Merry Christmas and have a happy (relaxing) holiday!

It has been a busy week!  A concert, indoor recess and lots of learning!!! Today we celebrated the last day with patterned Christmas crowns,  elf addition and a Santa story that had a surprise ending.  I hope you all have a very relaxing and restful holiday. Thank you very much for all of the wonderful gifts and thoughtful heartwarming messages. Take care, enjoy the time you get to spend time with loved ones and I will see you in January!!!! 

Discovering the joy of giving!

The students have been very busy making holiday cards at the discovery table in our room. They can't wait to give them out. Tis' the season to be generous! , and kind, and thoughtful, and caring.....Room

 14 is all of that and more! 

Gearing up for a Beary Merry Holiday!

We have been very busy practicing our concert songs. We have also been learning about a whole bunch if different cultural celebrations that happen in the winter. Can you name some of the holidays by looking at some of the symbols we created? 

A Haiku Deck for You: Beautiful Snowflakes

Krystal wrote a poem during Daily 5. Today she turned it into a slide show with illustrations using the haiku deck App on the class iPad. Enjoy! 

I'd like to share this Haiku Deck with you.
"Beautiful Snowflakes": http://www.haikudeck.com/p/cLP2mwXZZq

Haiku Deck makes presentations simple, beautiful, and fun. Download the free iPad App or sign up for the Web App private beta today to set your story free.

Sent from my iPad

Designers designing

Today we learned a new word.."prototype".  We made many prototypes of containers and then we picked our favourite to embellish using a variety of materials to add texture. Next we will be designing and creating a one of a kind masterpiece of our very own...but you won't see those until Christmas. 

Rangolis

WE learned about the Hindu Holiday of Diwali. It is a celebration from India that happens in November.  We learned the traditions that are associated the celebration.  One tradition we learned about was how people make Rangolis at their door to bring good luck for a new year.  We have been creating Rangolis in our room.

Painting texture

Today we painted but we did not use brushes. We used a bunch of different tools because we were painting to show texture. We used a variety if different techniques instead of just long smooth strokes. We dabbed, swirled, stamped, scraped, and combed.  Our textured painting looks very interesting. It almost makes you want to touch!! But not yet....it's still wet!!!

Concert preparation...

We are busy rehearsing for our concert! It's going to be "beary" exciting!!!!

Absorb or repel?

Today we read Mudpuddle by Robert Munsch.  The little girl kept getting covered all over with mud!!! She had a good idea because she decided to put on a rain coat to keep the wet sticky mud from soaking into her nice clean clothes. We did an experiment to see if water would soak in ( absorb) or if the rubber in a rain coat would repel the water (and mud)!  We found out the rubber raincoat repelled the water! Tomorrow we are going to test out other materials.  You could try some at home.  We wondered if our mitts absorbed or repelled water.... We will have to investigate that too! 

Invitation to a celebration ...

Tonight we had our first Celebration of Learning evening. We had many families come out to celebrate with their children.  It was an evening full of praise and smiles!  It was so good to see families interact and enjoy sharing their children's accomplishments. Families got to meet each other too and make connections which was great. (And I got to do a little bragging about the smart kiddos I get to spend time with every day!!!) thank you families for being part of the team! 

We are family.....

Today had our second meeting for house groups. The house groups are made up of one or two kids from each classroom.  We get together once a month or so to give the kids a chance to make connections with other kids in the school.  My house group has adopted the theme song " we are family" by the group Sister Sledge!

Scientific investigation in progress....

We did science today. It was fun. We got to investigate objects. We felt them, looked at the and tapped them to decide on their characteristics...shiny ,dull, hard, soft, rough, smooth, flexible or 

Inflexible. We are real scientists

We are reading a CHAPTER BOOK!!!!

Wow are the kids excited or what.....? We have started reading a chapter book called Log House Mouse.  It is full of action, suspense and has a villain.....they can't wait to read the next chapter!  

A magical visitor...

Today the magic story fairy came to visit. She brought us "magic story words". She said she has been visiting authors since the first stories were written. The magic words that are a part of every story are: who, what, where, when, why and how. We read an Eric Carle story and guess what....he used the magic story words!!!! The fairy must have visited him!!!! She left her magic wand to remind us that we all have the"magical gift" of story writing in us!!!! Stay tuned for our magical stories!!!!

Can you guess our sorting rule?

In science today we conducted an investigation of a bunch of different objects. We decided to sort our items. Can you guess our sorting rule? 

Great writing!

Today we were inspired by one of our classmates! She wrote a wonderful sentence about snow. As a class we talked about why we liked her sentence so much. Then we decided to make a poster to help us all remember that we are all great writers! Here are the tips we came up with. 

After we wrote our helpful hints we went and wrote about the wonderful "snowy" weekend we all had! 

Take a look at our writing and see if we were thinking about being great writers!