Beanbag Skills

Last week we were working on beanbag skills in the gym.  We balanced with them, jumped with them, and even threw and caught them.  We played some exciting tag games with them too.  We are enjoying our gym time on Monday and Tuesdays with Ms. Benjamin's class.

Post Cards Have Been Sent!

This week we sent six postcards to classes around the world.  We returned postcards to Ms. Nelson's class in Australia, Ms. Kolenberg's class in Australia, and Ms. Benbow's class in Australia.  We also wrote postcards to Ms. O'Brian's class in England, Ms. Leakey's class in New Zealand, and Ms. Lindsey's class in New Zealand.  Hopefully they arrive safely!

Our class goal is that everyone will send at least one postcard this year.  Please continue to donate postcards to our cause.

Ms. Will

Ms. Will is a teacher candidate from UBC.  She will be in our classroom every Tuesday for the month of November.  In January she will be with us for two weeks straight and will teach a little bit each day.  After Spring Break she will be with us for 13 weeks straight, and will plan and teach many of our lessons with guidance from Ms. Lirenman. If you haven't had a chance to introduce yourself to her, please take the time to do so.  We feel very lucky to have her join our classroom.

What We Like About Patterning

Today we are finishing up our patterning unit in math.  Here are some of the things that we have learned about patterning...

We know that patterns can be repeating.

We know that you can label patterns - like ab, or abb, or abc, or abcd, or abbcd etc...

We know that you can continue patterns.

We know that you can copy patterns.

We know that patterns aren't just in math.

We know that you can find patterns in clothing.

We know you can find patterns in the environment.

During the unit we worked through six different pattern stations.  They included:

Pattern Block Walls - we had to copy and continue a pattern using pattern block pieces.  We then tried to create our own pattern block walls.

Pattern Books - we had to create, and label our own patterns.  We then stapled our pages together to make pattern booklets.

Pattern Pictures - using magnetic pattern blocks we had to create a pattern picture, then copy the pattern picture onto black paper.

Patterning with Technology - we used the computer in our classroom to create patterns.  When we had the ipods in the room we used them to pattern on too.

Pattern Strips - we chose a pattern card and created a pattern strip. The pattern strips are now up in our classroom as classroom boarders around our Word Wall.

Pattern Drill and Practice - we had pattern papers that we had to complete. This is the type of patterning that most grown ups grew up with.  It's the type of math in most traditional workbooks.

Here are our favourite pattern stations.

Paul - Pattern Pictures
Huda -  Pattern Strips
Jennica - Pattern Strips
Julie - Pattern Pictures
Koden - Patterning with Technology
Trista - Pattern Strips
Lawrence - Pattern Strips
Brooklyn - Pattern Strips
Soeun - Pattern Booklets
Urim - Pattern Booklets
Jesse Pattern Block Walls
Alicia - Pattern Pictures
Nicolas - Pattern Block Walls
Eric  - Patterning with Technology
Claudine - Patterning with Technology
Marcus - Pattern Block Walls
Christine - Pattern Strips

Run Across Canada and Math Games with Pattern Blocks

Every Thursday and Friday after lunch we join Ms. Atkinson, Ms. Benjamin, and Ms. Baldry's grade 1 and k/1 classes for Run Across Canada.  We participate in this run in any type of weather all year round.  Right now things are pretty nice for us because it has been sunny and not too cold most of the time.  We've been lucky enough to have the rain stop for the afternoon so we haven't gotten wet yet.

Meeting up with the other three classes.

For Run Across Canada we meet outside our classroom and walk to our the first field in the little park. The first field is a community field but we're allowed to use it too.  We then RUN around the field making sure we don't cut corners.

Here we all go running around around our first field.

From the first field we walk together to our second field (that school's field) before we run around it too.  Again no cheating by cutting corners.  Thankfully we bring our water bottles outside with us so  we are never too far from water.

Starting to run on the second field. 

You can see a little bit of the first field in the background behind the trees.

Can you see us running on the other side of the field?

From there we walk, as a really large group, the rest of the outside of the school.  In total the route is about 1.2 km.  At the end of the run/walk we let Ms. Atkinson know how many of us did the entire run/walk.  For every person that does it all we earn 1.2 km for our run across Canada.  So far we have already run from Vancouver Island, over to Vancouver, and we are now just about in Calgary, Alberta.  Most years we make it to just outside of Toronto, Ontario.  This year we are hoping that we can make it all the way through Ontario and into Quebec or even Atlantic Canada.  Wish us luck!

This week, because we've been learning about patterning and patterning up a storm, Ms. Lirenman has taught us a game using pattern blocks. The object of the game is to fill a pumpkin shape with pattern blocks but be the person to put the last block on the shape. If you do that, you win.   It's trickier than it looks.

Here are some photos of us playing the game.

Claudine and Nicolas playing together.

Koden and Soeun playing together.

Christine, Jennica, and Julie playing together. (Julie is in the picture below)

Brooklyn and Jesse playing together.

Paul and Alicia playing together.

Marcus and Eric playing together.

Lawrence playing with Huda.

Trista and Urim playing together.  

Urim is looking for just the right piece.

 Do you do any running in your classroom, and if so do you have a running goal like we do?  Also, do you play games in math too? If so what is your favourite math game to play.

Learning to Paint Pumpkins with Mrs. Schaefer

Mrs. Schaefer is fantastic art teacher.  She used to teach at our school but retired a few years ago.  But she still loves teaching art so she spends a lot of time in our school teaching art to many different classes.  This past week she worked with us, teaching us how to paint pumpkins like an artist.  We learned how to mix colours and how to to make our brush strokes so that our pumpkins would look 3D.  Here are a few pictures of us working hard on our pumpkins.

Mrs. Schaefer showing us how to make brush strokes.

Then we practiced our strokes and created our own pumpkins.  Ms. Schaefer only gave us yellow and a little bit of red paint but she also taught us how to make orange, plus have lines on our pumpkins like real pumpkins have.

Next she showed us how to make the little hairs so that our pumpkins looked round a the top like real pumpkins.  It helped with the 3D effect.

She also taught us how to mix yellow and a tiny bit of blue to make green for our pumpkin's stem. Then we put our pumpkins out to dry in the hallway.

Finally, the next day they were up on our wall.

We know we are very lucky to have been able to spend some time with Mrs. Schaefer.  She's an excellent art teacher and you can tell by how great our pumpkins look.

Fun Friends - Talking About Emotions

On Friday, Oct 14 during our Community Square time after recess we took part in a Fun Friends lesson. This lesson focussed on feelings and emotions.  While we talked about each emotion we all made faces and took pictures with our iPods.  Here is a short video of some of our faces.  You will notice that many of the children's wonderful faces are missing from the video.  It certainly wasn't because they didn't take wonderful pictures, it was because some how Ms. Lirenman lost many of the photos when she transferred them from one computer to the other.  She's still not sure how it happened.  So, she apologizes.  Next time she will be a lot more careful, and not so quick to delete the photos from the original computer.