Fin's Friends

You've probably heard that we have been taking good care of our class Fin. His journal is getting really full with all of his adventures in our homes, and Ms. Lirenman promises that she is going to make a movie of his adventures in Vietnam and Korea. She has shown us a few of the pictures and she has some really funny ones. But taking care of Fin is not the only part of the Fin's Friends program. We have also been learning about how important each and everyone one of us is. We have been reading a book called I Like Me by Nancy Carlson.

Here is a sample of some of the work we have been doing with Fin and his special program.

Spring has Sprung

Even though the weather outside has been rainy and windy Spring has sprung in our classroom.

More Voice Messages

While Ms. Lirenman and Fin were running around Vietnam over Spring Break we received two more voice messages.  The first is from our good friends in Mrs. K's class at  Craigburn Primary in Adelaide, Australia and the second is from one of the classes we will be working with on the Flat Clasroom project.  Enjoy.

listen to ‘Mrs K's class in Australia’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Kaput's Class’ on Audioboo

Spring Break

In case you are wondering why this blog has been quite for a couple of weeks now it is because we are all on Spring Break!  Ms. Lirenman has taken Fin on some crazy adventures and the rest of us have been on our break too.  Ms. Lirenman tells us that she will make a video of her adventures with Fin when she returns.

We head back to school on Monday, March 26th and Ms. Will will be with us then too!

Getting Voice Messages on Our Blog!

Thanks to Ms. Lirenman seeing a blog post written by Mrs. K  in Australia we now have voicemail on our blog - do you see it there at the top of the page? This special widget came from a FREE web based program called  Speak Pipe.  This means that EVERYONE who visits us can leave us voice messages.

Last night we received our first two messages and it was very exciting.  One came from a student in our class (and her mommy too) and the other came from a teacher across the world.  Based on her accent we wonder if  you can guess where she lives.  Anyhow since the web program doesn't easily share the voice messages Ms. Lirenman  decided to record the messages in AudioBoo.

Here are recordings of our first two voice messages.  Please feel free to leave us some more.  Did we mention we love getting comments and messages too!

Learning Something New

As part of our Flat Classroom project the first thing we will be doing is introducing ourselves to the other classes in the group through a digital hand shake.  Our digital handshake will be shared with our group - we are in Group 2 - and with other classes in other groups in this special project.

Unfortunately because of job action followed so closely by our two week spring break we more than likely won't get our digital handshake done until we get back to school on March 26th.

In the mean time Ms. Lirenman has been looking at some of the completed handshakes and they are pretty amazing.  One handshake in particular inspired her to create this. Can you put it together?

Flat Classroom K-2 Pilot Project - Building Bridges

Ms. Lirenman is very excited to announce that we have been chosen to take part in the first ever Flat Classroom Pilot Project for K-2 Students - Building Bridges.  The aim is to have classrooms around the world collaborate together and create a project with the hopes that we will learn and share with one another.  Our group will be exploring the theme a View from Our Window as well as Making a Meal.  We will be working with children from the USA, and  Hong Kong.    While the teachers involved are still working out details it looks like it will be an exciting project.  Stay tuned for more details.  In the mean time please do check out the class blogs/websites of the students we will be working with.

Ms. Pih's Prep A Class (Kindergarten) - Canadian International School of Hong Kong

We are also working with Mrs. Kaput's (Kindergarten) and  Miss Bava's (Kindergarten) classes from the Cathedral of St. Raymond Catholic School near Chicago, Illinois.

Fit Kids

Today we worked with the wonderful Fit Kids expert grade seven coaches again. Here are a few sample videos Ms. Lirenman took of our time in the gym.  If you check out our individual kid blogs there are more of these wonderful videos.

Please take the time to check out the other videos on our individual blogs.