Tuesday 22 October 2013

Tommy and Trent go Tenting

This morning, the letter of the morning was T. And as with every letter we talk about, we came up with words and pictures that include this letter. This morning, we must have been feeling terrific because the t-words had the children all very involved in telling me a funny story about Trent and Tommy. By popular demand, I have written what I can remember for you here. 

One Tuesday around ten, Tommy and Trent talked about toying with the transmission in their truck (their only form of transportation). Once their truck was together they drove to a tree and set up their tent (it was a tent that looked like a tepee). Tommy and Trent soon ran into their teacher who happened to be wearing a turtleneck. She served the boys some tea from her special tea-pot. She told them she had a t-shirt underneath incase it gets warm. Anyway, Tommy, Trent, and the teacher were tenting away when suddenly they saw a tiger with terrible teeth. The tiger was taking his pet turtle for a walk on a long tether. This was about the time Tommy and Trent decided to drive their truck down the trail to the town of Teulon. When they got to Teulon, the boys saw a big Tyrannosaurus Rex terrorizing the townspeople. So, they ran down the trail and saw two teenagers that had tears in their eyes. The teenagers had to use the toilet, so they got away without being torn up by the T-Rex. The T-Rex decided he would be tame. Trent and Tommy decided to take down their tent and try again tomorrow. They got home about ten o'clock that night.

I think that's about where we wrapped it up. Someone mentions a toilet and we all lose ourselves...

Here is some of the work we did afterwards:

K's at the plasticine table

Matthew looks for nine challenging T words 

Autumn draws and prints 

Hello Snow!

Each morning we walk along the beautiful Prime Meridian Trail before entering the building. And this morning we were all excited rosie-cheeked children. How beautiful it was (the snow disappeared by recess).
Leaving Tracks

not much snow, but still wonderful
I admit I am quite late in saying how incredibly thankful I am to be learning from and working with this group of children each day. I certainly think it every evening as I drive home. I hope all families had a heartwarming Thanksgiving weekend. I also hope the offerings made it home safely and found a place to hang.

making salt dough turkeys for our Thanksgiving offering

glaze is still wet, but he looks happy

In K-3 this month we shared some beautiful stories on giving thanks including the book "Giving Thanks" written by Jonathan London (Gregory Manchess painted the illustrations that you can easily get lost in). The story is about a father and son who take a fall walk in the woods and give thanks to each living thing. If you are interested in borrowing the book (or any of the books we read) please let me know!



Stay tuned, and thank you for talking the time to read our blog!
Much Love,
Ms Hadfield (and company)


Monday 7 October 2013

The Lonely Sunflowers

Last week we were inspired by a lonely sunflower plant that has been growing beside a tree in our schoolyard. The sunflowers surprised and delighted us as we are not so sure how the seed got there in the first place. It looks very unique amongst all the trees and mulch.

the persevering flowers

After examining this plant closely, coming up with words to describe it, and talking about the four things all living things need to survive (soil, water, sun, air), inside we went. We didn't want to harm the plant, so we took photos of the flowers and put them on SMART board when we got inside.

As we looked at the photos, we talked about the rich, warm colours of the flowers. This led us to a very famous artist named Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh painted a vase of twelve sunflowers that show warm yellows on a cool blue background.  Van Gogh used a thick oil paint for his work, so we decided to use thick oil pastels to create a similar effect. What do you think? Do they look van Goghish?

warm flowers

lots of pastel

pretty close!


Tuesday 1 October 2013

Hello October!

Autumn Greetings Dear Readers!
This evening, I have four top stories to report. Let me begin by sharing photos from this morning. We had just come in from our first visit to the Bookmobile (our local library on wheels) and decided to all sit down with our chosen books when the sun came pouring in the windows. It was a beautiful sight: peaceful, reading children in all kinds of places around the room.


in the "teacher chair"
in a sunbeam


on the floor

in a doorway

under a bookcase

in a bathtub



My next bit of news is about our class visitor: the caterpillar. You do remember Myles found a caterpillar, right? And we brought her (or is it him?) into the classroom? And we fed her leaves?
Well...over the weekend she spun a cocoon! It is a small, light brown, hairball looking cocoon that is attached to the side of the cage. Today we did some research and compared butterflies and moths. We now know that this caterpillar will turn into a moth (not a butterfly) because moths spin silky, light cocoons whereas butterflies will form a hard chrysalis. We talked about many other similarities and differences as you can see from our venn-diagram below.

(sorry about the glare)
Last Monday:                                                              This Monday:                                                                        


Speaking of interesting discoveries, yesterday we found something amazing! It all started on our scavenger hunt. We were doing a nature BINGO where we were looking for shiny things, bumpy things, smelly things, listening for animal sounds, and so on. Here we are searching. Isn't the autumn sky a cool blue?


Suddenly, Brett came running out of the bush with a very strange object in his hand. It was a light green pod with little spikes. Brett told us it fell from the sky and hit him on the head! We were all very intrigued. When Brett put the little green pod in Ms Hadfield's hand, POP! the top burst open! It was very exciting. Inside the pod, there were four chambers. Three of the chambers had white seeds and one had a slimy brown thing that the kids said was probably a worm. Ms Hadfield tried to fish it out, but the sliminess of it all made her too frightened and Nic had to get it out. Thankfully it was a seed and not a worm.

What a funny little pod!

The pod once it had opened

the brown, slimy seed

We planted the dark and light seeds to see if they will grow.
When we got back to the classroom, Ms Hadfield did some research and was pretty sure we had found a Jimson Weed pod. It looked just like it on the outside. We learned that Jimson weed is very dangerous to animals and people if eaten and talked about why we never taste things we find on our walks. When we read more about Jimson Weed, we discovered it has tiny brown seeds. The pod we found, did not have tiny seeds. It had four pumpkin-like seeds. So, we kept searching. And good thing we did!

The little pod is most definitely a WILD CUCUMBER! We still won't eat one if we find one again, but it's good to know we have such an wonderful plant right in our backyard.

* * *

My final story is about our pine-cone jar you see below. Our main September goal was to listen to the person who is speaking. We tried our best to listen to all of the story, instructions, or announcement. We tried our best not to interrupt others. Each time we listened carefully, a pine-cone was put in the jar. We decided that when the jar was full, we would celebrate with cake. Today we also decided vanilla milkshakes would go nicely with chocolate cake because we filled up the jar!
 
I better go take the cake out of the oven...

Congratulations K-3 on completing your first goal!

Have a cozy week as the weather cools down!
~Ms Hadfield and crew~