Winter Migrations!

We are studying how animals survive during the harsh months of winter.  Animals need to avoid two problems:  STARVING and FREEZING.  Today we watched a video about some animals which migrate to warmer climates to better find food, to stay warm or to have babies.

 During the fall, we often see flocks of Canadian geese traveling in a V shape.  The geese take turns breaking the wind in the front while the ones behind save energy by drafting. 

We made water colour pictures of this journey.  Since the days are getting shorter, so we put a sunset in the background.  The children used a white pastel to create a water resist technique, to separate the sky from the snow.  Some also used it to create clouds. First, the students used big brushes and a "wet on wet" technique to make their background.  The students first applied water, then introduced wet paint onto the paper without "painting." (The water on the paper blends the colours on its own.)  We added only a hint of purple to our white snow to indicate shadows.  

Once our painting were dry, the children went back and used "wet on dry technique" and tiny brushes to create the geese silhouettes in the sky.  

Our buddies came this afternoon, to help us practice EXTENDING patterns.  Our big buddies started a pattern and the grade one/twos extended them.  Look in your child's communication folder to see what they did.  

We also sent home our suncatchers.  Find a window in your home that receives direct sun and enjoy the rainbows the crystal makes.  We discussed how, when placed in a window,  these decorations can  protect birds from flying into the glass.  Notice the beads show the pattern of the rainbow ROY GBIV!

Please keep toys at home!

Please remember that students should keep toys at home.  If your child has a toy for before and after school, remind them to keep it in their backpack during the school day. 

Thanks!

Animals in winter and Rocks and Rings!

Today in Science, we talked a lot about how animals survive in the winter.  They have to avoid freezing and starving to death.  We learned that they have three main strategies to survive: 

-Migration

-Hibernation 

-Adaptation

Today we focused on Adaptation.  Look the animals above and have your child tell you what some of these animals do to help them stay around in wintery locations and survive.  

Some of their strategies:

-Gathering and storing food for winter

-Eating lots during summer/fall and storing energy as blubber/fat for winter

-Having warm fur, feathers or wool to insulate their bodies

-Having extra feathers/fur on feet to help walk on snow

-Having big feet to walk on the snow (like snowshoes)

-Changing their colour white in winter to blend in with the snow to avoid predators (or to sneak up on prey)

-Huddle with other creatures to share body heat

-Create a burrow or home to hide in and warm up in

 Two student nurses visited us as part of the Apple A Day program on nutrition.  Through games, pictures and questions students talked about the food groups and sometimes foods.  Look at your dinner tonight and discuss which food groups are represented.  The most interesting thing was seeing how much sugar is in a can of coke (definitely a sometimes food!)

We started our curling residency this afternoon.  We started by playing some games to learn some curling terminology.

Rock- object you slide

House- rings you try to get the rock into

Button- the circle in the middle of the house (target)

Broom

Hurry

The children learned to score and played three ends.  Look at the picture of the house above.  Have your child tell you who won and what the score was.   We also focussed on how to show sportsmanship.  We can't wait to curl again next week!

Crazy Hair Day Tomorrow!!!

Tomorrow is CRAZY HAIR DAY! 

Have fun doing something creative with your hair.
Can't think of what to do?  There are lots of ideas on-line. Google, ideas for Crazy Hair Day.  Make a list of materials you could use or things you could do.
Have fun!

Second Great Lesson and Patterns

We started our morning off with some Cosmic Kids Yoga as our gym is being used for Rocks and Rings.  We are excited to start that program tomorrow! 

This morning we explored the Second Great Lesson: Life Comes to Earth.  The children were guided through the sequence of life appearing on Earth starting with the first microscopic bacterias including blue-green algae all the way to mammals and us humans!   This story touches on big concepts of adaptation, extinction, fossil records, continent movement and the classification of plants and animals.  After the lesson, the children explored some of the demonstrations in more depth in small groups.  They:   

-used playdough to create fossils from small models of animals

- explored our large, floor model Montessori Timelines of Life

- used photos from our powerpoint and worked on sequencing the groups in the order they appeared on Earth 

-Examined natural specimens like exoskeletons from invertebrates (like crab and lobsters) and bones and vertebrae from skeletons of vertebrates (like cows and elk).

This afternoon we continued to explore patterns.  In small groups, children worked on TRANSLATING patterns:  Making the same pattern with different attributes.  In the example above children made the same "type' of pattern with different manipulatives.  Some groups even translated their pattern into cool dance moves.  Nathaniel's group did a cool "Dab" dance to a ABAC pattern.  

We have continued to look at patterns in our world.  Today we read the Napping House by Audrey Wood.  We noticed there was a increasing pattern in it.  We discovered patterns help authors build to a climax in a story.  In this story, when the pattern finally changed, it helped the students predict that something BIG was going to happen.  

Where do you see patterns at home?

Firefighter visit

Today we were lucky to have another community helper visit our classrooms - a firefighter. It was a short visit but we got to see some of his tools and Ms. Howard even dressed in his gear - pants, boots, jacket, air tank, and helmet. We learned that all these plus his ax and power tools could equal 70lbs of weight, that's more than most of us weigh!

 

Community Building Project

Over this past week we've been hard at working building a community. We started with brainstorming a list of services that we need in a community and then sat together and planned where each service should be located. Students worked in partners and groups, collaborating and painting their chosen service. We have a great start and can't wait to continue adding everything needed in a community.

We Are Colour Designers!

Today students were "colour designers" and created their own colour palettes like you would find in a paint store, using the colours they created last week.  This task took a lot of decision making.  They needed to select 4-6 harmonious colours from a large selection.  They had to determine which were the best shades, they needed to choose colours of different values and ones that weren't `too' similar. Then the students arranged them from lightest to darkest and gave them interesting names.  Students first brainstormed things, emotions, seasons and describing words that fit their chosen colour.  Many students felt that green and blue made them feel calm.  A lot of student felt red was an intense, exciting and sometimes angry colour (someone noted that that is probably why we name the "red zone" the way we do!) . Many children practiced using alliteration (both words starting with same letter....ie. Soothing Seas or Radical Ruby) and most added some descriptive words or action words.

This afternoon we explored how humans survive the colder, darker weather as winter approaches. Children brainstormed in small groups, we looked at pictures and we compared strategies of  Early People and Modern People in a T-chart. 

At home:  Talk with your child
Find out how your house is kept warm in winter.  Look at the furnace. How does the heat get distributed around the house?  Does it have insulation?  Do you weather proof the windows?  Do you have storm doors?  A fireplace?  Do you used different bedclothes and pjs in the winter?

How do you get food in winter?  Do you store garden food in a freezer?  Do you have cans and boxes of non-perishables?  Look in your fridge at produce.  See if any of your food comes from places that have warmer climates.  We predicted that people will find food like spinach, strawberries, bananas and oranges have labels that say product of California, Mexico or other warmer countries.  See if you have any food that is made here in a hydroponic factory. 

A possible conversation starter:

 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/grow-calgary-donations-food-vegetables-women-s-shelter-hydroponic-gardening-1.3992329

This website talks about how Grow Calgary, an organization that helps people in need, by growing food.  Growing food here takes a lot of electricity to run the lamps, but saves the pollution created by transporting food long distances.  Have a discussion about how we get our food! 

Police Officer Visit

Today we had our school resource officer come to visit our classroom. He shared so much information about his job. We learned about his tools, his responsibilities, and even saw some pictures of his vehicles. The constable gave us all some homework. He asked that we all know our phone numbers and addresses by the end of the school year so if we need to call for help we can give that information to the dispatcher.
Students were very engaged in this presentation and did a fantastic job listening and asking questions. Be sure to talk to your child about his/her favourite part of the presentation.

Making a rubric

Today we finalized our writing rubric for our community helpers research reports. Students began by sorting through exemplars and determining what makes a 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, or 4-star report. From there, we developed the criteria and talked about how we can attain a specific score. Together we typed out the expectations and then posted them to match the specific exemplar. Below are pictures of the writing expectations for grade 1 and grade 2 writing by December 2018. Students will create a report and then self-assess to determine which score they would get. From here will create goals as to how to improve our writing for the next report.

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Photographer in the classroom

Next week, on Thursday, November 27, there will be a CBE photographer in the school. He will be taking pictures of the Montessori materials and students working. If you would like your child to be in the photographs, which may be used for promotional purposes on the CBE website, please either print this consent form or send us an email and we will send a paper copy home with your child.

Colours- science or art?

Today we explored the blurred line between art and science as we became colour designers.  After looking at the amazing variety of colours on a paint store website, we determined that each hue on the colour wheel can be blended with each other and mixed with white and black to create endless variations.  When examining the blue palette, we saw dark blues, light blues, greeny-blues, purply-blues, grey blues....and what was better were the creative names each of these colours had...Sea Breeze, Saphire Dream, Summer Sky and more. 

Being colour designers, we need to use all of our scientist behaviours, especially our predicting and working carefully skills.  To create the harmonious colours, we looked at our colour wheel at colours that are adjacent to each other.  These "colour wheel neighbours" are called Analogous colors.  

Each student picked a dominant colour and used black, white and its neighbours to experiment, test and design a family of colours.  We heard lots of questioning during this activity:

"What if I had white and black?"

"How can I make it lighter?'

"Why did it turn green?"

"I need to figure of what to add to make it like an emerald!"

"What happens if I....?  

Next week, the student will judge which are their best colours and will name them.  

We quickly talked about ways to TRANSLATE a simple pattern. (Translate, made the same pattern core with different attributes). We determined that AB patterns are the simplest patterns but one of the most common! (left-right of walking, windshield wipers wiping, nodding yes, shaking no...AB patterns are everywhere).  We took a single manipluative, the toothpick, to explore ways to make this pattern in different ways.  Children were creative thinking of ways to "change" a toothpick so it could be represented as both the A and B in this pattern. 

Asking good questions

       

Today we worked with our friends in Room 3. We had a class discussion about police officers and brainstormed questions we have for this community helper. Next week we will have a police officer visit our classroom to share about his job and why it is important to our community. During work period today, students wrote down questions they want to ask the police officer when he comes next week.
We had a very productive day during work period and everyone was on task, working through language, math, word work, STEM and writing choices.

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