Thanksgiving Gratitude

On Thursday we created some beautiful art. First we painted a tree in Mrs. Adeyemi's class. We used brown paint and white paper. Then we let the paint dry. Mrs. van der Veen put the art on our back tables so they would be out of the way. Next we created a list of things we are thankful for. These included people in our family, things in our life such as our home, or school or food that we enjoy to eat! We made a very big list. After that we coloured our leaves. Mrs. van der Veen only let us use crayon or pencil crayon, but we were able to write our thankful words in marker! Our class loves using markers! Last we cut our leaves out and were able to glue them onto our trees. The art was beautiful and our families were able to enjoy them for Thanksgiving.
Here are two pictures of the artwork!

Happy Thanksgiving

Dear Families,
I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. As some of the children may have mentioned, my mom lost her battle to cancer last week. It was a hard fight and I will miss her very much. Have a wonderful time with those you love.
See you on Tuesday,
Mrs.  van der Veen.

Raz Kids

Hi parents, thank you for your patience this last week. I will be returning to work and look forward to an exciting month.
I've set up our Raz Kids account. This allows your child the opportunity to read at home. The website is designed to give kids points for books they have read and they can 'buy' things for the rocket room with their points. Each child has their own account with password. I will send this information home next week once I am back to work.
You can access Raz Kids from the students tag on the blog. Also, we have been blogging. If you go to the kidblog link under student you can sign in with your son/daughter to read blogs or respond. They should know what the password is now but if they are unsure just send a note and I will write it down. We all have the same password for Kid Blog.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mrs. v.

Patterning

We have been working on patterning for the past few weeks.

Grade 1:
Big idea- identify, describe, and repeat patterns.

Grade 2: identify, describe, extend and create repeating patterns, growing patterns, and shrinking patterns
 The grade 2's have just started growing and shrinking patterns.

 

"In growing and shrinking patterns, the number of elements increases or decreases from one term to the next." (eworkshop, Patterning and Algebra p. 13)

 

Today we practiced with cubes, to create our own growing and shrinking patterns. Here are two examples of our work:

 

Ask your son/daughter to tell you which is a growing and which is a shrinking pattern!  

Caterpillars

The children have been very excited with our caterpillars transformation. Today when we came in we noticed that 2 of our caterpillars did not survive the weekend, but 2 had formed their chrysalis.
The boys and girls have been working in their butterfly observation books to draw pictures and write words that reflect their observations.
It has been very fascinating for the class to watch this miraculous metamorphosis occur!

Butterfly Adventure

We had 3 chrysalides in our class. We know it is called a chrysalis because butterflies come out. If we had a cocoon a moth would come out! First the chrysalis turned black. Then the butterfly went out of the chrysalis. Next we let the butterfly go. Only one left though. We think that the other one did not know how to fly yet. Finally the butterfly flew out and landed on someone's head! The butterflies keep coming out when we are not there!!! The last butterfly came out really quick. We have caterpillars who are going to turn into a chrysalis. We have 4 caterpillars! This was written by Mrs. van der Veen's Grade 1/2 class. Mrs. van der Veen is going to post pictures of our butterflies and caterpillars.

Lunch Mate Packages!

I am very excited to begin my journey at Christ the King School this upcoming school year. Currently I am enrolled in a course to learn more about inquiry-based learning, which your son/daughter will be immersed in this year.

We are collecting the Schneider's Lunch Mate blue packaging. We can collect points towards purchasing another ipad for the classroom!