October Arrives!

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Mrs. Boekhout

Show Me Ten for Good Listening!

It is hard to believe that we are now passing our 16th day of school! So much has happened in these first weeks, and we have had many different kinds of “first Gr. 2 lessons“! As well, all our Class Pets have now arrived and we have seen our first Chickadees and Hummingbirds come to our window bird feeders. We went into the “Sanctuary” courtyard and fed the big Koi fish. Our “Special Helper of the Day” is in full swing and we have organized our “Table Helpers“. Our first Spelling Tests and Homework assignments were a big success. Our first Good Stuff Assembly had a super Slide Show by Mme. Proulx, our new principal, and we enjoyed a whole-school performance by Andy the Musical Scientist. (Click on the link to see Andy in action.) We gave our best effort at the Terry Fox Run and had almost all our parents attend Open House. We have had Library, Music, and Computer times. Whew! That’s a lot of “firsts” and it’s only some of the things we have done!

Here are some photos of one of our favorite times in the day…
“Shared Reading”.

We hope you enjoy reading our Blog and “peeking into” Classroom 2! You are welcome to add your own comments too!

What was YOUR favorite activity in these first days?

Rainy Days are here!

Posted on October 5, 2014 by Mrs. Boekhout

Here we go… after a bit of a rough start, the new school year is finally starting to settle down to regular routines. The bright, sunny days of early October have dissolved into the soggy, doggy days of true Autumn, but when Mr. DV announces, “It’s an Inside Day today” on the PA system, we think of “Pete the Cat” !

Do we cry?

“Goodness, no!”

We just take out our snacks
and we sing this song:

“We love our classroom,
it’s fun for me and you!
Let’s play together,
there’s lots of stuff to do!”

Yeah!

It’s an Inside Day!

Bonus! You can listen to “Pete the Cat” online!

Eric Litwin reads his book “Pete the Cat” on YouTube.

Classroom 2 Kids 2014-15

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Mrs. Boekhout

Here we are…
the CREATIVE, DYNAMIC, ENTHUSIASTIC class of 2014-15!

Awesome Learners…

but full of Personality too!

It’s going to be a FANTASTIC YEAR!

September arrives… we are back!

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Mrs. Boekhout

The time is NOW…
the place is HERE…
and we are READY for Grade 2!

It’s been a very busy first full week of Grade 2 in Classroom 2. Our school was a-buzz with desks moving from classroom to classroom, as we unfortunately had to undergo reorganization. Everyone has settled in now, and our class has a full roster of 24 lovely students!

Supplies have been (almost!) organized, we’ve had our first newsletter and spelling test, first library and gym time, and Mrs. Boekhout got to lead the first Primary Sing-along. The first class pets have arrived (Fluffy the hamster, Speedy the Leopard Gecko, Fatty and Skinny the 2 Fire Bellied Newts). We’ve worked on good manners at the door (saying “Good Morning” while looking at Mrs. B. in the eyes) and being ready to LOOK, LISTEN, and LEARN. We are learning to follow the 7 parts of the Morning Set-Up (including having 2 sharp pencils and one big eraser ready!) We’ve talked about “Being in Control” and how to “Be a Good Friend“. We’ve started to learn where all the “good choices” are in the classroom, including different kinds of books, math manipulatives, paper for drawing & writing). Some people have started writing letters for our classroom Postal Service. Almost everyone is cleaning up their desk after lunch (oops… we have already lost one sponge!) We done some Math, journal writing, worksheets, reading, and we watched a Terry Fox video and participated in our School-Wide Terry Fox Run! … and MORE!!!

Doesn’t that make you feel tired? I know that Mrs. Boekhout was exhausted!

So… that’s a pretty typical first week in Mrs. Boekhout’s class, BUT, there is SOMETHING MORE! Nestor School has its very first SMARTBOARD, and… (can you guess?) it’s in OUR CLASSROOM!

How did this wonderful event happen? It all started last NEW YEAR’S DAY 2013! Mr. B. knew how much Mrs B. wanted a SmartBoard and so he talked to Mr. E. who belongs to a charitable organization and Mr. E. talked to Mrs. B. about the Coquitlam Foundation which sponsors “good ideas”, and Mrs. B. wrote a looooooong letter about her “good idea” and sent it in. Just when Mrs B. had given up hope, she got a letter (in May) saying that she was going to receive a GRANT for her SmartBoard! Yeah!

The SmartBoard was only installed in the afternoon of Sept. 3 and so Mrs. Boekhout is just like a KINDERGARTEN student, learning what to do at school! The students have had lots of laughs when things go higglety-pigglety, but we have all been so excited to use our new learning tool. We are getting lots of visitors who want to see too!

Whew!

I wonder what Week 2 will be like!

🙂 Mrs. Boekhout

Open House… what a success!

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Mrs. Boekhout

Open House is always such an exciting time!

It took a lot of work to get all our displays ready for our parents in just 2 weeks, but we did it! You all did your best to produce quality work! (Poor Mrs. B. got sick and lost her voice, but there was no way she was going to miss school when getting ready for such an important event! Mrs. Singh was sad that she could not come on Thursday, but she made a beautiful “hello poster” for you to show your parents.)

I think the “Who am I?” display was the most fun. Funnily enough, your parents seemed to be able to find their own child’s “body” and writing. Maybe that’s because you did such a good job of making a “realistic” head! Thank goodness I was finally able to bring the pet tanks back into the classroom! I prefer being able to bring the classroom pets in one-by-one but it did make for a special surprise for you to “suddenly see” them all at once!

Which piece of work were YOU
most excited to show your parents?

Congratulations to Mrs. Yollis, Winner of the “Class Blog” Eddy!

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Mrs. Boekhout

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!

“Eddies” nomination for Classroom2Kids!

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Mrs. Boekhout

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.

Here is Mrs. Nielsen’s nomination:
http://lynnenielsen.edublogs.org/2011/12/09/vote-for-mrs-boekhouts-classroom2kids/

Note: You can only vote once per IP address (that means, only once per computer). Extra votes from the same computer are deleted.

Wish us luck… and VOTE!

Students Upload Their Own Posts!

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Mrs. Boekhout

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!

New Hamster!

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Mrs. Boekhout

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.

Here are two videos of our new little friend!

Introduction to our New Hamster – Video1

Our New Hamster – Video2

Now…
what SHALL we call him???

StickBugs, Class Pets, and more!!!

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Mrs. Boekhout

Dear Mom and Dad…

This week we had SOOO many things to choose from for our Journal Letters home! Mrs. Boekhout could have FILLED the board! In the end, however, we had to choose just ONE event, so that we could practice our GOOD WRITING SKILLS by ZOOMING IN and ADDING DETAILS. We want our parents to be able to VISUALIZE the scene.

Here are some of the exciting events our class chose to write about:

the class pets, the class hamster, calendar time, reading the next chapters in our novel “Class Pets”, the new grass lizards, Clues & Questions by the Special Helper of the Day, getting to hold the Walking Stick insects, the Terry Fox run, birds coming to our bird feeders. Whew!

Mrs. Boekhout is going to choose the Walking Sticks for this blog because… WOW! Everyone was SO excited when each table got a blackberry branch with 4 different species of Walking Sticks on it! Stick Bugs are known as Phasmids… Ghost Insects… because their camouflage lets them “disappear” into the branches and leaves.

Our Indian Sticks do a neat trick… they fold 2 legs forward and 4 legs backwards, until you can’t see anything but a little green twig! The Pink Wings have tiny, delicate wings and can flutter away when disturbed. The Bacculum Sticks are our longest sticks. They like to wave their 2 front legs in the air, just as if they were saying “hello”! The Thorny Sticks could win an “ugly bug” award with their brown thorny bodies! The males are much smaller than the females and you can often see them having a piggy back ride around the bug tank! All of our Walking Stick insects live happily in one big tank, and they all eat Blackberry leaves. Blackberries are actually an invasive species here (even though the berries are soooo yummy!), so Mrs. B. doesn’t mind chopping them off for “bug dinners”.

Walking Stick Welcome! on PhotoPeach

Classroom 2 Kids

Reading, Writing, and Blogging!

Category Archives: News

October Arrives!

What was YOUR favorite activity in these first days?