March 8th

This week we studied the famous Canadian artist, Ted Harrison.  Ted Harrison is an artist who is well known for his paintings of the North, particularly the Yukon. We read some information about Mr. Harrison and we examined many pictures of his art. We learned about how he painted the landscapes of the North using wavy lines, and warm and cool colours.  The students then created their own interpretations of Ted Harrison art. They very lightly drew their picture with wavy lines.  They traced over it a few times firmly with black wax crayon.  This is insure that the water colour paints don't bleed together.  Finally, they used warm colours (red, orange, yellow hues) and cool colours (blue, green, purple hues) to create their landscape. 

 In Social Studies, as a culminating project about our school, we read the cute story "Knuffle Bunny", which is about a little girl who takes her bunny stuffie on a walk through her community.

1D adapted this story to make it their own about Robina Baker School.  In it, the students themselves go for a walk through our school with their Knuffle Bunny, creating their own story using familiar words.  They then learned how to properly draw a Knuffle Bunny, a boy, and a girl through guided drawings.  The interesting thing about this book is that the background / setting of the pictures are all in black and white but the characters are in colour. So, to keep with the form of the original book, the students did the same with their pictures.  You will be able to read your child's full story at the Student Led Conference evening, but here is a sneak peek....

In Social Studies, we have been talking a lot about RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES at home and at school.  We have also learned about the characteristics of a good citizen.  These discussions lend themselves nicely to our next topic, which is all about our community.

As a combination of Science and Language Arts, we have begun our animal research reports.  As an introduction, we read Jan Brett's "The Mitten" and students chose animals from that story to research.  We learned what the difference was between a FICTION book and a NON-FICTION book.  Fiction books tell stories and have characters, settings and a problem.  Non-fiction books are written to provide the reader with information.

Students are using non-fiction books and books online to find information about their animals.  They are required to create a front cover to their report and find facts about their animal.  We aren't done yet, but so far it is working really well and they are loving it!  Your child will be reading their animal research to you at the Student Led Conference evening. 

We learned a new Math game called Addition Connect 4.  

Students roll two dice and add them together.  Then they mark the answer on their game board, trying to get 4 answers in a row, while at the same time trying to block their partner from getting 4 in a row.

We played some fun new games in Language Arts to help us work with our words and spelling strategies.

Short Vowel Sounds BINGO 

and

Digraph and Blend Tiles

and

Word Tiles

were a big hit with the students.

 We tried snow shoes on Friday and we had a blast!  They weren't tricky to get on and we had almost an hour to explore around the school yard.  The kids did great and didn't want to stop!

Here is a little video:

CONGRATULATIONS TO JACOB FOR BEING STUDENT OF THE WEEK!