April Showers Brought April Flowers!

The saying usually goes - April showers bring May flowers, but we have been busy with our buddies creating "April Flowers"!!

First, our buddies showed us how to make tissue paper flowers and we planted a garden in our front foyer.

We planted our garden!

Soon after, we played a fun dice game and created a new garden full of flowers!

Later, we made our flower garden on paper, traced with sharpies and painted with water colours.

They are beautiful (just like our mothers who received them for Mother's Day!)

Procedural Writing

In Language Arts, the Huskies and the Cheetahs have started to learn about procedural writing.  The root word of procedural is proceed which means to move forward.  In order to complete a procedural write, we need to explain how to 'move forward' through the steps involved while performing a task. These steps need to be listed in the correct order or sequence.





Our first experience was to watch Mrs.Metz perform a regular, everyday task - brushing her teeth!  After we watched her do this, we had to describe the tools or equipment needed and then tell the steps she took to complete the task.


While we shared what we saw, Mrs. Betts listed the steps on the board, but our job was to put them in the correct order.  Because this is a task that we do everyday, it was pretty easy to do!

Our second experience with procedural writing was today when we used our observation skills to watch carefully while Mrs. Metz performed an experiment.  After she was finished, we had to list all the materials and then list the steps in the correct order.  We worked in partners to do this.  The experiment looked like this:

Can you see the materials that were used?  (tray, bottle, vinegar, dish soap, food color, baking soda, tissue and a spoon)  If you look closely, you can see blue, bubbling foam coming out of the bottle! What do you think Mrs. Metz made? It was very cool to watch what happened when she mixed different matter together and created a chemical change!

We worked in partners and wrote out all the steps of the experiment in the proper sequence.

Stay tuned for more procedural writing!!         

Our Amazing Buddies!

Do you have a buddy class that you work with?  We do and we have a lot of fun with them.  They are Mrs. Miller's grade 4/5 class.  This year we have done lots of great activities like reading, art, games, ipads, blogging, watching them perform drama and story writing.

Recently we wrote stories together. We talked about the elements of stories, chose characters and settings, developed a plot with a problem and solution and then wrote all the details to form our story.  We used Book Creator on the ipads to publish our stories and then we illustrated them.

We had a lot of fun - thanks big buddies for helping us learn!

Are you mindful?

Do you know what mindfulness is?  In our class, we have been learning and practicing mindfulness for a few months now.  We have learned: to breathe, to calm our bodies and minds, to relax and clear our thoughts, to use our senses mindfully and to use a mindful approach in our daily activities and communication with others.

When we are mindful, we are better able to connect with the world around us and to connect to others in positive ways.

We practice calming and breathing once or twice a day.  This helps us to focus on the important tasks during class time.

One of the ways we practiced looking at things mindfully, was to observe carefully and then use words to describe in detail what we saw.

Mrs. Rene helped us use our sense of vision by watching what happens when food color is dropped into a large container of water.  We observed: shapes, movement, colors and combinations of colors.  We used words like: swirling, fish, dropping, circles, ovals, floating, clouds, slowly, mixing, blue, green, and teardrop to describe what we saw.  It was really amazing what you can see if you are mindful!!

Treasure Island

WOW - Treasure Island, the Musical was amazing.

We hope that all of our parents, families and friends were able to see one of the performances of this wonderful musical put on by our entire school.  Mrs. Davis did a fantastic job of teaching us all the songs, as well as directing the main characters in their roles.

Many parents helped with designing and building sets, getting props and costumes, decorating our school and the gym, moving furniture and helping behind the scenes.  We are so lucky to have such an enthusiastic and helpful community!

Here are some of the highlights of the week!

Setting the stage in the foyer!

   

Ahoy Mateys!

The Cast and 'Crew"!

Our Classroom Door

"Arrrrg Matey!"

                                     

"We're ready to sail Captain!"

Captain Flint!