Ms. Carley's Classroom Blog

Welcome to the Div. 13 family, little alevins! We were so excited to come back from the long weekend and family day to see that our chum salmon eggs had hatched into alevin! We wrote and drew our observations of the changes we saw! We have been working hard on our salmon connection writing as well, writing brainstorms, drafts, and finally good copies!

We are enjoying alternating between forest days and literacy days with our little buddies! Here are some photos of our imaginative play together. Some children fished in a pond with fishing rods they found, others made a potion, and much more!

Happy Lunar New Year! We loved learning about the Year of the Horse and making crafts and decorations.

With our big buddies, we made intricate lanterns.

Valentine’s Day was so much fun! We enjoed making crafts and bags, and then filled them with so many lovely cards and treats from our classmates!

In math, we have begun exploring 2D and 3D shapes in geometry, and learning how we can measure them!

Come visit the garden and forest that decorates our hall and room. We loved chosing art for our card project and now get to finally enjoy it up on the walls!

Our forests inspired by Emily Carr look so beautiful. And our Van Gogh -inspried flowers are so vibrant!

The last few weeks have been so full of joy and discovery! Please take a look at some of our snapshots!

We loved having our garden day! We learned about the parts of the vegetables that we commonly eat – are they roots, fruits, stems, leaves, or flowers? Then we learned about ways to preserve vegetables, and sorted vegetables into these two large categories. We also got to do timely garden tasks such as removing algae, harvesting, and aerating the soil. We ate some carrots and they were delicious! We love using all our senses in the garden!

Literacy week was so much fun! On Monday, we dropped everything and read in the pod, we had a guest speaker, we shared jokes with our buddies, on Wednesday we wore words,  and on Friday we played bingo with our buddies! Here are a few photos of our pod reading and our bingo time!

We did an artist study of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven and created art inspired by her works! Here is some art in progress, and we will show you the final products soon!

We had our first session with our little UCC buddies in the forest and we were so excited to get to know them and show them our favourite forest spaces.

Div. 13 was so lovely and thoughtful in wanted to share birthday wishes with Isaak, so we made them into a little book and Isaak was over the moon thrilled with it. He loves reading it every day and remembering his Div. 13 friends.

We created rainbow trout drawings – a fish that is closely related to the salmon we are studying. Div. 13 did such a careful job of shading their fish with different colours. I love how unique they all are. We have been learning so much about salmon through math, science, language arts, and social studies!

We had our second session with our UCC buddies – this time reading to them and getting to know them through art.

We started a new art projet inspired by another famous artist, Vincent Van Gogh, and other artists and photographers who love to capture flowers. Div. 13 did such a beautiful job with this mixed media project – sharpie, oil pastel and watercolour paint.

In math, we continue to explore measurement. We started with length and height, mass, then capacity, and currently area and permimeter. Here is some of the fun we had measuring area and perimeter of words! We will be moving on to geometry next!

Our books of the week were Salmon River and Each Kindness. This week, we created little tokens of appreciation that might be coming home to you, thank you for all the care you provide them with.

Our art is so beautiful! Stay tuned for an art fundraiser that will be coming home soon!

Important days coming up:

• Feb. 13 – Valentine’s Day – if you would like to share Valentines with the class, please bring enough for our 21 classmates!
• Feb. 16 – Family Day – no school
• Feb. 17 – Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year
• Feb. 17 – Mar. 19 – Ramadan
• Feb. 25 – Pink Shirt Day – please wear pink
• Feb. 27 – Pro D Day – no school
• April 1 – Field trip to Seymour Hatchery – a notice for volunteers and drivers will be coming home shortly
• April TBD – Salmon Release at Stoney Creek – we will need drivers during this field trip as well

Happy 2026! Welcome back to our second term!

From our first day of hip hop on Jan. 6 to our performance on Jan. 15, Div. 13 has been working non-stop to learn and practice their dance! They did such a great job of learning all the elements and some of our classmates even performed extra special dance moves like cartwheels, popping, bridges and tables! Congratulations on three amazing performances!

We started with snowball math, practicing our addition and subtraction!

Then we started a new unit: measurment! After we brainstormed all the things we know about measurement, including what it was, what we can measure, what tools and units we can use, we got to work learning about measuring length and height! After practicing with scavenger hunts around the room and many other activities, we brought stuffies in to measure!

Next, we started learning about measuring weight! So far, we have been measuring weight with non-standard measurements – cubes. We love comparing the size and weight of our stuffies with our classmates!

With our big buddies, we learned about how the moon was an important way of measuring time. Then we learned the special names for Full moons in different cultures. Then we imagined how we might represent some of the January full moon names!

We have been working on our goal of running for Terry Fox! We noticed we have been doing measurement math all year long with this challenge!

One of the most exciting parts of our January so far, has been receiving our 55 Chum salmon eggs! We have been learning about salmon, their life cycle, their habitat, and ways we can safely look after them in our school. We can’t wait to learn more!

We have been reflecting on 2025 and thinking about our intentions and goals for 2026 and are excited to share all these thoughts with our New Years mobiles. Come take a look at all our lovely reflections.

We are looking forward to all our adventures this term!

• Tuesday is our second garden workshop at 10:45-12 (please let me know if you can join us)
• Wednesday is our first day of being big buddies!! Please sign the notice coming home

Wishing you all a cozy January. Look forward to seeing you all soon!

We had a little Grinch visit our class today!

We loved having pancakes with our big buddies! Thank you to the PAC for creating such a warm and welcoming event!

Ms. Carley brought in nutrackers to draw what we saw! After reading the Nutcracker story, we were so inpired. Then we used sharpie and pencil crayon to create this detailed art to the soundtrack of the Nutcracker ballet.

Almost everyone has finished our amazing bat pamphlets! They are filled with tons of interesting facts, information, photos, and games! Here are a few examples of students who wanted to share on the blog! We will share more in the new year!

We loved playing dreidle, a game that Fran taught us earlier in the month. Happy Hannukah to everyone who celebrates!

We went out looking for forest treasures to create winter ornament gifts! We were amazed at the treasures we found when we looked closely!

We dried them to get them ready for our crafts, and then we sorted them!

**Holiday gift spoilers below (if your children haven’t givent them to you already)!**

Next, we created three types of ornaments! One with clay, one we preserved in a clear cover, and one we used sticks to create trees! Each one is so unique and special! We hope you love them!

Two more classmates created their nature portraits as we wrote our portrait poems!

We revisited and created new stories during story workshop!

We made special holiday cards. First, we chose a design to emboss our paper, learned how to use the embosser, raised our cards using dimensionals, chose the perfect paper pieces to make our trees or menorahs, and then wrote heartfelt messages. We hope you feel the love that went into these cards!

They turned out so beautifully!

Our last three stories were Latkes Latkes, Good to Eat!, Ten Ways to Hear Snow, and Olive the Other Reindeer! We loved reading and learning so many strategies with these books! Here are some of our favourite ways to hear snow!

We loved hearing Kazumi share his beautiful artifacts. We loved to learn about all our classmates.

We have been working on addition and subtraction! This week was all about holiday gingerbread word problems! We look forward to starting measurement after the winter break!

Wishing you all such a joyful holiday full of love, laughter and fun!

Over the past two weeks, we’ve taken time to look closely—at one another and at the creatures and living things around us. Just as the saying reminds us that no two snowflakes are alike, we discovered countless examples of how careful observation reveals the beautiful uniqueness within everything: our cultures, families, and experiences; our art and creations; every snowflake; and every mushroom. We learned about the remarkable diversity that emerges when we acknowledge our connections, our similarities, our differences, and the qualities that make each of us unique.

It was such an honour to hear all the stories and connections from Div. 13 students and families for show and tell. Here are some photos to remind you of the treasures we heard about. Tell your families about what you learned and what connections, questions, appreciations, and comments you shared with your classmates!

We went on mushroom scavenger hunt with our buddies! Look at some of the amazing forest mushroom treasures we found!

We were so excited to see the first snowfall of the year on Monday!

We got to read some books about snow and then create our very own snowflakes to decorate the class!

This week’s main read aloud was Ten Ways to Hear Snow – we loved doing many literacy activities with it, and exploring the descriptive language and similies.

This week, we started our new addition and subtraction unit in math! We brainstormed what we knew, and then we jumped right in! We are using lots of strategies to help us understand how to add numbers together.

We love doing scoots around the room to show our math understanding! Along with using math manipulatives, we showed our understanding on worksheets and played games to improve our fluency of addition and subtraction facts!

We went on a science walk to see who we could find and Bunny found an amazing artifact! We are exited to look and explore more closely!

We are so close to finishing our bat inquiry projects and showing our learning in pamphlets! We look forward to showing you soon!

This week we were writing poems to go with our nature portrait and a few of our classmates got to create their own, after missing the first day!

Every week we get new spelling words to practice and do activities! Div. 13 brought home their booklets to practice and finish this weekend! Reminder that tests are on Monday, new words and activities on Tuesday, dication and finishing their booklet on Thursday!

We love the library! Don’t forget to bring your library books on Tuesdays! And you can bring home reading books back for an exchange any day 🙂

Come visit our beautiful school welcome weave anytime!

Looking forward to an amazing next week!

• We have a few final presentations!
• We have a fun winter buddies activity planned for this Wednesday – please let us know if you’d like to come help!

We were so excited to have our first two presenters sharing about their families and cultures today: Zoya shared about why her Shalwar Qameez is so important to her family and culture; and Bunny shared about how he has a special tradition of making dumplings with his family. Thank you for being such brave presenters! Div. 13 did a great job as an audience as well, and shared lovely appreciations, connections, comments, and wonders!

We are learning about families, communities, cultures, and traditions in Social Studies. For Show and Tell, we are sharing something special from our family, culture, or community.

Your children have their presentation date, rubric, and project description in their planners – please take a look and support them in preparing for this special show and tell 🙂

We had a visit from the Burnaby Mountain Secondary school band! They shared about the different programs that student can join, and taught us the names of their instruments! They played us two wonderful songs that we loved dancing to. We were so inspired to follow our musical passion!

On Friday, Caitlin came to our school to unveil the beautiful weaving she created with us! Now is hanging at the front of our school to welcome everyone.

We have been doing so much place value math! Here, we were created a picture and then calculating its value! We have been learning about ones, tens, hundreds, and how they compose larger numbers! We have been ordering and comparing too. Math is being sent home a few times a week so you can see what we are working on! And don’t forget to check the math tab to find out more about some of the math, language arts, and other curriculum connections we have this term!

We had the opportunity to learn from Indigenous Knowledge keepers who shared about the “Greeting of the Day”. We learned so many things about the story of the song and the instruments they played. We look forward to the next session!

Our buddy bulletin board is up and ready to admire! It highlights all the learning we did about each other, and the creative projects we collaborated on so far!

Our School mural is also up on the walls, welcoming everyone as they walk up the stairs!

Reminders:

• Your children’s show and tell date is soon! Please help them prepare 🙂
• Please feel welcome to order scholastics for your holiday presents, with the code:
  

  RC161145

• Spelling and Poem of the Week are two programs that will be coming home regularly

We hope you had a restful and reflective Remembrance Day! Div. 13 created a beautiful wreath for our assembly.

We have been studying nocturnal animals this past month. Learning about adaptations, habitat, and then about specific animals. First, we learned about Racoons together and now we are learning about bats! After watching some videos and doing some group reading, we are working in small groups to research and wonder about specific types of bats! Tell you family which ones you chose! We started doing research on the ipad. Feel free to look up more facts and videos at home with your parents! Thursday, Nov. 13 is our bat workshop from Douglas College!

In math, we have started a new unit! We have been learning about place value. Last week we took our thinking out to the forest. First making groups of 10, then 100, and then working toward 1000! Students chose different materials to count – some chose sticks, needles, leaves, cones! Then they realized they could work together to add up their numbers faster. At first counting by ones but then adding groups of tens to increase! We have been working on representing, recognizing numbers, as well as comparing and ordering them!

We have started a spelling program. On Tuesdays, we will get new spelling words (with a sheet to practice) and activities to practice understanding their patterns, spelling patterns, etc. On Thursday, we will practice a dictation to listen and spell, and we will bring home our spelling sheets to practice. On Monday, we will have a spelling test.

Come by and visit our beautiful art. Our Diyas for Diwali are in the classroom and our Calaveras for Day of the Dead are in the hallway.

Div. 13 sounds so beautiful as they play “Doggie, Doggie, where is your bone?”in music class!

Reminders:

• Tomorrow is our Douglas College Bat Workshop – it takes place in our classroom!
• You can participate in Spelling activities at home
• You can practice you Poem of the Week (please bring your duotang home each Monday or Tuesday to bring home our new poem)

Last week was full of exploring nature and fall celebrations!

We read My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks and created self-portraits inspired by the beautiful natural treasures around us. We explored how each treasure can be used as a simile to describe parts of us. Here are a few examples.

“I used rocks for my arms to show that I am strong.”

“I used helicopters to show that I am growing.”

“I am as clever as a clover.”

“I used helicopter seeds as my legs to show that I am fast.”

“I used maple leaves for my hair to show that I am colourful.”

Do you recognize your child’s portrait? We will write the poems that go with this beautiful art soon!

Tuesday was our first garden day of the year! We learn so much in the garden! Even though it was a rainy day, there were so many things to find and observe.

We learned about the amazing things growing in the garden. Brocolli had the hand-like leaves, cabbage had round leaves, and kale was frilly! We transplanted leek plants to protect them!

We loved the smell of sage, lavendar! We thought the chives were delicious! We were surprised by what the brussel sprout plant looked like!

We split and put strawberries into new pots with soil and prepared to transplant them to different places!

Here we are planting our leeks!

On our scavenger hunt, we found many living things! We looked closely with magnifiers!

Here are some of the garden reflections Div. 13 wanted to share on the blog!

We learned about the celebration Day of the Dead, which is celebrated in Mexico on November 1st and 2nd. We read stories and created art inspired by candy skulls.

We had so much fun with our buddies! We made haunted houses with so many intricate pieces and designs!

We had a costume parade and walked and watched with our big buddies!

The UHE Green Team introduced a new challenge to learn and practice our recycling system! We are excited to do our best to help the environment!

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!

Here are a few snap shots of our learning recently!

We loved extending our Science unit of Forces and Motion (Physics) to our SFU Field trip! We learned about Newton’s Three Laws of Physics and did experiments to strengthen our understanding! Newton’s three laws of motion for kids explain how things move:

• First Law: An object in motion stays in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest, unless a force acts on it
• Second Law: Heavier objects require more force to move, and a greater force creates more acceleration
• Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, like when a rocket pushes gas down and the gas pushes the rocket up

Tell your family about what we did to explore these concepts! What did you notice?

Here is the first experiment where we pulled paper from between the cards to see if we could stack them together! What did you notice about what made this harder or easier to do?

The second experiment we used cars, added various weights, pulled them with magnets to “drive” across varying materials with different levels of friction. What did you notice made the cars go farther or faster?

The third experiment we made rockets with special “rocket fuel”! What made your experiment successful or meant you needed to try again?

On the way back to school, we loved stopping at the fish pond! Div. 13 loves nature and being in the community!

In science (Biology), we read the story, Not a Daffodil and observed daffodil bulbs and learned about all their parts. Then we planted our daffodil bulbs and can’t wait to see them sprout in the spring! Can you show your family where you think you planted your daffodil? How deep did you need to dig and which direction did you need to place the bulb?

We have been learning all about apples and each other with our buddies! This week, we brought in apples to make and eat delicious apple sauce, and created art inspired by Andy Warhol! We can’t wait to show you our buddy bulletin board.

Wishing a Happy Diwali to everyone who celebrates! We have been learning all about the stories, traditions, and celebrations of Diwali, and connecting to our understanding of celebrations in our own lives. We drew diyas and look forward to sharing them with you. We love when Social Studies and Arts Education intersect.

In math, we have been working hard learning about repeating, increasing, and decreasing patterns! We learned about pattern cores and practiced recognizing and writing pattern rules. We have been exploring patterns in the world around us. We have been sending some of the students’ booklets home where they have been practicing these new skills on paper. Please take a look to see how your child is doing with learning, practicing, and building upon these skills! Some of us started extending our thinking into patterns in multiplication!

In Div. 13, we are learning about growth mindset and feelings with tools such as Everyday Speech and Mood Meter. Over the last month, we learned about how having a growth mindset can help in everything we do!

We have started brainstorming feelings and understanding which zone they might fit in for us.

We are continuing to focus on Self-Awareness, which is a measure of how accurately learners can recognize their feelings and thoughts and learn to understand how those influence their behaviour.

Some goals we have:

Recognize and label our feelings
Describe our emotions and the situations that cause them
Recognize intensity levels of our emotions
Recognize how emotions can change
Recognize how thoughts are linked with emotions and emotions are linked to behaviour

Many Div. 13 students are creating a spooky Halloween village with the boxes that our portfolios came in! They are so creative!

Here is a sneak peak of our collaborative art mural that Ms. Carley, Ms. Dixon, Ms. Yee, and Ms. Tsang have been working on putting together for the main stairwell! Every student and staff in the school created a fish and we will all be swimming together!

We look forward to so many more wonderful learning adventures!

A few reminders:

• Oct. 29 – Photo Retakes
• OCt. 29 – Family Movie Night
• Oct. 31 – Halloween – you can wear your costumes!
• Nov. 2 – Day of the Dead

It was such a pleasure meeting with so many families this week at Parents as Partners meetings this past week! Thank you so much for sharing your time and connecting about goal setting for your wonderful children! I am so grateful to be part of your child’s learning journey and lives.

This week, we went on a gratitude walk, noticing and thanking the flora, fauna, and biota. We were inspired by the Thanksgiving Address by Chief Jake Swamp in Giving Thanks. 

The next day, we wrote and drew about what we were thankful for in more detail. I hope you had a wonderful weekend sharing gratitude with your families.

In science, we continued our study of force and motion by exploring non-contact forces, gravity, magnetism, and electrostatic force. We used various items to drop and compare, balloons, and many different magnets! Tell your families what you noticed! Were you able to find any more examples this week?

We met our big buddies on Wednesday! We learned about apples and then created some sharing about our favourites! We can’t wait to get to know them better as the year goes on!

We created new stories this week in story workshop and started our drawings and drafts! We even used our spelling dictionaries to collect and look up words.

Our All About Us art is finished! We love seeing it up on the walls and sharing it with our families at Parents as Partners!

We also put up our beautiful Best Part of Me writing. From brainstorm planning, to drafts, to writing conferences, and good copies, Div. 13 worked hard to express their unique selves.

Please feel welcome to visit our classroom to see our space and our art if you haven’t had a chance already! We look forward to putting up  our new art soon!

Wishing you all a wonderful next week!

Reminders:

• Forces and Motion Field trip to SFU on Wed. Oct. 15th
• Please complete the Getting to Know your Child survey if you haven’t already!