Decorating our Trees and Gingerbread People

 Today was the day we have been waiting for...for a long time!!  Way back at the end of October (Halloween!) the children were asked to donate some "halloween candies" for our tree and gingerbread decorating.  And WOW!!  What a generous group of students (and families) we have!  We got a tub-full of goodies!  And today, we got to use those goodies to design our gingerbread scenes!

We started by dying our trees green.  That was pretty fun already!!

Then...we got all our supplies ready!  Look at those sweets!

Everything is ready.  Just waiting for the kids!

Let the decorating begin!!!

We are using a squeeze bag for the icing.  

 Everyone could choose 1 sweet to eat!  Which one should I choose??

This was like a mini ADST challenge....how do we get our gingerbread people to stand up?  Which candies worked best for the eyes?  How do I make a mouth if I want one?  There was a lot of thinking, trying and re-trying to get things just the way we wanted them!

And our perseverance paid off!  Look at these beautiful and EDIBLE works of art!!!

These will make wonderful centrepieces for our holiday dinner tables!!  ENJOY!

Animal Projects All Done!

We are so proud to be finally ready to share our Animal Research Projects with you!  We spent the last month and a half working together in groups of 2 and 3 to learn more about an animal of our choice.    The groups had a choice as to how they wanted to present their learning:  a book, a poster, or a movie

Each project was to include information about:

- the animals' group (mammal, amphibian, reptile, fish, or bird) and a characteristic of that group

- a description of the animal

- how it has adapted to survive

-and one or two other interesting facts

At the end of the project each group was asked to reflect on the experience and tell us what they liked and what they learned.

Our first two projects here are presented as a movie, using the iPad app called Spark Video.  (Note: these two videos have been edited so that the privacy of the students who made it could be maintained here.  To see the unedited version, please ask your child to show you their work on our classroom iPad)

Come read these 2 books....

And, we had several groups make posters of their animals...

Please drop by and check out all this great work on our bulletin board!

Our Castle building ADST Challenge

We have been waiting a long time to do our first group ADST challenge!  Working together in teams of 4 and 5, we had to design our castles, and then build them using the 3-D solids provided.  We learned so much about what makes a good team - listening to one another, contributing ideas, doing our fair share of work, not being bossy, helping one another and respecting each others ideas.


The Challenge

The materials

Let the work begin!

 OUR CASTLES...

This one has a dungeon!

This castle is decorated, ready for the holidays!

The Royal family is waiting for visitors!

The guards are sitting outside protecting the King and Queen!

 Once we were all done, each group worked together to complete their reflections....


Everyone agreed...this was so much fun!!  We can't wait for our next challenge!

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

This week we finished off our math unit on shapes and solids by making spheres and turning them into Rudolph's head!  It was a bit tricky at first making the round ball, but we all helped one another and before you knew it, we all had this great little reindeer!

All you need is four strips of paper and some glue to start



Place the strips down making a "star shape", gluing each strip down as you put them on top of each other

Then start gluing the ends together

Once you have your sphere ready, cut out antlers, eyes, and a big red nose

And here they are!!

list 15

Here are our words for next week...
rang
hang
ring
sing
long
song
better
letter
butter
water
singing
sung






Extra words


when
where
who
why
what

Frosty the Snowman

We will be singing Frosty the Snowman at our Winter Concert!  Here we are making a Frosty of our own!

First, we paint the body of the snowman...

Then we add all the details...

"Frosty came to life one day"!



"There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found"!



Tangram pictures

This week we used tangrams to make pictures.  Did you know there are 7 pieces to a tangram.  Can you see what shapes they are?

We cut out our own tangrams and made pictures with them!  We got pretty creative!