-43 Wind Chill! Brrr!

No buses ran today due to the cold temperatures.  Art was scheduled for the afternoon.  We started a Valentine's Collage project by painting different textures using toothbrushes, bubble wrap, combs, sponges and small pieces of carpet.  Next week we'll use these papers to cut out various valentine shapes to make a picture.  (We made extras for the students who couldn't be at school today.)  Stay tuned for pictures of the final product.

Spatter painting using a toothbrush

Students painted on bubble wrap and then turned it over to make interesting prints!

Sponge painting

Making prints using small carpet samples

Students are getting excited for the 100th Day of School (next Friday).  Notes were sent home this week with instructions for a special 100 Day collection and requests for our 100 Day snack.  It's going to be a lot of fun!

In Social Studies we started our Map unit.  Today we looked at atlases and found Canada and Saskatchewan on different maps.

Penguins on Parade!

Students enjoyed our Art lesson this afternoon.  We made penguin pictures:

First, we used chalk, a kleenex and a template to create the background.  We put chalk on the top of the template, then used the kleenex to rub the chalk dust up onto the blue background.

Then we learned how to draw penguins. 

Students put at least three penguins in their pictures.

We glued cotton balls for the snow.

A few of the final products!

In Math, we've been working on Subtraction.  Ask your child to tell you a subtraction story.  We've been trying to use the "counting backwards" strategy to help us solve stories where something is missing.  Example:  There are 9 polar bears on an iceberg.  Some of the bears go swimming.  There are 3 bears left.  How many went swimming?

Our next Math lesson is all about mental math.  We will be practicing solving adding and subtracting stories using strategies such as counting on, counting back, making ten and using doubles.

We have just finished our Senses unit in Science.  It's been fun using our senses to taste, feel, listen, see and smell all kinds of interesting things!

In Language Arts, we continue to work on reading and writing words that have long vowel sounds.  

Tasting Party!

As part of our Science unit on the Senses, we had a tasting party this afternoon!  Students were asked to try tasting a collection of different foods and decide if they tasted sweet, sour, salty or bitter.  The students tasted:  chips, nuts, grapefuit, sugar, cocoa, pickles, pretzels, candy, coffee, vinegar, and chocolate.  Surprisingly, a lot of students liked vinegar the best!

We have finished our How To stories.  I typed the stories for the students and then they practiced reading their story to different partners to work on their reading fluency.   The stories have interesting topics:  how to plant flowers, how to make beds, how to feed pets...

The stories will be put together into a class book.  Students will take turns bringing the book home to share.

Other  things we've been working on:

• Long vowels (ee, a-e, o-e):  reading, making and spelling words that belong to different word families  (-ate, -ake, -oke)
• Writing in our Conversation Journals.  I write letters to the students in their notebooks and they reply by writing back with their answers and questions for me!
• Math:  making and solving subtraction stories
• Reading:  we've learned how good readers ask questions before, during and after reading.

Here are a few pictures from our last art project.  Students had to tear pieces of paper to create a picture showing a winter activity.  They turned out great!

Figure skater

All of our pictures on display!

Doing the splits

Building a snowfort

Happy New Year!

It was good to get back into a routine after a nice break!  Here are a few things that we've been up to this week:

• We painted beautiful snowmen from a large perspective!  (See pictures below.)
• In Math, we're continuing to work on adding.  The last few days have been spent learning and memorizing our doubles adding facts.
• We are beginning to practice reading and spelling words with long vowel sounds.  We started with the ee sound (like in feet and weed) and will be working on words with the silent e at the end of the word.
• In Science, we are learning about our five senses.  Today we did a writing activity where we used our sense to describe "zebra" cookies (also known as Oreos)!

Painting snowmen

Finished product!

(Sorry about the orientation - I couldn't turn it around once it was downloaded!)