Friday March 24 2023

We have a lovely new bulletin board display brightening our room.  We made flying birds of Calgary, including chickadees, blue jays, magpies and flickers to add to our blue sky and clouds.  We are ready for spring!

Thank you to our Parent Council for providing a chocolate chip cookie for each student to take home on our last afternoon before break.  Students were instructed to check with parents before eating it!  We also sent home your child's swimming certificate that will indicate which level to sign your child up for at their next swim lesson opportunity.

Enjoy a week of rest and relaxation!  See you back at school on April 3rd.

Wednesday March 22, 2023

Our class sketched 5 of Calgary's most recognizable birds to practice seeing shapes and lines to help us draw.  These birds are probably in your backyard these days, looking for nesting material and food...perhaps the drawings will help you identify them!

Tuesday March 21, 2023

 Happy Spring!

It’s time to take down our winter bulletin board displays and put up some fresh ones. We painted various shades of blue on white paper to create a spring sky and then painted clouds to cut out and glue on. It will look smashing!

Yesterday was Miss K’s last day as our EA in grade one. We sent her off with a student-created book and lots of hugs. We will miss her but she has a great opportunity helping students at another school. We thank her for all her hard work and caring support she gave to our school. 

Friday March 17, 2023

Today was jam-packed with excitement as we celebrated St Patrick's Day and had our final swim lesson.  Ask your child to show you the Irish jig steps we practiced!  

Next week is our last week of classes before Spring Break...last day of school is Friday March 24th, reconvening on Monday April 3rd.

Thursday March 16, 2023

The traps have been set...we will wait to see if any leprechauns are caught tomorrow morning!

As tomorrow is St Patricks Day, we encourage students to come to school wearing green!  We will have some Irish-themed activities to do before we head out for our final swim lesson.

Wednesday March 15, 2023

 We planned, sketched and created some interesting Leprechaun traps today.  We did some research into the best ways to bait a leprechaun and decided that the use of rainbows, gold, signs and shamrocks would be must-haves in our plans.  There were ladders, trap doors, secret compartments and trip wires being installed to ensure any mischief-maker gets caught in the act on St Patrick's Day Eve!

Greater than, less than and equal to...ask your child if they can sketch and explain these symbols to you.  We had fun pointing the crocodile mouth towards the greater number in our number pairs.

Two more days of swim lessons...kids are getting more comfortable in the water each day they attend lessons!  Great to see.

Tuesday March 14, 2023

We are going to plan, design and create Leprechaun traps at school tomorrow.  If you have a small box (cracker, cereal box size) to send along with your child we will definitely use it!  

Ask your child about the song they learned in music today with Mrs. Switzer...leprechauns are all around this week:)

Monday March 13, 2023

We had a very successful first swim lesson at Canyon Meadows Pool today.  All students who were in attendance had big smiles and made big splashes!  

We wrote about swim lessons in our journals today.  Thinking about the 5Ws (who, what, when, why and where), we are extending our sentence length and writing stamina by including details that make our writing more interesting.  

Tuesday March 7, 2023

We are gearing up for Conferences this Thursday and Friday.  Be sure to book a time slot if you haven't already!  Reminder that there is no school for students on Friday due to Conferences.

Tomorrow we will have an opportunity to purchase books from the Book Fair.  If you would like to make a purchase, please send cash with your child along with the title of the item you would like to buy.  There is a link for families to make purchases from the online if you prefer this method of shopping.  See link below!

Book Fair

Monday March 6, 2023

We explored pitch today with rubber band guitars we made from plastic lids.  We observed how the thickness, length and tightness of the rubber band created different pitches in the sounds they created.  We took a video of one student's guitar and played it in slow motion to watch the rubber band vibrate.

Book Fair is up and running at Woodlands.  We toured it today and made wish lists of items we would like.  If you would like to send cash to school on Wednesday for an item on your child's list, they will have a chance to shop.  Otherwise, pop in to the library during conferences and check out the stock.

 

Friday March 3, 2023

Our Picasso-inspired self portraits are AMAZING!  The paper/water colour transfer task yesterday created incredible backgrounds for our black line portraits.  It was so fun to peel off the coloured paper to reveal the prints underneath!  We watched a read-aloud online about Pablo Picasso that taught us some interesting facts about this iconic artist.  Ask your child if they can tell you what his first word was...even before Mama (it was pencil!)

Call for boxes:  we are using a ton of cardboard during our workshop time each afternoon!  If you have a few empty cereal or cracker boxes that you can send along to donate to our cardboard collection, we would appreciate it.

Conferences next week...I believe registration is now open to sign up for conferences next Thursday and Friday.  This will be our last opportunity to discuss your child's progress this year, as we enter the home stretch of Grade One!  I look forward to chatting about strengths, areas for growth and citizenship of students in Room 4.

 

Thursday March 2, 2023

In preparation for a fun art project to show at conferences next week, we used paper and water to create something unique.  We can't wait to see how they turned out once they dry tomorrow!

In science, we learned about how our ears carry signals to the brain to process information about sounds.  We did a Listening Walk around the school to test out how many sounds we could detect in the school environment and then compiled a list of what we heard.  Ask your child if they can name three things they heard as we walked the hallways.

Wednesday March 1, 2023

We must be having a growth spurt in Grade One, as we have a lot of kiddos saying that they are still hungry after their snack and lunch.  This is probably a good time to chat with your child to see if they would like more food packed, and what kind of food they would like to have more of while at school.  

Today's art lesson was around the portraits of Pablo Picasso.  Ask your child how Picasso's portraits looked different from the kinds of portraits we are more accustomed to seeing.  It was fun sketching eyes, ears, noses and mouths in unique ways and places.