What?!? It's May Already - How did that happen?????

Wow with the winter that seemed to drag on FOREVER, I blink my eyes and it is May! We have been having so much fun with spring activities in our room now that the weather is better and everyone is out of the dulldrums...We are busy this week gearing up for our Mother's Day Tea which will be held this Friday, May 9.
The kids really seem to be enjoying their genius hour projects....you may have heard this term at home and not known what your student was talking about, but in a nutshell, every Friday, the students have 1 hour at the end of the day to work on a project of their choice.  We have everything from baking to knitting to preparations for a Magic Show...I love watching the kids learn from their own inquiries.  It is such authentic learning, when students are learning and researching a topic they are passionate about!  I can't wait to see their final products!

Welcome to March!

It has been quite a while since I have done a post, but if you have looked at our kidblogs, you have seen that we have been extremely busy!  The students most recently have been working very hard at creating their very own non-fiction animal fact books.  They seem to be enjoying this project immensely since it is entirely student driven.  I am loving the creativity that this activity is bringing out in the kids!
I also wanted to make a special note, that March 19 will be spring picture day here at school.  There is an opportunity on this day also to have sibling shots taken.
I hope everyone has a very restful and fun Spring Break.  See Everyone back on March 18!  Can't wait to hear all the stories!

Community Read

We have been continuing with our community read and have had several parents participate on different occasions. The students are loving having their parents come so they can show off their blossoming reading skills.  Please consider joining us for our special Christmas Community Read on Thursday December 20, from 8:30-9:30.  We will have special Christmas treats available for our readers.

Cultures and celebrations around the world

This month we have been learning about different cultures, traditions and celebrations around the world. Yesterday we learned about Germany, and the history of the Christmas Tress.  During Art time, we made these cool Christmas tree hats!

Check out our new Knuffle Bunny Video!

We have been spending the week enjoying the writing of Mo Willems.  One of our favourite books has been Knuffle Bunny.  We wondered what Knuffle Bunny did while he was lost, so Mrs. Wideen and I thought it would be fun to see where Knuffle Bunny went....

Reading Folders

Parents - Please know that I am in the process of completing updated reading assessments.  I am going to be hanging on to the reading folders this week, so that I can have the students choose new books that more accurately reflect their current reading level.
Thank you for your continued support.

Schedule Change

After some internal shuffling, I just wanted to let you know that our schedule has changed a little bit. Beginning Monday, October 29th, our new schedule is...

Day 1- Drama/Dance/Music

Day 2 - Gym

Day 3 - Library

Day 4 - Art, Drama/Dance/Music

Day 5 - Gym

A Halloween Brain Break....

Source: youtube.com via Tammy on Pinterest

Time, Temperature and Money

Today, we are starting a new math unit that covers Time, Temperature and Money. Here are some activities that you can work on at home to support our learning at school....

• Discuss with your child the special events your family celebrates during the year. Have your child help you record these dates on a calendar.

• If you have an outside thermometer at home, direct your child's attention to where the mercury is in the morning and then again at night.  Ask him or her if the mercury has risen or fallen.

• When shopping with your child, point out food products (up to a dollar) and have your child read the amounts.

We are looking forward to some really fun activities to do with these topics over the next few weeks!

Our Virtual Field Trip to Kenya

On Friday, we joined thousands of schools from across North America for a virtual field trip to Kenya. We watched on the smartboard, as a scientist showed us pictures and videos of the work that he did in Kenya.  He even showed us his camera that got eaten by a lion!

Spiders!

We started learning about spiders today! It goes along nicely with our science unit on life cycles, and it goes with our book Charlotte's Web.
This was the Spider Anchor Chart we did today, of our schema (prior knowledge) as well has some new learning from today.  We are going to continue to add to our chart as we go.

Welcome Primary Quad Bloggers!

This week we would like to give a special welcome to Mrs. Robinson's class, Mrs. Martel's class and Mrs. Sarchet's class. Take a peek around our blog to see what we've been up to! Can't wait to hear from you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our 2B families and visitors to our blog a very Happy  Thanksgiving!  Here is a little bit of the history of Canadian Thanksgiving, taken from Kidsworld.com...

Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day

Harvest Season

How It Began

The origins of Canadian Thanksgiving are more closely connected to the traditions of Europe than of the United States. Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. The very first Thanksgiving celebration in North America took place in Canada when Martin Frobisher, an explorer from England, arrived in Newfoundland in 1578. He wanted to give thanks for his safe arrival to the New World. That means the first Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated 43 years before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts!

Official Holiday

For a few hundred years, Thanksgiving was celebrated in either late October or early November, before it was declared a national holiday in 1879. It was then, that November 6th was set aside as the official Thanksgiving holiday. But then on January 31, 1957, Canadian Parliament announced that on the second Monday in October, Thanksgiving would be "a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed." Thanksgiving was moved to the second Monday in October because after the World Wars, Remembrance Day (November 11th) and Thanksgiving kept falling in the same week.

The 49th Parallel

Another reason for Canadian Thanksgiving arriving earlier than its American counterpart is that Canada is geographically further north than the United States, causing the Canadian harvest season to arrive earlier than the American harvest season. And since Thanksgiving for Canadians is more about giving thanks for theharvest season than the arrival of pilgrims, it makes sense to celebrate the holiday in October. So what are the differences between Canadian and American Thanksgiving, other than the date? Not much! Both Canadians and Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with parades, family gatherings, pumpkin pie and a whole lot ofturkey!

Read more: Canadian Thanksgiving | History | Tradition | Harvest Festival | Thanksgiving Day | Holiday http://www.kidzworld.com/article/2614-canadian-thanksgiving#ixzz28W5qYWD1

Here's a little video of our year so far!

Try our video maker at Animoto.

Literacy Centres

Each morning, our class spends about 30 minutes doing some independent literacy centres.  The centres we are working on this week are:

Reference Roundup : we are learning to work with the dictionary.

 Jump into writing: where we are working on some fall writing activities

Non-fiction news helps us get acquainted with non fiction writing

Buddy reading to help with our fluency

Reading Ebooks on the iPads. 

All of this makes for a fun and busy morning!

Global Read Aloud

Today, October 1st is the offical starting date of the Global Read Along.  What is the Global Read Aloud you may ask?  Watch the video below to find out all about it!

Our class is really excited to be a part of this exciting opportunity! We will be reading the book "Charlotte's Web". We were with Mrs. Wideen's class this morning and did a Skype call with Mrs. Lierman's class in Surrey, BC to make our predictions!

Reading Stamina

We are working so hard building our reading muscles.  We are already up to 11 minutes of uninterrupted reading time!

What a great day yesterday!

We had so much fun at the Terry Fox Run yesterday.  We got to go on a long walk on a beautiful day - does it get any better than that?  Here are some pictures from the little party we had in the field when we got back from the walk.

We're working on our writing stamina!

Ariana and Fatima shared their writing today.  They did a fantastic job!

Tomorrow is Picture Day - And The Terry Fox Run

Just quick note to remind families that tomorrow is picture day. Complicating things a bit is also the fact that it is our school wide Terry Fox run in the afternoon.  If you are wearing your dress shoes for pictures, it would be a really good idea to bring some running shoes for our activities later!