Saturday 28 April 2012

Flat Classroom Project Update - Cooking with Paul's Mom.

On Friday we were lucky enough have Paul's mom help us with our Flat Classroom project. She cooked with six different students from our class and they made Dirt and Worms. Ms. Lirenman thought it was cute that we were making dirt and worms because lately we have been studying plants. But unlike the dirty and worms we have seen while looking at plants this dirt and worms was very delicious. Check out the video of our cooking. Perhaps our flat classroom classes may try to make this delicious dish too. Enjoy!

 

Friday 27 April 2012

Looking for Frog Eggs

This past week while running in Green Timbers, Ms. Lirenman spotted frog eggs in their natural environment.  Since she knows that Ms. Will will soon be teaching us about frogs she felt it was important that we go to see them too.  So with a few of our parents joining us for the walk, we headed to Green Timbers.  And guess what.... WE SAW THEM TOO!


What a great way to spend the first hour of a school day.  We are so lucky to be so close to this wonderful park.

Here's a little movie of our adventure.  Enjoy.





Something is Happening!

Something is happening to the seeds we planted last week.  Take a look.


Wednesday 25 April 2012

Something out of the Ordinary

Today after school when Ms. Lirenman and Ms. Segec were going for their run they saw something quite out of the ordinary.


Why is this so out of the ordinary?

Monday 23 April 2012

Exciting New Projects

This morning Ms. Lirenman told us about two exciting new projects we are involved with.  They are both on line and they involve learning with other children.

The first is a place that is safe for us to blog about our adventures with Fin.  We can still write in his journal but if we'd prefer to blog about our adventures we can do that too.  Now we can do which ever option(s) we chose. So YES we can write on paper and we can blog on the computer if we'd like.  You will see that other children are sharing their adventures with their special animals too.  Most of the children are from Ontario so it will be nice for them to hear about what we do in British Columbia.

Here is the link to Fin's blog.  Ms. Lirenman has also added a link to the right hand side of this blog to make it easy to access it.

The second project we are involved with is sharing what is happening with the beans we are growing in our classroom.  What's cool is that we are not the only class doing this experiment so they will be sharing with us too.  There has been a Wiki set up to hold all this information and each class will be adding to the wiki.  The wiki is called Full of Beans .  If you click on "Full of Beans" you'll get to that special wiki.  You will also notice that Ms. Lirenman put a link on the right hand side of the blog too so you can check it out from there as well.

A lot of exciting things are going on in our classroom.  We hope you will check back often and leave us lots of comments.  WE LOVE COMMENTS!

Saturday 21 April 2012

Learning About Plants


Ms. Lirenman has been playing with Comic Life on our class iPad and now she can't wait for more iPads to arrive in our classroom.  There are so many wonderful things that can be done with this App and much of what is created can be put on our individual blogs too!  Coooooooooooooool!

Anyhow, beside Ms. Lirenman learning about Comic Life for the iPad we have been busy learning about plants with Ms. Will.  So far we have taken care of a pocket seed, and our seeds are now growing (hopefully) on our class wall.  Ms. Will has also been teaching us about 2D and 3D shapes. We've learned about Canadian symbols, and recognizing safety signs too.  We've been learning a lot from Ms. Will.

Here is what Ms. Lirenman created using Comic Life and pictures of our plant  journals.  Learning is so much fun.

Flat Classroom Project Update - Cooking with Urim's Mom

This past week Urim's mom made Korean GimBap with six of the students in our class.  For those that were able to make the GimBap it was a really great experience.  Urim's mom was super organized and a really good instructor.  Plus what we made tasted delicious too.  Thankfully everyone in the class had the option to try GimBap too.  Now we can't wait for our other families to come to cook with us.  As of right now we still have three more families coming in to cook with us over the next couple of weeks.  Ms. Lirenman also tells us not to worry because we will all cook at least once.

In the meantime here is a video of our cooking session.  Ms. Lirenman still needs to get the recipe from Urim's mom though so others that are interested (and perhaps those in our Flat Classroom project) can try to make it at home too.

Enjoy.


Friday 13 April 2012

Ms. Will

Ms. Will is a really good sport.  For those of you that don't know Ms. Will grew up in Calgary, Alberta and believe it or not her favourite ice hockey team is the Calgary Flames.  Little did she know that when she started her extended practicum with us that she would have to become a Vancouver Canucks Fan.  But Ms. Will has great school spirit as she displays here.


We like learning from Ms. Will! :-)

Welcome Menura

While we still miss Claudine and Nicolas a lot we are really happy to welcome Menura to our Division 16 family.



We look forward to getting to know you better. 

Monday 9 April 2012

Fin's Home Visits

Back in February we started taking Fin home as part of the Fin's Friends program.  Not only did we have adventures with him in our homes but we wrote about them  too.  While Fin is still be visiting our homes we thought it was a good idea to show you what he has been up to the past few months.  Enjoy.



 For the next round of home visits we will have the chance to blog about Fin's visits on a special website.  Stay tuned for more details.

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Flat Classroom Project

A few days before Spring Break Ms. Lirenman was talking about a Flat Classroom Project that our class will be involved with.  We will be creating a collaborative project with two classes from around the world - one in the USA and one in Hong Kong.  We will be looking at the View From Our Window and Making a Meal.

But before we start our collaborative project we first had to introduce ourselves to one another.   With permission from Mrs. Kaput from Cathedral St. Raymond in Illinois, USA and Ms. Pih from the Canadian International School of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, here are our digital handshakes.  We look forward to learning and sharing with them.

Mrs. Kaput's Kindergarten Voice Thread



Ms. Pih's Kindergarten (Prep)  iMovie



Our Class iMovie


Learning with Ten Frames


The past couple of days we have been looking at the ten family and the different number combinations we can use to make the number ten.  At first we watched this great catchy math video.



As you can probably imagine our favourite part (or at least the part that made us giggle the most) was the check baby check baby check baby part.

After reviewing the video a couple of times Ms. Lirenman introduced us to the Find Sums app on the class iPad and iPod.  It's a great app because it helps you "see" what the different math pairs for ten are.  Ms. Lirenman had the iPad hooked up to the projection device so that we could all play along.  One of us would choose a number between one and ten and then that many apples would show up in the ten frame box.  Then someone else in the class would have to figure out how many more apples we would need to complete the ten frame box.  Needless to say it was a lot of fun.  It was almost like we were using an interactive white board, but instead of touching a white board we were touching the iPad. The whole time the process was being projected onto a screen.

But as with most kids we like doing things ourselves too.  Unfortunately we don't have a class set of iPads (or at least not yet) so we had to make do with tiles, a ten sided dice, and a blank tens frame (thanks Mrs. Morrison for letting us borrow yours).

To play the game one person had to roll the dice and put that many tiles on the tens frame.  Then the other person had to complete the frame and read out the number sentence that went with the frame.  While it wasn't a challenging game it certainly helped us learn the tens family much easier.

At the end of the math period we watched the movie again, but this time we could easily shout out the missing numbers in the addition questions closer to the end of the video.

They have been a good couple of days of math learning.  Here are some pictures of us playing the game.  You will notice that one group is playing on the iPad.  A second group was planning on the iPod until Ms. Lirenman realized she needed it to take photos since her camera died in Vietnam.  Enjoy the photos.













Sunday 1 April 2012

Jobs in Our Community

Since we have been less successful than most years to attract parents into our classroom to talk about their jobs we turned to books to learn about other jobs in our community.  In pairs the children read books about a variety of jobs.  Typically in most groups one person read while the other person recorded important details such as what type of duties the job requires.  At the end of socials we all met together and shared what we had learned from our books.  Here are some photos of us learning together.









Screen Chomp

Last week Trista and Brooklyn worked together using the iPad and the ScreenChomp app.  While this is still pretty new to them, they did create a great subtractions story together.

Enjoy.


Saying Goodbye

This week was a sad week because we had to say goodbye to two of our classmates.  While we had word at the beginning of March that Claudine had moved and would be going to a new school after Spring Break, it came as a total surprise to find out that Nicolas was moving too.

We have thoroughly enjoyed having Claudine and Nicolas in our class this year and we will miss them both terribly.  Hopefully they will be able to keep in touch via our class blog, or their individual blogs. We wish them both the very best of luck at their new schools.  Both schools will be VERY lucky to have these special students.

Love Ms. Lirenman and Division 16



Brooklyn's Dad

This past week Brooklyn's Dad came in to talk about his job with us.  He runs Street Legal Tint and Detail.  He told us about how he adds material to windows that either blocks out light (or harmful sun rays) or makes glass stronger, and harder to break.  He showed us some of the tools he uses.  He also told us about his favourite part of the job - it's something that he loves to do.  He let us know that he started his company a long time ago, and used to do it from his garage when he lived in Winnipeg.  He sure has come a long way because he now has three shops, which are very busy.  The one thing he doesn't like about being the boss is that sometimes he gets home from work late and so he misses out on the important time with his family. Thankfully as the boss he can leave work sometimes too to be at his children's special occasions.  Thank you Rene for visiting our classroom.  We learned a lot from you.





Fin's Adventures in Vietnam and Korea

Ms. Lirenman took our class Fin on her adventures over spring break. They went to Vietnam for two weeks with a quick day trip to Korea on their way back to Canada.

Here is a video of Fin's adventures.