Learning About Animals

Since our visit to the aquarium at the end of October, we have been learning about animals - how they adapt to their environments, what they need to survive, and the characteristics of the different groups of animals.

Here we are working with partners.  We are sorting the animals into 6 different categories:  are they mammals...

 ...birds  or reptiles....

...amphibians or insects....

                                                                               

 ...or  fish??  

There were some tricky animals!.

Spelling list 10

ate
gate
late
bake
came
game
name
same
some
hope
baking
hoping

five words for other kids
tame
same
game
came
name

Peace and Remembrance Day

We have been talking about Peace and Poppies this past week as Remembrance Day approaches.

We painted poppies. We started by painting a blue "wash" for our background. 

We then practiced painting our poppies using different size brushes.  We talked about perspective - the poppies in front should be bigger and the ones at the back should be smaller.

We filled our page with red poppies and then added a black centre with a toothpick dipped in paint.  We then added the grass, stems, and leaves

The finished paintings are just beautiful!

During the week we have also been listening to stories about Poppies and Peace.  This book inspired our latest piece of writing

By Vladimir Radunsky   

The book is filled with simple words and illustrations about what peace looks, feels, smells, sounds, and tastes like in the words of young children around the world.  After we read the story, we thought about "those special moments" that made us feel safe, and loved and peaceful.  We talked about "painting a picture with your words" so the readers could actual see or feel what we were talking about.  Here are a few examples of what we came up with...

Peace - click here to listen to all our thoughts

Spelling List 9

Here are the spelling words from list 9...

doll
call
hall
tall
wall
walk
well
duck
pull
full
pulled
walked

These are the extra words...

day
play
say
way
they

Our Trip to the Aquarium

We had such a good time at the Vancouver Aquarium earlier this week.  There was so much to see and so much to learn!

"Who is making all that noise!!?

This is "Creature"!  Creature helped us learn about how animals adapt to their environments to survive!

We broke up into small groups and learned more about animals with our group leader.

Here are a couple of stories about our trip.   We have included everyone's stories in a class book that will be circulating for home reading.  I hope you enjoy reading the stories with your child.

Halloween has come and gone!

What a busy AND fun week we had leading up to Halloween!  From carving pumpkins with the help of some of our families, to making "jello-jack-o-lanterns"...

....and ghostly popcorn hands....

---black cat races and much, much more, everyone had a great time !

The week was capped off with trick-or-treating by many of the students in our class!

A special "thank you" to those of you who sent in treats for the whole class yesterday!  Your children enjoyed handing them out to their classmates.

Also, another big "thank you" to the children who were so generous with their donation of Halloween candies to our next class project (coming up in December) - gingerbread decorating!  

Pumpkins and Jack-O-Lanterns

With October 31st fast approaching, we have been busy with all things HALLOWEEN!

We carved jack-o-lanterns with the help of some of our parents. 

For several of our parents, this was the first time they have carved a pumpkin!

Look at these great jack-o-lanterns!

 Look at all the seeds we dug out of our pumpkins.  We roasted a whole pan of seeds.  They were delicious!  We also got to take some home. 

We saved the rest of the seeds. We are drying them now and will keep them until Spring.  Then we will plant them and hope to grow our own pumpkin patch!

Next, we used strips of paper to make more jack-o-lanterns!

Spelling List 8

Our words for next week...
rest
best
nest
fast
last
most
lost
cook
took
wood
lasted
rested

The  extra words...
boy
girl
get
let
candy

Our Leaf Art Pictures

The leaves are pressed and dried!  They are ready for the next step of our art project....

 We look at all the leaves we collected and find "just the right ones" for our pictures.

Once we picked the leaves, we laid they down on the paper and made a plan .   What will our pictures be?

We had so many ideas!

After planning out the picture, we then started to glue things into place.  We used paper and crayons and felt pens to add details to our "stories".

Look at these creative masterpieces!  Everyone came up with such unique ideas!  

 And like many artists do, we all came up with a title for our piece of artwork!

What a creative group of students we have!

Spelling List 7

Here are the spelling words...

ten
six
two
four
three
be
baby
father
here
use
been
babies
and
for
like
that
there

A Fall Walk

With the sun shining, we went out for a walk around the neighbourhood to gather some leaves...

Back in the classroom we learned how we can press and dry the leaves.  Next week we will use these dried leaves for an art project!