We had such a special treat today…
the “Maple Man” came to perform at our school!
It was a real coincidence in timing, because Mrs. Boekhout and Monty Moose had just come back from their very first (but very short) trip to Quebec. (They didn’t get to see a Maple farm, but they did get to go dogsledding! That, however, will be in ANOTHER post!)
The Maple Man, René Turmel, is a third generation “Maple Sugar” producer. His Maple tree grove is in Sainte-Marie de Beauce, near Quebec City, Quebec but most of the year he lives in the Okanagan Valley, BC. He travels across Canada sharing some of the traditions and history of French Canadians.
Watch our video to see some of the wonderful learning from this session:
We have been busy thinking about NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS! Have you?
Mrs. Nielsen had a very inspiring post about what you would put in a “New Year’s Survival Kit“. It was such a unique idea that we thought it would be fun to create our OWN “New Year’s Kits”!
Here are some of the things
in our Classroom2Kids New Year’s Kit:
*String… reminds me to connect with others. Alina
*Butterfly…reminds me of nature. Alyssa
* A match… to light up dark times. Amanda
* Candy…because it reminds you can always be sweet. Bryan
*A book…is a life to remember. Dennis
* Paper clips… remind you to extend your friend ship. Dylan
*KNIFE………….cuts away bad thoughts. Eric
*Diary… reminds me of writing in good memories. Hannah
*A ball… reminds you to try harder. Hayden M.
*A trophy…to remind you that you are special. Hayden Y.
* A rock… to be strong. Jayde
*A piece of paper… to draw good thoughts. Jesse
*3 candles… for love, peace & harmony. Kendon
* Sticker…because it reminds you to stick up for your friends and family. Mattias
*A spoon… to remind you to scoop up new ideas. Megan J.
*Soap… to wash away sad things. Meghan L.
*power bar… to have the power to be brave. Shay
*Medicine…To heal others, yourself, and family. William
You can view EACH STUDENT’S “Happy New Year Kit” on their personal blogs!
Look on the top menu bar for “About Us” and choose “Student Blogs”
or… just click here! STUDENT BLOGS
It’s hard to believe that the Christmas ‘frenzy’ is already over, and we are on to “Happy New Year”!!! We had a wonderful school-time end to 2011 (can you believe that it will be 2012 when we return to school?)
I have to admit that I felt a lot of nostalgia watching my current students in our videos as I put together our “year-end” blog. It makes me think of a saying that reminds us to treat the “Present” as a “Gift”. When I look at these delightful young children (no where near knowing where their lives will take them) I feel a good deal of happiness knowing that this was one of the “good times” in their school experiences.
Let’s start with a “Pot Pourri” of some of our activities!
I had a FANTASTIC time at school this evening, between 4:00 and 5:30pm, participating in an “Online Blackboard” ceremony of the Eddy Awards! There were over 115 teachers from ALL AROUND THE WORLD typing messages in real time, talking over microphones, and watching the results as they happened “live”. I even got to e-meet some of the teachers I have links to! There were teachers from Canada, USA, Europe, South America, Australia and more! For some of those teachers, it was the middle of the night, and others had their students listening at school!
A HUGE congratulations to Mrs. Yollis for winning the Class Blog Award… she certainly deserves it! I have learned a lot about creating blogs by reading her inspirational posts and using her guidelines and suggestions. Mrs. Yollis also won the “Most Influential Blog” award!
Although Classroom2Kids didn’t win, I am SO proud to have made it to the Edublog-selected nominations. I am especially proud, considering the other amazing Class Blogs that were nominated. Thank you to EVERYONE who voted for us!
THANK YOU, EDUBLOGS! YOU ARE A WONDERFUL ADDITION TO OUR LEARNING!
A big THANK YOU to Mrs. Nielsen for nominating our Classroom2Kids Edublog for an “Eddy” award! We feel honored! You can vote for us by selecting “Best Class Blog” and then “Classroom 2 Kids”. BTW, it seems that we are especially honored because we were shortlisted into the actual voting selection!
EDUBLOG QUOTE: Each year there are more and more nominations, and of increasing excellent quality, reflecting the ever growing edublogosphere — nice work guys!Unfortunately we can’t list every single nomination in each category — that’s too overwhelming for everyone. Instead, our intrepid team of judges combed through hundreds of nominated sites to whittle them down to a manageable number of shortlisted nominations for each category.
We finally got to use our pastels on an Andy Warhol style Christmas tree! The design we used to inspire us was a project from http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/
Andy Warhol’s new style of art became popular in the 1960′s, and eventually he became the world’s most famous Pop Art Artist. Warhol made the Campbell Soup Can famous too!
Here’s the “real” Andy Warhol Christmas tree.
Enjoy our rendition of a Christmas Tree Parade! Christmas Tree on PhotoPeach
Our “Dear Santa” letters had a special excitement to them, because the students uploaded their posts almost completely on their own for the first time! Here’s what they did:
-Wrote to Santa in MSWord
-Learned how to login to their blogs with their usernames & passwords
-Activated “Easy Mode” (what a fantastic option!)
-Put in the title and copy/pasted their MSWord document
-Checked off “Blogging” as a Category and checked “Publish”
Then…
-Created a picture of Santa in KidPix, printed out as an outline to color
-Filled in the color on the computer in “Todd Parr” style
-Saved the picture and then also exported the picture as a jpeg
-Went back to their blogs and uploaded the jpeg into their Dear Santa post
Personally, I think it is AMAZING!
I am SO PROUD of my Classroom2Kids Bloggers!
You can find our Student Blogs are located in a separate tab under the “About Our Class”, or you can just “CLICK HERE“.
The next step will be…
to upload a post FROM HOME! WOW!
We have been very busy learning about SURVEYS, VOTING, and DATA COLLECTION this week. Coincidentally, there is a municipal election going on right now and some of the voters will be heading to our school on Saturday!
Our first work involved looking at the two surveys we have done on our Edublog: Favourite Walking Stick Insect and Favourite Pet. We found out that the number of votes in our survey doesn’t actually tell us how many PEOPLE voted. (It’s a good thing that government voting keeps track of the names of people!) We could tell, however, that not everyone in the class voted for the first survey, because there were only 14 votes. The second survey had 31 votes, but we found out that some people voted twice and some people didn’t vote at all. Pink Winged Walking Sticks were the favourite stick bug and dogs were the favourite pet. We looked at which came second, which came last, and made some comparisons between the choices. There was a lot of GOOD MATH going on!!!
FINALLY, Mrs. B. let us get down to the exciting activity of giving our hamster a name!
We collected a LOT of different ideas for a good hamster name
(3 groups of 19 = well… an easier question is…
3 groups of 20 = 60,
then take away 3 = 57…
then add a couple of names suggested online….
but take away the names that were suggested twice…. Oh GEE, let’s just say we had a LOT of names!!!)
In our first round of voting, we picked our favourite 3 or 4 names.
That helped us narrow down the choices to 12 names (Burnout, Flash, Fluffy, Nibbles, Ollie, Runsalot, Speedy, Sputnik, Teddy, Wiggles, Zap, Zappy).
Then we voted again and ended up with just 4 names: Fluffy, Teddy, Wiggles, and Zap.
(Mrs. Boekhout’s favourite had been “Sputnik”, but this name didn’t make it into the final round.)
In the last round of voting, the winning name was
FLUFFY!
We hope our new little hamster
likes his new name!
This week we will have to be on our BEST “inside voices“… because we have a new class pet! He will be nervous at first, even though Mrs. Boekhout has been working with him at home. Mrs. Boekhout tried to pick the calmest one in the litter, but he most definitely has personality! At first he was only allowed in the small cage, but once he got into his big new cage, this little guy turned into wildfire!
This week we will watch him carefully so that we can give him a good name. It will have to be something spunky, that’s for sure! He is only 2 1/2 months old, so he isn’t supposed to be given fruits and veggies yet. We will have to find out which “hamster treats” he likes. He definitely enjoys sunflower seeds.
We have been busy reading and learning about Remembrance Day. The book “A Poppy is to Remember” helped us understand why the poppy is such an important symbol for Remembrance Day. We were honoured to hear that the famous poem, “In Flanders Fields” was written by a Canadian army doctor. His poem is very sad and the illustrations in this book really touched our hearts.
Lots of the children in our class have relatives who have been in a war. Some of them died in the war, but many of them came home, with terrible memories of what it is like to be in a war. Some of them were in the army, some were in the navy and some may have been in the airforce. One student in our class has a brother who is a soldier in Afganistan right now. That makes us all feel worried for him, but proud that he is helping to make the world free and safe.
War and Peace on PhotoPeach
We also learned about how animals have made a contribution to war efforts. Veterns Affairs Canada sent us their “Animals in War” newspapers. This year’s paper was called “Archway of Remembrance”. Our Grade 5 Buddy class read the newspapers with us and then we all got to take our own copies home. http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/activities/kidszone/tales_animals/2011
We have been thinking about how “Children Can Help“. The poem “Poppy, Poppy” reminds us that even children can do their part to make the world a happier, kinder place. We made big PEACE posters with ways that children can care, share, and cooperate. We read Todd Parr’s book, “Peace” and talked about how lucky we are here in Canada. Then we did our own pictures of things that are special to us and what would happen to them if we were at war. At Primary Sing-Along, we all sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” (Peter, Paul, and Mary) and “Make the World a Little Bit Better” with sign language (Charlotte Diamond). Our class also watched the video “A Pittance in Time”, a moving reminder from Nova Scotia, Canada, to take the time to observe the 2 minutes of silence on Nov. 11.
The Remembrance Day ceremony at school was very moving. There were presentations by students, songs by the choir, and placing of wreaths by the K/1 students. Mr. Della Vedova shared a memory of his own Grandfather.
Today, in 2011, on the 11th hour on the 11th day on the 11th month, an emotional service was performed at Victory Square in Vancouver. One of the poems read was from a plaque in Stanley Park. It reminds us that WE are the LIVING SPIRIT of those who gave their lives for us.
The Vancouver Junior Bach Choir performed the Canadian poem, “In Flanders Field”, in song. Here is a video of this beautiful song from the 2009 ceremony.
We created our own video of the poem “Poppy, Poppy”. Mrs. Boekhout copied this poem off a Vancouver school display board over 20 years ago, but has never been able to find the name of the poet. She hopes that this year’s class will always remember to be children who SHARE, CARE, and COOPERATE.
