We Are Working With Clay!

We have been working with a visiting artist, Ms. Jen McCurry. She has been teaching us how to work with clay. The students were surprised to learn that clay is mud. It is smooth, soft and mushy, but it dries out quickly! We had to learn to work quickly as well!

Our practise pieces top left were falling apart because we didn't attach them properly. We had to learn how to score properly. To add a piece of clay to another piece you have to scratch both surfaces and put a dab of water on them to make them stick together.

Clay pieces that dry are called greenware. They will feel grainy when dry. Ms. McCurry will take our greenware and fire them in a kiln. A kiln gets as hot as a volcano! Once the piece has been fired it is called bisque ware. It feels a little smoother and harder. Our next step was glazing, which is the same as painting. Glaze is made of glass and sand. It will make our pieces soft and smooth after they have been fired. 

Students were asked the think of some of the symbols that Canada is known for like the etchings on our coins. They were challenged to chose two symbols that would share the same habitat and create a sculpture representing them. Just look at their wonderful pieces!

Be on the lookout! These pieces will be on their way home and they are fragile. (Broken pieces can be glued back on.)

Spirit Week

Our Grade 4/5 classrooms have been learning about being entrepreneurs. They have designed a marketing plan in order to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. To do this they have planned a fun filled spirit week to kick off Spring Break!

LEGENDARY FLAVOURS & FIRED UP WITH FUN PRESENTS:

Monday March. 23^rd to Friday March.27^th, is our spirit week at Stevenson! We are going to be holding a fundraising food stand. The food stand will be open during am & pm recesses. The proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. You won’t want to miss this… Snacks include:

Monday at the back doors– Milky Monday, selling milk for $1.00 and cookies for $0.25

Tuesday at the back doors – Juice boxes for $0.75 and chips for $1.00

Wednesday at the back doors– Milk for $1.00 and licorice for $0.25

Thursday, outside of the gym during the movie

– Pretzels for $0.75, popcorn for $0.50 and pop for $0.75

Friday, outside of the gym during the basketball game

– Juice boxes for $0.75 and candy bags $1.00

But that’s not all…

On Thursday March 26^th, we are also going to have a movie in the gym at 1pm and it is “Finding Nemo”. Legendary Flavors will sell some treats and snacks for the movie. On Friday March 27^th, we have a basketball game it is students vs. teachers. Legendary Flavors will sell some snacks and drinks during this event as well.

We hope to see you all there. Have fun!

We are Smart!

 We are all SMART! We are just smart in different ways.

We filled out a Multiple Intelligence survey to see which areas we were strong in. We could see where our challenges were.

We each rolled a piece of clay. We added all the rolls together into one brain shape.

We put our names on flags.  We wrote down our area of strength that we want to keep working on.  We chose one area of challenge that we want to work on being better.  We put our flags in the brain.

We think our brain is really cool!

Daily Five

In Language Arts we get to choose our daily five activities. They are: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listening, Writing, and Word Work. In our class we also work with our friend Cody on fine motor skills and turn taking, so we get a chance to be his teacher too!

A Very Busy Week

Spirit Week

We dressed up as our
favourite teacher on Monday.

Tuesday was dress as a blast from the past.

Wednesday was Head Topper Day!

We wore hats or had a crazy hair.














Thursday was pajama day.    And Friday was HALLOWEEN!



Bag up Manitoba

Today we finished bagging up bags of ten. Then we put the bags of ten in a pile to take a picture. We counted all of our bags. We had 19 bundles of 10. We had 5 loose bags. How many bags does that make in all? If you need a clue look closely at our pictures.

Guest Artist 

We were very lucky to have an artist come to teach us how to paint a landscape. We learned about backgrounds, horizon line, and the foreground. We have some pictures you can see.

Dance-a-Thon

We raised $257.90 in our classroom!  The school raised $4795.00!!!



Halloween

Our afternoon started with our Halloween Parade and then we returned to our classrooms for other activities and our party.

The Plastic Bag Round Up!

Ms. Couch shared some really important news with our school. Our school continues to be the top school in the division in reducing our waste. Because we recycle, reuse, and compost, our school has reduced what goes into the garbage by 50%in the last few years. Here are some ideas we have for ways that we could reduce waste even more:
Krystal thinks we should reuse our sandwich baggies.
Brooke thinks we could use plastic containers.
Tyler and Kyran, say that we should eat vegetables for a snack that we could put into containers!
Krystal suggested we eat fruit as a snack that we can put into containers!
Jack said his mom makes homemade granola bars that she puts into containers!
Christina suggested we use plastic containers for juice too!
Alexander thinks we should use bags made from recycled materials like the Halloween bags from MPI.


We have been rounding up all those plastic bags that collect in the cupboards and closets for the Bag Up Manitoba -- Plastic Bag Roundup Challenge, a program of Take Pride Winnipeg! Inc. The plastic bags that are collected are recycled into free frisbees, bird houses, and benches for our school. These are the bags we have collected so far!

We bundle them up into tens so that we can easily count them!

Keep those bags coming!

Plastic Bag Challenge

Litter is a terrible thing. Litter makes our community look horrible! Littering even hurts nature! In the ocean plastic bags look like jellyfish. Sea animals think that the trash is food and they eat it. Eating plastic is not good for them. Other animals get trapped in plastic bags.

What can we do?

"We could pick up litter at recess and at home too!" said Oliver.

"We should recycle everything that we can!" said Krystal.

"We will participate in the plastic bag challenge! said Room 18. We are going to bring in all our extra plastic bags so that they can be recycled!