Our Picasso-inspired Art

We learned how Picasso was a very talented artist who started out drawing and painting real life objects when he was quite young.  Inspired by a Picasso painting of a guitarist we completed a contour drawing of Mrs. Rene's ukulele.  The following week we learned how Picasso became bored with painting real life objects and wanted to recreate what he saw in his mind.  This was the beginning of the Cubist art movement. We cut out our contour drawings (!) starting by cutting the drawing in half and then around the outline of the ukulele.  Each student then created their own piece of Cubist art.  Each one is creative and unique.

Have you have used a drawing to create another piece of art?

Crazy Hair Day!

At our school we have Spirit Days - In May we had Crazy Hair Day! Have a look at our CRAZY hair!

Crazy Colors!

Crazy Wigs!

Crazy Styles!

CrazyPigtails!

What do you do at your school to build school spirit?

Our Newest Procedural Write

Can you tell by the pictures what we wrote about?  We had so much fun trying to blow bubbles with bubblegum and then writing about how we did it in great detail.

Do you know how to make bubbles?  Just follow our steps!

First-unwrap the gum

Second - CHEW, CHEW, CHEW!!

Third- press your tongue on the gum to make it flat

Fourth - push your tongue into the middle of the gum gently

Fifth - blow into the gum

Sixth - make your bubble

Seventh - POP!! 

Water!

Grade 2s started a new theme unit today: Air, Water, and Soil! We brainstormed all the water words we could think of and created this Wordle. (Click on the photo to go to the website for a clearer image.)

Our Community

We have been learning about the different features of communities and have been working in small groups to find out how those features look in our community.

Fun Activities To Do in Surrey

There are lots of fun activities in Surrey, like the Aquarium, the Greater Vancouver Zoo, pools, and parks. Surrey is near the ocean where people visit to go on picnics, build sandcastles, and play on the beach and in the water. You could have a picnic dinner or lunch at the beach.  There are many parks in Surrey including Bear Creek Park – our favourite!  In Crescent Park you can go walking all year long and enjoy bird watching. Some of our favourite activities include skiing and snowboarding on Mt. Seymour in the winter and canoeing and swimming at Crescent Beach in the summer.  What do you do for fun in your community? Do you have a favourite park?

All About the Landscape in Surrey

We have lots of evergreen trees and green grass in Surrey. We live close to the ocean. On the beach we see sand, rocks, and the water. The beach near us is named for the large white rock on the shore.  What do you see when you look out the window? When we look outside we see the Coast Mountains topped with snow. There are lots of paths and trails in our community. We have fertile soil and lots of blueberry farms. In the wild you can pick blackberries and huckleberries.  Do you grow any fruits or vegetables in your community? Do you grow anything we don’t have in our community?

Weather in our Community

Our weather is mild; it doesn’t snow very much in the winter and when it does snow, it’s not very much nor does it stay very long.  The weather doesn’t get very hot in the summer either but is warm.  We do get lots of rain all year long! In spring the flowers bloom and the grass grows fast. In the fall we have trees whose leaves change colour and then fall. We have four seasons: summer, fall, winter, and spring.  How many seasons do you have? How cold does it get in your community?

Animals in our Community

Some of the animals in our community include the beaver, black bears, bald eagles, geese, and lots of fish including salmon and rainbow trout. A couple weeks ago we had a fire alarm and while we were waiting outside we saw two bald eagles circling above us.  Our school is next to Chantrell Creek and a beaver lives near our creek.  He has built a big dam.  Raccoons eat our gardens, get into our garbage, and are a nuisance in our community.  What animals do you have in your area?

Chantrell Creek - located just behind our school!

Transportation in the Lower Mainland

We have lots of types of transportation. Lots of people in our community use the skytrain. We use the skytrain so we can get from place to place quickly and efficiently. The skytrain opened in 1986 when Expo 86 was on. This was a fair that people came to visit. We have an Expo line that takes us to Vancouver from Surrey. When skytrains get to Vancouver they can travel to Richmond on the Canada Line. The Canada line is the newest line on the skytrain. We also have the Millennium line which takes us to Coquitlam. The skytrain works with magnets.

 

Ferries take us from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. There are two islands you can travel to. One of the places it goes to is Victoria. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. They can also take us to Bowen Island and the Sunshine Coast.

We see cars everyday. We use cars to drive us to other cities. Cars are the most used type of transportation in Surrey. Trucks usually carry cargo.

Passsenger trains take us to different provinces. The Rocky Mountaineer takes us from Vancouver to Alberta.  The VIA takes us to Winnipeg and to the U.S. Trains used to be pulled by horses in our community. Now we use diesel engines in our trains.

Our roads are made of asphalt. We have roads because we have long drives to places in the Lower Mainland. Thank you for reading about our types of transportation. Thank you for reading our blog.

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!!