Good Morning families,
I hope you are all enjoying your weekend. The weather was beautiful yesterday! I was able to spend a few hours walking the beautiful, north shore sea wall while looking at the snowcapped mountains. It was sooo nice. Hopefully we will have a lovely week next week.

Thank you for sending your carseats and skates and skating gear. Only a few forgets, lets go for 100percent next week! The children had a great time. They were all so well behaved and really worked hard at their skating. Thank you to the drivers who got us there and back safely! Three more fun sessions to go!

This last week saw us doing another wonderful Jan Brett story called The Three Snow Bears. Modelling the store of The Three Little Bears.The children are working hard at learning how to retell a story with the main details, then work on creating a picture to go along with it.
This term the children are also learning how to work on procedural writing. Writing that tells how to do something in such detail that a Martian coming to Earth would be able to do the activity. So far they have learned how to build a snowman and how to make hot chocolate, and now how to brush their teeth. I have many more great ideas in store for them.

This week we also started our Owl unit. We brainstormed what we already knew about owls and then wrote down what we already knew. If you have any owl books or owl pictures that you would like to share or send to the class we would love to borrow them.
On Thursday Mrs. Applebees class will be joining us to see an Owl presentation. There will be two birds of prey brought in after recess on Thursday. The children will have the opportunity to see one live owl. It is an amazing presentation and we will be counting on behaviour that is beyond stellar as these animals are very skittish and will need children who are quiet and respectful. The costs for this presentation will come out of our school funds. Funds that are given to each classroom for fieldtrips and presentations such as this. I am so excited that they will be joining us. It is one of my most favorite presentations!

It is a short week this week as Monday is a professional day. So please do not send your child to school. I will be there reviewing my art material and reviewing the new curriculum!

With that,
I have some pictures that show some of the other activities that we have worked on this week.
Take care and I will see everyone on Tuesday.
Teri

winter is a time for making hot choocolate!

Nina shares her favourite book.

Casper shares his favourite book.

Oliver shares his favourite book. Sorry it's blurry!

Learning about owls.

This is the way you brush your teeth!

Writing poetry with Ms. Whitelaw. 

This one was titled, I love winter.

Good morning my families,
I hope everyone has had a great weekend thus far and is doing well.
As you may have heard from your children, I had to leave a little early on Friday as I had (what I self-diagnosed) but I think I had food poisoning from some tofu that I made on Thursday night. My stomach felt awful! As I feel great right now, I think that the toxins are out of me and I am now raring to go. The children all were very sweet and very helpful as I groaned through the day!

Thank you to all the families who showed up for our student led conferences. I enjoyed having a little chat with you and your children and loved how your child loved showing you their amazing work. They are wonderful children and you should be very proud of how hard your child has been working this year! As I have said many times, I am very lucky to have a group like this. They are a pleasure to teach!

First off before I get into our busy week I would just like to remind everyone of two important things.
1) Our first skating session is this Friday. The forms must be in already. Also if you have volunteered to drive, I will be putting in a drivers form into your box, that you must fill out. It is a third party liability form. If you have filled it out once this year already, it is not necessary to fill it out again. But I will put it in your box, and you can then let me know. All children are to bring their carseats, their skates (if they are not renting), their helmets if they have their own, and all appropriate skating gear (mittens, hats etc) on this date. For drivers, we ask that you are at the school around 1255, for instructions and for the talk to the children as we will leave shortly after 100. Fun fun fun!

2) We are still collecting socks for the homeless people on the street. It is an opportunity for the children to give to the community. We encourage the children to be selfless and this is an additional opportunity for the children to help try make the world a better place. Thank you to the families who have already contributed socks to our very big box outside the classroom!

Now for the fun stuff!
This week we:
1) Read The Hat by Jan Brett and discussed the differences and similarities between The Mitten and The Hat.
2) We did Poetry in the Library...this time we listened to a poem called...I Hate Winter...(a two word list poem) and the children were challenged to write a two word, list poem called, I love Winter.
3) Mr. T came in and worked on Ipads...doing brain games.
4) Mr A came in and continued their study on the community and they sang up a storm.
5) We worked on our platter. It is beautiful. Just in case anyone doesnt know. This platter will be up for auction at the Bayview Gala, fundraiser in March. It is always a fun event and a covetted platter!
6) We mixed liquids with liquids to see which would combine together and which wouldnt. Ask your child about this.
7) We wrote how to make Hot Chocolate in a way that if any Martian would come to earth they would be able to follow the steps of how to do it. Because you cant  just talk about Hot chocolate, you actually have to do it, we made hot chocolate. It was very very good, especially with the marshmallows floating on top. The writing was also excellent! The children are getting very good at step by step explanatory writing. That afternoon the children worked on some beautiful hot chocolate art.

I took a few pictures to show you the fun we are having in class.
Enjoy the blog and your Sunday together.
Cheers,
Teri

Ps. Thank you to Maggie and her family for our feather duster...the dust does not like you, but i do. As well as thank you to their family for some french-english dictionaries...one of which is a picture dictionary that the children and Clement are enjoying looking at and learning some new words. Thank you

Reid is the first to do his book talk.

Matt shows us his favorite book. A book from when he was two.

Reanna does her book talk.

Casper works on the platter. It is coming along!

Our winter poems. We LOVE winter!

Capturing Jan Brett's style of artwork where the side panels tell the story.

Working on our Hot Chocolate art.

We love working on our art! Look at the smiles!!

Mixing liquids with liquids..some mix, some do not!

Good Morning to all my families,
I hope everyone enjoyed the lovely, blue skies yesterday! The weather man says we may be in for a little bit of rain starting Monday, so get out there today and soak in the sun before we need to pull out our rain gear! Thank you for helping your child remember their indoor shoes during the snow season as it has kept our carpets a little bit cleaner and thus our bottoms a little bit dryer!

A busy week was had by all the children and a very productive one as well!
Every Monday the children are given a new set of spelling words. The grade ones are given four new words now a week they are to practice these words and then continue to review the other words that they have been given since September. By review I suggest that the children read the words and try to spell them out word and as they continue to do this on a daily basis, that is how it is committed to memory. The grade two's are getting very good at remembering and learning the strategies to commit their words to memory. During the spelling time, we look at word families, rule breakers in spelling and rule followers. They are doing very well as can be seen in their spelling tests. Keep up the hard work boys and girls!

Now that I am working full time on Tuesdays we have filled it with a lot of different activities for the children to get used to. First off we are joining Ms. Whitelaw and participating in a Poetry unit. We will be looking at a variety of poetry.This week Ms. Whitelaw introduced "clue" giving as a poetic style. Where one does not actually know what the poem is about until they have read all the clues. We were lucky to have Ms. Craig join us today. Ms.Craig will be volunteering on Tuesdays and will be helping children with their reading and writing and at this point will be helping Clement as she is fluent in French! Today we also had Mr.Toszak join our class in the afternoon. He will be with the children every Tuesday afternoon for an hour to teach them how to work on the school Ipads while I go to his class and teach art. It's a perfect trade. The children were delighted to be working with Mr. T and the ipads.

On Wednesday the children worked on learning how to procedural write. They wrote the steps of how to build a snowman. We will be working on this type of writing over the next month. Procedural writing is a very important style of writing as it helps children work on clearly communicating. They will work on giving clear directions for everyday activities and learn how to communicate without skipping steps.

On Thursday the children had the pleasure of Deanna visiting us again. She read us a story about Totem Poles and talked about what the symbolism of different animals on the totem pole and then we got to colour and create a piece of art with the totem pole.

On Friday during buddies, we talked to all of our Buddy classes about our Homeless/ Street People and their needs right now. Due to the cold that Vancouver is experiencing many shelters are filled to overflowing. We talked about the amount of street people who cannot get into some of the shelters and what could we do. I read the children a story called Lily and the Paper Man. It was a beautiful story about how even young children can give back to others. Thus prompted our idea of how we could help. We thought this might be a great time for us to do a Sock Drive for the adults on the street. So with our buddy classes we made posters to invite families to donate adult size socks which we will then take to a shelter (or???) to have the socks distributed to those in need. In true Bayview fashion we are hoping that we will be able to fill the big box outside of our room!

Finally:
Things to remember (and needs)
1) Skating forms and money need to be sent back as soon as possible so I can see how many drivers we have/need.
2) Early Dismissal this Wednesday and Thursday at 200 for the parent/teacher/student conferences
3) Needs: Swiffer dust picker upper...if you have one of these????? our room is very very dusty and that doesnt seem to be something that our janitorial crew does...guess, that's left to the teaching staff as well.

With that,
have a great Sunday and enjoy the pictures!
Teri

Working on our Matter experiment. Does some matter Dissolve in water or not? 

They love doing experiments in the sunshine!

What happens????

Aren't they adorable?

So many different expressions!

This is our platter, or the start of it. Once again, the fundraiser, gala is coming up and all classrooms are busy creating their platters!

Our Procedural writing...how to build a snowman!!


I did take waaaaaaaaaaaaay more pictures, but my camera is breaking down...boo hoo!! Some pictures didnt go onto my card??? why????

Good Morning and Happy New Year!!
From everything that the children shared with me I know everyone had a great winter holiday! And like I am always saying to the children, "time flies when you are having fun!!" That is true in class when we are doing so many activities and it's true when the snow is falling and everyone is enjoying all the beauty around them while being with their family and friends.

I would like to take this time to welcome Clement to our classroom. Clement is from France and is here for six months with his family to learn English. It is a pleasure to have him join our class. The children have all been very kind and welcoming. So if you know any French, this is your opportunity to practice it. It's surprising what words do come back to you!

It was great to see all the children back in fine form! They were excited, happy and surprisingly very very calm. I think they were all ready to be back and working away. And believe me, we worked. We wrote and wrote and wrote. We wrote about our holidays, we made some great New Years Resolutions and we wrote some wonderful Firework poetry. We also did a lot of art...and this was all on the first day!!!

Even though Hannukah has passed, we decided to have a belated Hannukah experience. We started off with reading a delicious Hannukah story called Latkes, Latkes Good to Eat. Then some of the grade twos got to go and make some latkes for us all to try. They were so yummy. In the afternoon Yael (Ben's mom) came in and shared the story of Hannukah with us. She lit the Mennorah, and then read a story that Ben helped her to tell and then took groups of children to play the dreidle game. It was a great afternoon.

On Thursday we had the pleasure of having Veronica come in and talk about hibernation.Veronica is a scientist (an ecologist to be specific) from Douglasfe College who came in and shared many delightful stories with the children about her own experiences about seeing different animals in their habitats.Afterwards the children began working on their own hibernation posters incorporating the different hibernating animals.

Friday arrived soo quickly, I couldnt believe that our week was coming to an end. With four children away, it made the class also seem sooo small. To all who were away with colds, I hope you feel better! We started our new literature unit, Jan Brett. She is an author and an illustrator. We will be investigating her style of writing and illustrating over the next month and doing many Jan Brett inspired projects. In the afternoon we painted and created some very whimsical bears...celebrating our knowledge of Hi-bear-nation!

Important information:
1) Our Student Led conferences are coming up on Wednesday, Jan. 18th and Thursday Jan. 19th.
There will be an early dismissal on these days (2:00 pm) to allow time for the interviews.
The student led conference is an opportunity for the children to show and share. The first five minutes is spent with the parents and the teacher briefly discussing the report card and the next ten minutes is for the parents and the child to review the childrens work, During this time I will pop in for a quick little chat to review the goals and off you will go.
The following times are reserved for the parent teacher interviews:
Wednesday from 730 am till 830 am and from 200 pm till 400 pm
Thursday from 730 am till 830 am and from 200 pm till 500 pm

Email with your preferred times...please give me a few choices and I will email you back with your time.

With that,
Have a great weekend and I will see you on Monday!
teri
Enjoy the pictures

Yael shows the children the Mennorah