Reading Buddies, Blogging and Exploding Colors!

I couldn’t resist getting a shot of our latest reading buddies!  When the children have finished their independent assignments they have the opportunity to read.  That morning I had received a new “suitcase” of books that the children were exploring.  We had to go to the computer lab and when we came back I saw that they had left their “reading buddies” with their noses in a book!  Too cute!

At the computer lab, the children have been exploring some of the new links I have added to the WIKI this week.  I have added a few Christmas links and a link for the I Spy series.  The Christmas links are from the ABCYa site.  There is a  Math practise site,  decorating a Christmas tree and a Gingerbread House, and a Christmas word search.  Love those word searches!   Check it out!

Today we explored surface tension again with our experiment called Exploding Colors.  This is another Dr. Zed experiment that I found many years ago!  All you need is some milk, a drop of red, blue, and yellow food colouring, a toothpick, and some dish soap.  Pour the milk onto a shallow plate.  Add the three drops of food colouring.  Then use the bigger end of the toothpick and dip it into a little bit of dish soap.  I usually put out a little plate of dish soap.  Dip the toothpick  into the milk and watch the fun!

Today we blogged on our student blogs with our big buddy class.  We wrote about our last big buddy day!  Check it out!

It is amazing how quickly the children have learned how to navigate the various directories to insert their pictures!  There are quite a few steps that they have to remember and then they also have to learn how to adjust the picture so that it comes up in the correct position.  We are super impressed!  Right now the buddies are scribing for us but soon we will begin writing our own entries!

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Munsch Munch!

On Friday for buddies we met in our big buddies class for Munsch Munch!  Our big buddies had prepared a special treat for us!  They have been reading Robert Munsch stories and practising them to read to their little buddies.  They were working on making the stories come alive for their little buddies!  It was awesome!

There are a lot of favourite Robert Munsch stories and I am sure that the little buddies all got to hear at least one of their favourites!  In addition to the special treat of listening to these stories come alive, the children got another special treat!  Something to munch!

Our big buddies had all brought in fruit to share and make into fruit kabobs!  Totally yummy!

Even Mrs. Anton, Mrs. Marshall, and Mr. Brick has some!

Thanks for sharing!! TOTALLY YUMMY!

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Dinosaur Day!

We have started a mini project on dinosaurs this month.  We started off with our very first research project on Apatosaurus.  We worked on sorting the facts on apatosaurus into four different categories.  Our categories were: what they look like, about the babies, what they eat, and cool facts.  I think the children liked the cool facts category the best!  We were able to watch two great programs on BrainPop Jr. that focussed on fossils and extinction.  Really interesting  programs!

It was a dinosaur day on Friday!  We are making a little booklet about the different dinosaurs and some interesting facts about each one.  We worked on that in the afternoon.  Did you see the Itty Bitty book about Dinosaur riddles?  I like the one about the Sillysaurus the best!

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Fun with Fall!

We had a lovely time creating little vocabulary books about Fall this week.  It is amazing how much excitement can be generated by sparkly foam stickers!  On one of my many visits to our local craft store I managed to find fall sparkly stickers on sale at a significant saving.  I thought that the children might enjoy using them to decorate a little fall vocabulary booklet I was planning for them!  Well… that was an understatement!  They were quite happy to pose for pictures!  As I don’t have everyone’s permission yet to post everyone’s pictures I will have to save those pictures to a later date. But  I do have pictures of their products!

I love this one!  He decided to add the title to his all on his own!  Wish I’d thought of that!

We also met with our buddies this week and they helped us add another entry to our student blog sites.  I hope you will take a moment and check them out.  Just drop me a note if your child has forgotten the password.  I will pass it along again!

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Dracula Mummy Cans!

We had a lovely time on Halloween!  I hope everyone has forgiven me for the Dracula cans!  I just can’t resist them because the children really love them!  I found the original mummy can idea a long time ago.  Can’t remember exactly where…It was in one of the craft magazines that come out at Halloween.  It was always a big hit with the children, but then, one of my parents brought in the idea of the Dracula Can!  We HAD to put the two ideas together!

Our latest science experiment was hilarious.  I was having a bit of a day and couldn’t seem to get anything right.  The children were quite sympathetic!  This trend continued on into the demonstration of the science experiment!

The object of the experiment was to flick the card with several coins on top and have the pennies drop into the cup!  Well, it took me numerous tries to actually get the coins to drop into the cup!  The children thought it was hilarious!  But I persevered and after several tries managed to redeem myself!  The children were much more successful much to their delight!

Just wanted to show you one of the journal entries from our hay ride field trip!  Those parents who were with us will recognize the truck with the pumpkins!

I wish our day had been as sunny as this picture! But we managed to have lots of fun anyway!

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More Halloween Fun!

We have been having a lot of fun over the last few days!   We had an amazing time on our hay ride!  The children and parent volunteers were troupers about the rain!  The children got to pick a pumpkin from this neat old truck and had a hayride through the woods.  There were some spooky sights to see,  too! I bet I know which scary sight was the favourite!   Lots of excitement!  We even had an adventure when the hayride got a flat tire!  No worries!  We just had a little bit bumpier of a ride back!

We have been working hard on the door for the door decorating contest at the school!  The children made spooky jack-o-lanterns under the ghost eye tree!  I think they are amazing!  Love the amazing expressions!

We made a haunted house count up book today, too!  The children had a great time making the spooky characters peek through the windows!

The children also worked on our WIKI page today again and looked at the Halloween items.  Be sure to check out the pumpkin book.  Imagine having a carved jack-0-lantern so big that a child could be inside!  Too cool!

The skeletons are out and about in our classroom, too.  Watch for them to spook your house soon!

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Halloween Fun!

Over the past few weeks we have been having a lot of fun with Halloween.  We have been creating mini Halloween books that introduce new vocabulary and allow practise in a fun way!  The children had to match pictures to the appropriate sentences to create their books and I was really proud of their increasing independence!  They did a great job illustrating their cauldron covers, too!

We have also opened a very popular new centre that the children can work at after completing their independent assignments.

Over the last little while I have collected all the cool bugs that are available at the dollar store.  I also found these lovely cauldrons and mini cauldrons.  So…. now we have the Witch’s Brew Cafe!

I made a simple cloze sheet for the children to create their culinary masterpieces!  They decide on the items and how many of each item to add to their recipe.  When it is complete they serve their delicious treats to their friends.  The recipes can be remade by their friends by reading their recipes.  Lots of reading and counting practice!

I hope you have had a chance to visit your child’s blog site.  It can be found at the Student Blog page at the top of the screen.  Your child has the password.  If they have forgotten it just drop me a note and I will pass it on once again.

We are just beginning our journey with our student blogs and I hope you will be patient with our hiccups!

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Scarecrow Day!

We had a lovely time on Scarecrow Day!  We made scarecrow books, art, and even learned to dance the chicken dance!  The costumes were wonderful!  Thank you!

We read several excellent stories about scarecrows.  The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown is a favourite of mine.  In the story the little boy makes six fierce faces at the crows.  The children made a little scarecrow book and drew their own fierce faces in a mini-movie format.  They really seemed to enjoy it.  There were a lot of scary faces!

We also made a scarecrow face snack!  Most of the children seemed to really like it!  Even the funny green hair!

We also made some scarecrow art!

I have quite a collection of scarecrows in my classroom.  It is like a Where’s Waldo of scarecrows.  The children started to count them up and I think we got to 19 and then we realized that we were scarecrows too!  That’s a lot of scarecrows!

We are also working with StoryBuddy on the iPad to create Halloween pictures.  Stay tuned to see our efforts!

Please check out the WIKI page as I have added some Halloween links for fun!  The Pumpkin Book is from the Starfall Website which is a particular favourite of mine!

 

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Going Batty about Bats!

Yesterday we started learning about bats!  We read several non fiction books about bats.  There are a lot of different kinds of bats!  We made a list of our favourite ones and wrote a poem in a simple frame format.  Then we turned them into bat books.  I found a really cool video about bats on the Primary Games site.  It can be found on this address.

http://www.primarygames.com/videos/webosaurs/nigel/bat/index.htm

We watched it several times today.  It is a really cool video.  So I decided to go looking for other videos about bats.  And I found this one about the flying fox as well.  This bat can have a wingspan of about six feet!  Take a look! This is the world’s biggest bat!

 

Did you know that there is a bat that weighs less than a penny?  It is the world’s smallest bat! What is its name?

That’s your homework!

Soon you will be batty about bats, too!

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Science is Magic!

Each week we try to do a science experiment!  I like to do the ones that children can do themselves with simple ingredients from home.  The best ones make a BIG mess!  I especially like the ones where you mix baking soda and vinegar together.  We had fun with that one last week when we made popcorn dance!

Last week we also did the one about air pressure.  I have to admit it is really fun to see the children’s faces every time I demonstrate this experiment.  It’s the one where you put a piece of cardboard on top of a glass half full of water, carefully turn it over keeping your hand very flat.  You take your hand away from the cardboard and amazingly the water stays in the cup!  It really seems like magic!  The magic of air pressure!

Some of the children had to hold onto their cups for a long time before the cardboard fell off!

I found these experiments in a series of books by Dr.Zed in the library . The books were a culmination of the experiments in the Owl/Chickadee magazine.  I checked the Owl/Chickadee website and it has some neat little games and they still have Dr. Zed science in their magazines too!

Hopefully the children remembered their promise to show you this experiment over the sink!

Don’t spill now!

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