Last Day!

For our last day at school before the holiday break, we spent the morning building gingerbread houses. A lot of us discovered that building gingerbread houses out of graham crackers is hard to do!

Nonetheless, they sure look tasty! After lunch, we went down to the gym and spent the afternoon watching the movie Ugly Dolls. 

Mrs. Holman and Ms. Le sent a present home with everyone at the end of the day, along with the Winter Reading Challenge and our RAZ Kids log-in cards. More information on RAZ Kids to follow on a separate blog post.

Ms. Le said goodbye to Room 21 and shared a big class hug. She will miss each and every student in both Room 20 and 21 with all of her heart. Thank you for allowing me to be your child's teacher for the past few months. They have all taken up a very special place in my heart and I will miss them dearly! 

Mrs. Holman and Ms. Le would like to say thank you for all of the kind gifts and cards that we received from families! Your immense generosity and kindness warms our hearts and we appreciate every single one of you! ♥

We hope you have a wonderful and happy holiday break! We will see you in the new year ☺

Last Day Reminders

Today we learned about writing lists. Here is a list we created for tomorrow:

Last Day Reminders

• Bring back all library books to avoid overdue fees
• Wear PJs if you would like
• You may also bring 1 stuffed animal
• Please send in 1 snack bag of treats to decorate house (we do not want gingerbread kits or candies for the whole class) We will supply graham crackers and icing for building
• Please send in a plastic plate to build gingerbread house on
• Reminder: Ms. Le's last day is tomorrow
• Tomorrow is a full day with dismissal at 3:5

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New Assembly Date

Our assembly performance is now changed to tomorrow (Wednesday, December 18th) at 9:30am in the gymnasium. Thank you for your continued support and understanding! We hope to see you there! 

Gingerbread House Drawing

This afternoon, we did a guided draw of a gingerbread house! 

This gave us some ideas about how we would like to design our gingerbread houses on Thursday.

Assembly Tomorrow!

Reminder: Room 20/21 are performing at CJP's December Assembly tomorrow morning at 10:30am in the gymnasium! Family members are invited. 

We hope to see you there! ☺

Holiday Spinner Cards

Ms. Kolkmann lead our classes in creating a unique holiday card!

Each card has a spinner that goes along with the design on the front of the card. We came up with some awesome and creative ideas! Room 21 brought their cards home today. Room 20 will bring their cards home on Monday. 

2D and 3D Shapes

The last few weeks we have been talking lots about 2D shapes and 3D Objects/Solids. 

We hope that your child is sharing lots with you. We have completed 2D and 3D shape hunts within our class. They have learned how to sort the Montessori solids (3D material) and how to use the geometric cabinet. These lessons were a refresher for many.

       

Grade 1 - SHAPE AND SPACE (3-D Objects and 2-D Shapes) 

Describe the characteristics of 3-D objects and 2-D shapes, and analyze the relationships among them.

• Sort 3-D objects and 2-D shapes, using one attribute, and explain the sorting rule. 
• Replicate composite 2-D shapes and 3-D objects. 
• Compare 2-D shapes to parts of 3-D objects in the environment.

Grade 2 - SHAPE AND SPACE (3-D Objects and 2-D Shapes) 

Describe the characteristics of 3-D objects and 2-D shapes, and analyze the relationships among them.

• Sort 2-D shapes and 3-D objects, using two attributes, and explain the sorting rule. 
• Describe, compare and construct 3-D objects, including: • cubes • spheres • cones • cylinders • pyramids. 
• Describe, compare and construct 2-D shapes, including: • triangles • squares • rectangles • circles. 
• Identify 2-D shapes as parts of 3-D objects in the environment.

Music Sharing Class

Students in Room 20 and 21 will have a Music Sharing Class on Wednesday, December 18th during their music time. Students are welcome to share something music-related like a piano piece, a song or a dance. If your child has something to share, please help them prepare and remember to bring what they need on their performance day. 

If you have any questions, please e-mail Ms. Nair at canair@cbe.ab.ca.

Library

Please ensure your child has their library book tomorrow so they can sign out a new book for the weekend. 

This year we are asking that all student library books be returned to the library by Monday, December 16^th. We are hoping that having all the books come back before the break, will help to assure there are less books that get lost.  

Reindeer Portraits

This afternoon, we drew reindeer portraits using oil pastels. 

Our reindeer turned out awesome! They are unique in their own way and all look amazing :) 

Important notice: Rooms 20 and 21 are performing at the winter assembly on Tuesday, December 17th at 10:30am in the gymnasium. You are invited to come and watch! We hope to see you there! 

Building 3D Objects

On Monday, we spent the afternoon building 3D shapes using toothpicks and plasticine. 

The toothpicks acted as the edges of our shapes and the plasticine acted as the vertices. 

Ask me what 3D shapes I built! 

Snowman Art

On Thursday, we spent the afternoon creating snowman art. We used a variety of techniques (ex. watercolor washing the background, painting the snowman) and materials (ex. buttons, ribbon, string, sticks, googly eyes, paper) to build and decorate our snowmen!

I Can Do Hard Things!

Today, we talked about perseverance and what it means to persevere when facing hard tasks. We discussed how it is important to always try your hardest and to never give up!

Reminder: Tomorrow is Toque Day! 

Soupy Monday

Today, we made our stone soup! We had very many carrots and a wide variety of other vegetables (and some fruit) added into our pot along with our stone (don't worry, no one ate the stone!). While we waited for our soup to cook, we wrote a recipe for stone soup.

After lunch, we were able to taste our soup... and it tasted great! Most of us liked the soup and had seconds and even thirds! Here is what was left in our pot after everyone had their fill. (more pictures to come...)

Stone Soup

Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing.

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Today we read several versions of Stone Soup. On Monday, we will be making our own stone soup. Just like in the story we ask that everyone contribute a little so that we can have a feast. We ask that every child bring in a small contribution for our soup. Please have the items chopped and ready to go so we can get the slow cooker started quickly. We will be making vegetarian stone soup so that all children will be able to participate. 

Possible donation ideas:

onions

green onions

garlic

salt and pepper

carrots

celery

potato

sweet potato

can of diced tomatoes

can of corn

vegetable broth

zucchini

bell peppers (red, green, yellow etc.)

This is not an exhaustive list. Any item that you would put in a vegetable soup would be great. 

Please also send a bowl/container and a spoon so your child can enjoy the soup in the afternoon just before recess. 

Jack and the Beanstalk

Today we watched a short version of Jack and the Beanstalk, Mickey and the Beanstalk.

Following the movie we had a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) challenge. Students were given 20 pieces of spaghetti, 20 mini marshmallows, 1 large marshmallow, and 2 long pieces of masking tape. With these materials they were to build the highest tower for Jack to climb that they could with there team. 

We hope to get the pictures of the towers onto Iris next week.

Golden Ticket Reward

We have been working very hard in rooms 20 and 21 to be safe, caring, welcoming, and respectful. The students set a goal to earn 150 Golden Tickets so that they could earn a big reward. It looks like we will be able to make this goal by Thursday, November 28th. Students may wear PJs to school on this day and bring a stuffie if they wish. We will be watching Hoodwinked in the afternoon. This movie relates to our learning on Folk and fairy tales.

Skip Counting

Skip counting is an integral part of the math curriculum. It is part of our pattern unit as well as number sense. Please help your child with counting. The following are the end of year targets for each grade:

Grade 1:
Say the number sequence 0 to 100 by: 
• 1s forward between any two given numbers 
• 1s backward from 20 to 0 
• 2s forward from 0 to 20 
• 5s and 10s forward from 0 to 100.

Grade 2:
Say the number sequence 0 to 100 by: 
• 2s, 5s and 10s, forward and backward, using starting points that are multiples of 2, 5 and 10 respectively 
• 10s, using starting points from 1 to 9 
• 2s, starting from 1.

Building Houses

We have started a new science unit, Building Things. Tomorrow we will build houses, just like the three little pigs. We will required some building supplies for this project. If you are willing to donate any of the following items please send them in tomorrow. We will be creating other projects from recycled materials during December.

• boxes
• tape
• popsicle sticks
• cups
• straws
• paper towel rolls (we can not use toilet paper rolls)
• cotton balls
• lids
• ribbon
• paper
• rubber bands
• other items from your recycle bin