Pool

  We have been having so much fun in the pool! Well, the students have -- I've been spending my time watching them from the bench :)

 I can't show you faces, but this is what I see a lot of :)

 

It's nice and warm in the pool -- and after pool we skip recess (on cold days) so we don't freeze.

The Water Cycle

 As part of the Air and Water in the Environment science curriculum for Grade 2, we have been learning about the water cycle. Bill Nye does an amusing and kid friendly presentation of the water cycle:

Ask your child if they can tell you about the water cycle -- they should be able to tell you about Precipitation, Collection, Evaporation and Condensation!

We even made our own Water Cycle in a Bag! It is taped onto our classroom window so we can see the cycle in progress.

*** This post originally posted in November -- then mysteriously disappeared. Some of my December posts also disappeared, but I managed to re-do many of them.

The Short Life of a Mitten

 

The Short Life of A Mitten
I'm sliding on the driveway,
I'm falling off my sled,
I'm rolling down the hillside,
I'm standing on my head.
When playing in a snowbank
It's hard to have control.
I wonder how my mittens
Got such a great big hole?

Words of the week

 

Grade 1 and 2 words

king

ring

sing

wing

thing

bonus word: falling

 

Holiday Lights

Holiday Lights

We are candles

Look at our light.

Each of us helps make holidays bright.

We sit on branches

making Christmas trees shine.

In Hanukkah menorahs

we stand eight in a line.

In a Kwanzaa kinara,

red, green and black are alight.

We are all candles,

Now here we go,

We helped make each of our holidays glow.

 

 This week we are focusing on the long i sound, again with that silent e!

Words of the Week
dine
fine
line
mine
pine
*shine

Homemade Gingerbread

We are beginning our study of fairy tales, which will continue into January. We are starting with The Gingerbread Man and will be focusing on Characters and Setting. Most of our words of the week can be found in the traditional telling of the Gingerbread Man!

Homemade Gingerbread

Stir a bowl of gingerbread,
Smooth and spicy brown.
Roll it with a rolling pin,
Up and up and down.
With a cookie cutter,
Make some little men.
Put them in the oven,
Till half past ten. 


Words of the Week
We are now going to focus on long vowels. The whole class (Grade 1's and 2's) will be learning the same words. We are starting with the long a sound, and learning about the silent e!
make
take
bake
cake
lake
*awake

This is my favourite Silent e song. The video might be dated... but the song isn't (I sometimes catch the children singing it when they are writing :)

Mr. HoHo + Holiday Concert

 We are doing a countdown of "how many days are left until the end of school" (winter vacation). We are cutting off one number of Mr. HoHo's beard each day in December! (My daughter named him Mr. HoHo many years ago and the name stuck).

We are also doing a 'counting up' to the last day of school on a traditional advent calendar (the kind with chocolates behind the flaps). The children have been amazingly patient and understand that only one person gets to open a flap (and get the chocolate) each day. 

Our classroom is beginning to look a bit like Santa's workshop too! We are making crafts to sell at the sale at the Holiday Concert. We are making ornaments and some drink coasters and some coffee cozies. We are sewing them! Everyone loves the sewing machine -- and they have been very careful and respectful with it! When it comes to the actual sewing, they do the "steering' and I do the foot pedal. It takes a lot of concentration on my part, as I cannot look away from the needle while we are working. I'm a very good listener though! The class thinks that I have eyes in the back of my head because I always seem to know what they are up to.

Speaking of the Holiday Concert, the final times will be:
5:30-8pm -  Craft Sale in the Library - proceeds to go to Haiti (organized by our "Me to We" group)
6pm - Kindergarten concert
7pm - Grade 1+ concert 
(Our concert is on Thursday, December 12)

Students should wear white tops and dark bottoms :) Please walk your child up to Room 15 at 6:45 and drop him/her off, then proceed to the gym. You will be picking your child up after the concert in Room 15.

Skip counting

  We will be skip counting for the next few weeks. This week we will focus on counting by twos. From Dec  9-13 we will be counting by fives and Dec 16-19 we will be counting by tens. We will be exploring the hundreds chart and will be looking for patterns.

The Skip Count Song

(to the tune of "Skip to my Lou")

Skip count, skip count, count by 2's
Skip count, skip count, count by 2's
Skip count, skip count, count by 2's
We can count to 20.
2, 4, 6, 8, 10,12,14,16, 18, 20!

Skip count, skip count, count by 5's
Skip count, skip count, count by 5's
Skip count, skip count, count by 5's
We can count to 50.
5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50!

Skip count, skip count, count by 10's
Skip count, skip count, count by 10's
Skip count, skip count, count by 10's
We can count to 100.
10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100!

 Words of the Week

Grade 1's (working on short i)

 dip

lip

rip

sip

tip

*skip

Grade 2's (working on sk)

ski

skip

skin

skate

desk

*ask