A Wonderful Day in the Park!

The grade ones and two were super lucky to have such wonderful weather and conditions at Bowness Park today.  Children explored the natural environment, making excellent observations and discoveries. 

We found millipedes, ants, worms, beetles, snail shells, bees, flies and a bunch of mystery insects. Children discovered that to find insects, they needed to slow down, dig down under the leaf litter and ....look under, behind, below, and inbetween!!  Audrina explored the undersides of some leaves and found some ant larvae!  

We also played on the playground with our friend and did a variety of field games with an insect theme. 

Thanks to all our parent volunteers for helping this day happen!

Field Trip TOMORROW!!!

Tomorrow is our grade one/two field trip to Bowness Park. 

Please ensure your child arrives to school on time, as our busses will be leaving shortly after the bell. 

Please dress for the weather!  Please have your child ready for sun (sunscreen, sunhats, full water bottle), rain (rain jacket, layer) and mosquitos (apply bug spray at home, we will not allow children to share spray as some parents choose not to use it.)

Please send a snack and lunch in litter-free containers in their back packs.  We will be doing some field games so ensure students are wearing comfortable shoes to run, walk and play in.

Thanks!

Bike to School Day!

Dear Families,

We are excited that CJP will be participating on Bike to School Day on Tuesday June 4th. Students are invited to participate by biking from home to school or driving closer to school and biking the rest of the distance. Bike to School Day helps students become active and engaged with the outdoors. CJP has participated in this project for a few years, to encourage students to build a healthy lifestyle while having fun! More information can be found at: http://calgarybiketoschool.weebly.com/

If your child is choosing to participate please ensure their bike and helmet is clearly labeled with their first name, last name and room number. Students will be storing their helmets inside their classrooms. 

Please do not bring your bike in through the front doors. There will be two outdoor doors connected to the gym for students to drop their bikes off. Grades K-3 will enter through the west door (door closest to staff parking lot) with their bikes. Please be courteous to staff by not parking in the staff parking lot. The other entrance for grade 4-6 will be the the door closest to the front entrance of the school facing Northmount drive. Both doors will be marked with a sign and pylon. The students will enter the door and drop their bikes off inside the gym by their designated classroom spot marked with a number. Please note which door your child takes their bike in, they will be exiting through this door at the end of the day to meet you outside. Due to the volume of people participating, students are asked to independently bring their bike in and out of the gym. Teachers and volunteers will be assisting students in parking and retrieving their bikes. 

We are looking for CBE approved parent volunteers to help usher the students into the doors, help park their bikes and cheer them on! If you are able to volunteer in the morning from 8:45am-9:20am and/or 3:45pm-4pm please email
chwross@cbe.ab.ca 

Thank you,
CJP Bike to School committee

Learning about Acadia

   

Today we had a fantastic afternoon being immersed in Acadian culture. Students learned about the Acadian culture of Eastern Canada. We painted lighthouses, learned about chores people used to do, made butter and practiced weaving. Students are bringing home a painted lighthouse and some butter. The butter is safe to eat as students made it today with their own hands! Ask your child about their favourite part of the afternoon!

Volunteer Tea and IRIS

Next week you're invited to our volunteer tea, please let Mrs. Wacker and/or Mrs. Halsall know if you can attend. See invitation in previous post!

Check out IRIS - we added our stories today!

Plenty of Patterns Day tomorrow!

Wear all sorts of patterns tomorrow to school.  Stripes, plaid, dots....and you can mix and match. 

Have fun!

Volunteer Tea

History of the Prairies

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Did you know that the prairies have a big Ukranian presence? This week students have been learning more about the history of the prairie provinces. From our indigenous roots to Ukrainian settling here for our rich soil and prosperous farming opportunities. We have learned about traditions, oral story telling, hoop dancing, traditional clothing, folk dancing and celebrations, including Ukrainian Easter and the Pysanky Egg - which is what we painted today. Talk with your child about what they can recall from our lessons this week and how it is related to the community we live in today. You may also want to ask how they created their pysanky egg (using oil pastels and watercolur paint).

Water Walk and Word Problems

Today we read this beautiful story about a water princess. It led very well into our reason why we do the water walk at CJP. Talk with your child about this book and importance of raising awareness of everyone having access to clean water.





Also today we worked on creating word problems. Students used pattern blocks, plastic animals, snap cubes and lego to create a word problem. They worked with their peers to solve a variety of addition and subtraction problems that they created.

  

Can't get me!!

Insects are the most prolific animals on earth, but they also have many predators!!! Today we explored different defense mechanisms insects have against those who want to eat them.   

Some of these strategies included:

-playing dead

-camouflage (and looking like other things in nature like sticks, leaves or even bird poop!)

-being poisonous (warning colours and patterns to show you are not good to eat)

-having warning colours, pretending you are poisonous even though you are not

-losing a limb if a predator grabs it

-being really fast like a fly

-spraying predator with stink spray, acid or a sticky substance to trap it

-working as a team (like ants and bees)

-having a stinger or biting

-having a strong exoskeleton or pointy spines

-building a shelter or protection like the caddisfly case, beehives or anthills 

-mimicking the appearance of a dangerous animals (looking like a wasp even though you are a moth)

 

Boats and Buoyancy

Students have completed their boat building in learning commons. Questions to ask your child - what materials did you use? Can it carry a load? Did you test it and have to make improvements? If you were to do it again, what would you do differently?


Music Monday was a success! Thank you to everyone who came to watch and our students who were fantastic performers.


We are starting story writing. Students have created a character and placed him/her into a setting. They are now developing a problem for their character to solve. Please talk to you child about his/her story. The more conversations we have about our writing the further we delve into the details, therefore making a more interesting story!

Seeing connections in our world

Today we took a more in-depth look at the interactions that happen in an ecosystem.  We watched a short video on Food Webs, which showed more complex connections between the components in our environment than food chains alone.  Next, we made a circle and each received a picture of an organism. We used yarn to demonstrate a connection.  It mostly showed prey-predator relationships but also showed habitat connections.  For example, Katie was a tree and Nowellia was lichen.  The lichen grows on the tree.  We showed if we removed an organism from the web the other members of the community were affected.  So if Katie Tree, was cut down that would affect Nowellia the lichen and Autumn the deer who ate the lichen and wolves who ate the deer.
Later, we went outside and showed good citizenship and helped our buddies clean up litter in our school grounds.  Kids connected that as members of our environment, it was important for us to help take care of it.  Mrs. Ross and I were very proud of the children's hard work.

The children also worked hard practicing for Music Monday.  Our class will be performing in the afternoon.  Look at the message yesterday for the details.

Music Monday Update!

Thank-you for being patient and flexible with our Music Monday dates and times. We have made a decision. Due to the weather, we will have 2 Music Monday concerts on Monday, May 6^th inside the gym. Half of the school will perform in the morning and half will perform in the afternoon. Our morning concert will start at 10:00am and the afternoon concert will start at 1:45pm. Choir, handbells, and other small ensembles will perform at both concerts. Please bring blankets, so that you can sit comfortably! 

Our class will be performing on Monday AFTERNOON. We hope you can join us!

Monthly Math Game

Story Writing

  

We've been exploring storywriting/telling. We've talked about different story elements and today we looked at how good stories begin. We learned that most stories start with a sound, action, thought, or dialogue. We listened to the beginning of a number of books and sorted them based on their interesting beginning.
Students then created their own interesting beginnings that would fit with a variety of characters and settings. Next week we'll begin drafting our own version of a story.

Grade one trees and Food Chains

 Grade ones received trees in honour of Arbour Day.  There are instructions on the back of the tree.  It is super important to keep the seedling cool and to plant it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!  If you cannot plant it tonight, ensure your keep the root bundle damp and to store it in a cool place over night.

Today we explored energy cycles using models of a food pyramid and food chains using the beautiful story Pond Circle by Betsy Franco.  It follows a pattern like the old lady that swallowed the fly shows a food chain:  algae-mayfly nymph- diving beetle-bullfrog- garter snake- skunk- owl (eggs)- raccoon-coyote.


This pyramid model, shows the distribution of organisms with the producers being the most numerous.  Reflecting back to our Great Lessons, we talked about how the SUN is the source of all energy on our planet.  The producers use the sun to create food energy.  We also discussed how decomposers break down dead animals and plant material so that their nutrients can be cycled through the food pyramid again.

Some of these words are challenging for grade one/ two students.  Breaking words up into their parts can be helpful.  

Decompose (take apart) Decomposer is an organism that breaks apart material into its base components.    De: negative of:  Compose (like composer who puts music together)

We also talked about how producers produce (or make) food.  We then connected this to the produce section at the grocery store.  Finding connections for root words can be helpful.

The children then created their own four part food chains: producer-primary consumer-secondary consumer-tertiary consumer.

Next we will explore the concept of food webs and how the life in an ecosystem is interconnected.