Grade 1/2 Experiences at Rosser Elementary
During the last week, before the Christmas break, we read, “The Polar Express” by Chris Van Allsburg and did a buddy activity on it. These mini-booklets are displayed on the bulletin board outside of our classroom.
Our class watched the movie on the Thursday morning.
All students seemed to really enjoy both the book and the movie.
A huge (belated) “THANK YOU” to all the parents who drove, and stayed to help supervise, on our field trip. In spite of the rainy weather we had a good day. The students reported that the highlights, for them, were: the blacksmith shop, the school house, the tram, and the carousel. It is great to see how people used to live in the 1920’s and compare it to our lives today.
Hi all,
The District is upgrading all of our email passwords, etc. and, as such, I am currently unable to access my email. I am hoping that this will get rectified tomorrow. If you have anything urgent to contact me about, please send a note with your child (in their planner), or contact me at school personally. I will send out a group email to let you know when I am able to use my school email again.
Thanks for your understanding.
Notices went home last week about our Gingerbread House building which is scheduled for Thursday, December 17th in the afternoon. Please send in the items on the list by Tuesday, December 15th so that I can ensure that everything is ready for the 17th. Here is a photo of the size of milk container that is needed as the base of their houses:
The children also need a hard cardboard base, covered with tin foil. I have purchased the Graham wafers and mini cones, and will make the green icing for the ‘cone trees’.
This is a very fun activity that the students all love to do. Please ensure that your child has a fun day by sending in the needed items.
Thank you for your continuing support.
We have been busily getting ready for the Christmas concert. In between our regular academic subjects we have been using our ‘theme’ time to enjoy our fairy tale unit, and also to have some fun with Christmas crafts. I won’t tell you the main one – as it is the children’s Christmas present to their families – but we have also spent some time making our class Christmas tree with some very special unique ornaments which, I hope, will become longtime family keepsakes. You will see them at the Christmas concert. We have also made some other fun ornaments for your Christmas trees.
Student also had fun last week making paper chains for decorating the gym for the concert.
We look forward to seeing you all at the concert on Wednesday, December 16th. The children have been working very hard. I am sure the show will be very nice.
We did a directed drawing lesson on ‘bears’ this week. The next day the students did a much larger version of this bear’s portrait. The lines were then traced over with China markers. Students had used these markers to outline their Remembrance Day poppy art. Today students had the opportunity of working with oil pastels. They were given guidelines on colour choices available for the different sections. The background needed to be one of the varieties (shades or tints) of either green or blue. They were also instructed in the ‘smudge-iness’ of working with oil pastels and were supposed to work from the inside to the outside in order to not rub the colours into each other.
I think the students should be very proud of their hard work. Many said that their hands were sore afterwards but they were troupers and I think that they did a great job.
This week we began our fairy tale unit with the story, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. We read the traditional version and a few ‘fractured’ or ‘twisted’ versions. One of these was ‘Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs’, and another was ‘You and Me’. The students debated on whether Goldilocks was ‘naughty or nice’. On the ‘naughty’ side they decided that she: didn’t listen to her mother to stay out of the woods, and therefore got lost there; she broke into the Bears’ house; ‘stole’ their food (porridge); broke Baby Bear’s chair; and then ‘trespassed’ in their beds. On the ‘nice’ side they decided that she was a good girl who just made some wrong choices and that she didn’t ‘intend’ to do anything illegal or harmful. It was a good group discussion and was meant to show the students that there are usually two – and sometimes more – sides to any issue.
Students then had fun creating WANTED posters about Goldilocks.
They especially enjoyed deciding how much of a reward should be set for capturing this notorious criminal 🙂
As part of our exploration of the elements of art (colour) students created complementary colour patterns. We read the book, “Hello, Green Fox”, by Eric Carle, which shows how the colour opposites can trick our eyes. Students learned which colours are the opposites of each other: red/green; purple/yellow; and blue/orange. They learned that opposites, when placed next to each other, make each other seem brighter and almost appear to glow. They also got a chance to get ready for making winter snowflakes through the cutting technique. Check them out on the bulletin board outside our classroom, if you are in the building.
We are beginning a unit on Fairy Tales. We will be reading and doing many activities with a variety of different stories. A letter will be coming home this week asking for your child’s favourite recipe for our Fairy Tale Cookbook. Please send it back (renamed with a fairy tale name) by the due date so that I can get them put together before the holidays.
We have spent the last few weeks learning and playing with magnets. Students have done experiments learning about attraction and what things are ‘magnetic’ and which ones are not. They have also learned about the two ‘poles’ – north and south – and how the opposites will attract each other but the same one will push apart from the same one.
We also experimented with the different magnets to see which ones were the strongest by seeing how many paper clips they could hold in a line hanging down. Originally most students had the same number of paper clips hanging off each type of magnets. Through experimenting one student discovered how to magnetize the paper clips to have more paper clips hanging. Then we all went back and re-tried all the different magnets and managed to get better results by magnetizing the clips as we pushed them over the magnet to join the line.
The students had a lot of fun and also learned a lot. We also spoke about how our earth is one huge magnet – with a north pole an a south pole.