proud of how well they were standing?

Another first was our first session of Reading Buddies. We have partnered with Mrs. Beazley's Room 3 students. It was fun going into their room and reading some of their books too!

Finally, we are learning about the difference between wants and needs. Our needs are protected by our government. They are our rights! We had to work in groups to sort out which pictures were rights and which ones showed wants. This is what it looked like!

Wow! Another Great Week!

We started the week with International Dot Day celebrating the marks we all make in the world. We read "The Dot " by Peter Reynolds. We completed a colAR page and watched as our i-pads created a 3D image of our colouring that moved! You will have to come in and check it out sometime! Here are our friends that wore dots on dot day.

We have been using math manipulatives to explore what patterns are. Most students can point out the core, and can name the repeating pattern. We are learning what it is that makes a pattern. Here is some of our work!

Welcome Back to School!

It's great to see our returning friends and meet so many new friends! We are so lucky to have such a great group in room 18 this year! Everyone had a mixture of nerves and excitement on the first day!

On Monday we had our first school assembly to meet the new staff and those who returned from maternity leaves. We sang "Oh, Canada" and the 'Kind Hearted Heart" song that we worked on last year in music classes. 

We are getting to know each other through various activities and assignments in class!

We've Gone Buggy!

That's what happens when 20 students start researching all about bugs! We have been up to our elbows in glue and newsprint but we all think it was worth it! This is the display right across from the gym!

Mrs, Chapman's class also made bugs. Ours are on the bottom. Here are some closer views!

This week we also finished reading "The Incredible Journey" by Sheila Burnford. We enjoyed some popcorn with the movie "Homeward Bound" which was based on the book. We certainly enjoyed both! We recommend you read the book if you haven't!

Finally we finished off our Father's Day craft. We read the aboriginal creation story retold by David McLimans called "Big Turtle". We painted yogurt cups with acrylic paint. Next planted onion seeds or grass seeds and waited a long time for them to grow. Today we added the head and feet to make it look like a turtle. We thought it looked pretty neat. Some of us did have trouble getting the feet to stick though!

Next week we are having our Care Home Concert here at the school. If you are in the neighbourhood....

We would love to see you!

We're Going Buggy!

We have been doing some research on insects. They have 3 body parts: the head, thorax and abdomen. Insects have 6 legs, some have antennae, and most have wings. We read some books, saw some videos, we drew and labelled some diagrams, and now we are making a 3D model of our insects out of paper mache.

YOU can see some of our diagrams! There are some legs we have drying for our bugs. The bottom corner is the body of a dragonfly. Just wait until we add them to the thorax. We still have to cut out our wings! Then comes the paint! 

Grade Three Swimming!

There were a few nervous students but they all learned a great deal and FUN was had by all. Judge for yourself! Here is a peek at our first class!

On our second visit many students were trying new things!

All students learned a great deal about safety and building their stamina!

Our grade two classmates can look forward to all this fun next year!