February 22nd

It has been a week of projects in 1D - some we finished and some are still in progress.  After extensive studying of what animals do in winter, we began our winter project.  This project was based on the book Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner.  This is a beautiful story about a boy and his father who are out skiing over the snow for the day.  In it, they discover all kinds of life happening under the snow and over the snow.  After reading this book, the students did some amazing writing.  I gave them the sentence starter "Over the snow....." and "Under the snow...." and they took off writing some great paragraphs.  For this writing assignment, I was looking for capitals at the beginning of sentences, periods, correct spelling of familiar words, and application of some of our spelling strategies for unfamiliar words.  I was also looking for writing sentences that had descriptive details.  I have to say that they all did an exceptional job with their writing. Each student was able to impress me with how far they have come with their writing.  I just love reading all of them.

When the writing was complete, then came the fun part.  We collaborated as a class and created a mural showing the life that is happening over the snow and under the snow.  Each child was responsible for different parts of the mural, and we helped each other when needed.  We worked so hard on this all afternoon and they didn't want to quit.  It turned out really well. Our mural will be on display outside our classroom with the writing attached next week, if you would like to come and take a look.

Some other winter projects are in the works, to be completed next week......

Fingerprint Snowmen

We will write about what they are doing out there in the snow!

 Birch Trees

We tore the tape and painted with watercolours.  

Next week we will pull off the tape and create some cool birch trees!

We were FINALLY able to get outside to build our ice sculpture!

The students carried those blocks over to our spot and worked collaboratively to build an ice sculpture. Each student had a different job, whether it was carrying the block over, choosing a place for it, holding it there, or pouring the water over to "glue it".  It turned out beautifully, especially in the sunshine!

 After we were done with the sculpture, we had some fun spraying coloured water on the snow.

In Math we have been working really hard at representing our numbers to 20 using base 10 blocks.  I think they have a solid understanding of numbers to 20 now and we are ready to begin addition!

 CONGRATULATIONS TO BELLE FOR BEING STUDENT OF THE WEEK!