Hello everyone!
I hope everyone has enjoyed a lovely weekend!! And a bonus sunny Sunday!!

 A belated Happy Earth Day to everyone!
It was excellent to see so many children participating in our Crazy Hair and Crazy Hat day. The assembly celebrated our wonderful Earth with us watching a few lovely Earth Videos. Our class worked on some Earth Day writing and pledges and promises of things we could do to keep our earth as beautiful as it is now for generations to come. Our class is filled with some beautiful art and thoughtful writing. We also took some time to transplant our basil, our sunflower seeds and to hill our potatoes. Hilling means adding compost to the potato pot as the plant grows. We sure have a lot of green thumbs in our classroom as our plants are definitely growing beautifully. We also talked about what plants need to grow, sunshine, soil, air and water and then we checked to see if our spuds, our seeds, our green houses have all that and yes they do!! In art we talked about how in nature rain is as important as the sunshine to help seeds germinate, sprout and grow and we did some beautiful rain art. We are still working on these beautiful pieces and you will see them displayed next week!

Just  a reminder that next Wednesday is our volunteer celebration. We will start with an assembly that everyone is invited to come to at 945. Our class will be joining Mr. A's class to do a fun song just for you!! Then afterwards all the volunteers are invited into the library for some refreshments. We will show you how "bananas" we are for you!!

We will be busy next week continuing our unit on weather and rain and the water cycle. Sarah will also be coming in to do some yoga and acting and talking about the talent show that we will be having sometime in June. Information about this will come at a later date...we are still working out the details! Fun and excitement around the corner!!

With that,
Enjoy the pictures and I will see you all on Monday!!
Take care,
Teri

Joana is the teacher and the girls are playing school, during our free play on Friday. I guess they just cant get enough!

Our Pledges and promises for helping the Earth.

Our spuds are growing...we hilled them and will be taking them out to the gardens likely next week!

A big welcome to Rodrigo, our new classmate from Peru!

Ms. Hromyk a Friday volunteer, former teacher at Bayview joins Sadie to do some math! Thank you to our volunteers we all appreciate you!

Working on our dancing in the rain pictures.

We love the rain!!

Celebrating EArth day.

Maggie and I in a selfie...do you think we look like twins? Maggie does!! Aww, to be so cute!! Thank you, Maggie!

Good Morning,
Im sorry that I didnt get the blog done on Sunday...but I think I had a touch of the flu!!
I was in shock!! Who gets the flu in April??? The sun was shining and the birds were singing and I was lying on the deck shivering...but the good news is I feel much better today and will be roaring to go tomorrow!!
Perhaps the last week of school pooped me out!! We were very busy in our three full days that I was there. We wrote April shower stories and did some beautiful art to go with it, we planted more seeds (sunflower this time), we went to the library and heard another story by Steve Jenkins about animals that work together because it "works" then they played a great partnership game about which animals do work together. Ask your child about different pairings that they discovered through reading.
Besides that we did our daily reading, daily math, a tap dancing presentation in the gym, did some yoga and drama with Sarah and other wonderful activities. You just have to come in to the classroom to see the amazing colours and projects that the children have all over our walls and now ceilings!!! There is no where else to go!!

This next week we will:
1) take a look at our spuds...they are growing!!
2) talk and write about our wonderful earth and discuss things we can do and pledges that we can make that will preserve our earth for a long time
3) participate in an Earth Day activity on Friday ....our assembly this week will be all about Earth Day. The children are encouraged to wear a hat that they made themselves out of recycled materials or do their hair in a crazy way that is somewhat related to Earth Day...like colouring it in the colours of our earth (blue/green) or hanging things off the ends that they have made...whatever you dream up for this day is acceptable as it is Crazy hair and hat day!!
4) discuss our wonderful volunteers....the invites for our volunteer tea will be going out tomorrow...next Wednesday we will be hosting a volunteer assembly and a volunteer tea to show you that we are simply "bananas about our volunteers". We hope you will be able to make it!! Mark it on your calendars now!

Please remember:
1) to send back the envelope of your report card. Sign the back first, we will be using it for our last report card as well. If you have any questions about the report card, please come talk to me. One thing I would like you to remember is that these report cards were written at the end of February and that it is now the end of April...the children have grown so much in those few months and the last report card will reflect that growth! Your children have worked very hard...please celebrate their successes!

With that, have a great day and I will see you all on Wednesday.
Enjoy the pictures!!
teri

looking at the parts of our potato plant

You cant see anything in this picture..but wait till you see them in person!!!

April showers writing and art!

Hello spring!

Beautiful Apple blossom art!

Arent they beautiful??? The blossoms outside are just gorgeous! The ones inside are too!!

The sun is shining and the birds are chirping and it looks like we will be having another wonderful day in Vancouver! Wasnt our weekend beautiful!! I saw so many happy faces on the North Van seawall and people playing and running in the sand at the beaches. I hope everyone got out and played and enjoyed the Vitamin D!!!

We had a very busy week at school....you should hear about all we did. 
We were busy gardeners all week. On Monday Hannah (Eli J's mom) came in and helped the children plant our spuds in tubs...they are sitting in the window ready to start growing now. As we watch them grow we will hill them, water them, fertilize them and when the plant is higher than the top of the tub we will be carrying them out to our gardens at the church where we will be letting them grow and then harvesting them at the end of June.

We also planted tomatoe seeds with Jen (Ayana's mom) and basil seed with Jo (Caspers mom) they are all sitting in our classroom waiting to sprout. When they sprout we will start transplanting them into larger containers until they too will be taken outside and planted in our gardens.

As we plant we talk...we talked about the parts of all plants and particularly looked at the parts of a potato plant starting at the "tuber" that we planted. The children then did some beautiful hands on collages of what a potato plant will look like when it matures.

Other things we have done in the classroom besides learning about plants (which we will continue to do)
1) We wrote spring stories and began some beautiful paintings looking at apple blossoms.
2) We worked in the library with Ms. Whitelaw and are doing an author study on Steve Jenkins. He is an amazing non fictional author and artist. His books are all about animals which he writes so magically and then uses collaging as a technique for his art. This last Thursday we worked on a book called Just a Second. In this book he discusses what can happen in a second, a minute, an hour, a day etc. We tried to see how many times we could blink in a second (not many) and how many heart beats we have in a minute . We will continue this author study with Ms. Whitelaw for the next six weeks.
3) In Math the grade 2's are working on double digit adding with regrouping. We used manipulatives to really get the concept across and it was interesting as they all said it was easier without the hands on manipulatives! I want them to see what they are doing, and why they are doing this thing called "carrying", not to just have it be rote, eventually it will be rote. The grade ones are working on adding and subtracting numbers to 12.
4) In cooking the grade one b group made some very delicious irish soda bread to share. Very yummy!

So as you can see we have been busy in the classroom! The children continue to work on being mindful workers...that when we work we concentrate on the job on hand , not on anything else...not on recess, not on skate boarding etc. They are getting better and better at this. Congratulations to Ayana and Leah who have shown what a mindful worker can get done in a day!!

 With that have a great Sunday and enjoy the beautiful pictures!!
teri

Our first group has planted their spuds.

Our second group is with Hannah and planting their spuds

Our beautiful April Showers brings May flowers art!

This was the test we did on what we learned about Penguins. They sure learned a lot!!

Our beautiful door!!! Thank you Ms. Craig!

Learning about the Potatoe Plant...our collage!

Our gardening station!

Hannah with the last group of spud planters.

Good Morning and Welcome back!!
What a wonderful welcome back I had on Friday!! Thank you to all the children who came in with their hilarious April Fool's "tricks". I had some delicious granola bar bits with a lovely strawberry toothpaste filling, a box of girl guide rock cookies, a bleeding tooth with ketchup blood all over the fingers, a lovely snake filled plastic egg , some lovely made brown e's, mustard filled chocolate eggs, and perhaps more that I wasnt aware of??? We read a story about April foolishness and talked about how tricks and pranks are okay as long as they arent mean or hurtful! And finally that at twelve oclock ALLLLL pranks and tricks STOPPED at noon! The children were definitely excited but were very respectful and did follow the rules!!

It was awesome to see everyone back on Friday. I had a great time in Greece and Russia. I enjoyed my first trip ever to Europe and was just so impressed by both cultures! I did a lot of touring and visiting with family but was also happy to be back in WARM Vancouver....it wasn't exactly balmy weather in either Russia or  Greece! A big thank you to Ms. Craig who took over for the two extra days. The children were in great hands. Did you see the origami flower door?
It was lovely. Great job kids!! and thank you Ms. Craig.

On Friday we spent time trying to finish up our Penguin unit. We have oooooooooooone more activity!! We will continue to work on it in addition to starting our new unit on weather. We will be looking at the clouds and looking at the water cycle and talking about rain and lightening and things like that. April seems to be a good month to do this. This month we will also be doing some spring writing and spring drawing and gardening. Its an exciting time of the year, thats for sure!!

On Monday we will be planting our spuds in tubs. This is an annual thing that both Ms. Jung and I do. We look at our little seed potatoes, talk about them, and then we plant them first in big black tubs which we keep in the classroom. We will watch them grow inside and then when the leaves are growing out of the tubs we will take these potato filled tubs outside and put them at the church across the street where we already have our garlic and other yummy things growing! In June, the potatoes will be harvested and we always have a delicious feast of boiled potatoes and a big salad from all the greens that we have grown!! Something yummy to look forwards to. I may need some help with the planting of the spuds on Monday, let me know if you are available and I will send you a note if  I could use your help! Thank you.

Finally, a good bye to Ariel and her family. It was on the last day of school that I said good bye to Ariel. They bought a house in another area and she is going to school there. I wish her and her family the best of luck at their new school and in their new house. Maybe she will come to visit us one day and we can all say good bye to her together!

With that, I hope you all have a great Sunday. I heard it should be sunny!!! I love the sun!!
Take care and I will see you on Monday!
Teri