Our First Week Back

We sure had a fun, and exciting first week back at school.  We started our own businesses, we began our Science unit on living things, we created Snow people/animals using our "Good Stuff."  

 ^ I just love this picture.  I like to think this is how most of the kids feel as they are learning in this classroom.  Learning is so much fun!

 We started our Science unit on living things and our first task was to find things in magazines that are living and not living.  We had a good discussion on what characteristics define something as living.

In Writing, we started this game called Monster Match.  If you want a better idea of how this game is played I have the link to the video which is where I got the idea from.  The kids are so excited to play this game with the Beaverdell Elementary students.  We will be video conferencing with them this Wednesday to see if they can draw the monsters we will be explaining.  This is also a great game to play with your children at home.  We started the lesson with a really bad example and the kids were very frustrated that they couldn't draw the monster because it was so poorly explained.  They understood that they needed to think and write everything they had drawn on their monsters for them to match.

In art, we read the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlers.  Lois is one of my favourite artists and I love sharing her world with the kids.  They get so excited to read her books and create!  This book inspired us to collect "good stuff" as she calls it and use that stuff to create interesting snow figures.  The kids were created snow cats, dogs, Mom's, Dad's, girls, boys, etc.  I am hoping to display their artwork this week!

 ^ I had two specials helpers that day!  One helped organize, help students, and just overall helpful the other one was quite disastrous.  

It was so much fun this week and I can't wait to see what next week entails.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Wednesday Update!

Exciting news in our classroom!  Sparkle the Elf has arrived.  We are so happy that Sparkle has come and he has already got into a little mischief.  

This was Sparkles first day in our classroom.

This is Sparkle's second day in our classroom.  The kids were very concerned with who will have to clean up his mess and how will he clean himself?

We are just about to start a new reading program that I am so excited about.  It's the same program as our writing program and it's called Primary Success.  I was so excited to see this when I came to school.  Thank you Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Parton!

The other Mrs. Liebel has been working with the kids for health and career and they made this adorable fish.  It ties in perfectly with our Christmas play, Flakes.  

Our self portraits are on display and they are looking so fantastic with the frames.  I am so impressed with the kids artwork.

We opened up our mailing system today because the kids are wanting to write to Sparkle.  So we made sure all new students names were on our mailing box and during free time the letters started coming.  The kids are so sweet to each other too.  I did say that Sparkle and Arnold write back so lots of them were excited to write a letter to our classroom Elf and dog!

Mailboxes are open and writing, writing, and more writing has begun!

Monday

Thanks to a couple handy people (My Dad and Wife) we now have these really awesome locker tags!  We were all pretty excited coming into school today and seeing these.

We also had new art up on our door!  Funny enough, we don't have any bulletin board space available right now haha.  However, the students amazing Andy Goldsworthy inspired art is up in our room.

Today in writing we all received our very own dictionaries.  We talked about how to look up words we can't spell, and where we can find words we don't know.  We also have a new word wall up too!  Today we practiced using our dictionaries for words we don't know how to spell.

 In Socials, we learned about needs and wants in our community.  We had a hard time understanding that skiing was a want.  Yes, it is exercise and we need that! haha.

Below are a few examples of our brainstorming.

^^ Doesn't this just melt your heart?!?! Cloud watching as a want!  So adorable.  That might just fit under the need category hehe.

With this beautiful warm weather the students are bringing in flowers to brighten our days up.  I must admit it brings a smile to my face too!  {Grandma you recognize the vases?}

Happy Monday!