Hats On and Stuffed Animals

Hello Families,

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 1st is Hats On for Mental Health day! All students are invited to wear hats to school tomorrow to show their support and awareness for keeping our brains healthy!

In addition, Thursday, May 2 students are invited to bring a toy or stuffed animal to school with them.  They earned a reward last week in our "beat the teacher" classroom dojo game and today this is the reward they chose. Any one favorite toy is perfect.

Thanks,
Lindsay Brown

April 29, 2019

Hello Families, 

Wow, we sure have been busy with all these field trips! We had a great day at Fish Creek Park today, everyone was able to stay warm and dry and the sun came out for us this afternoon. Because of the wet grounds, we changed our itinerary a bit to accommodate. We spent our morning exploring in small groups led by parent volunteers. In these groups we saw animals such as deer, pheasants, downy woodpeckers, northern flickers, robins, chickadees, herons and a horned owl in its nest!

After lunch, we split the students up into two classes (ours and Ms. Thomas's) and half the students did a sharing circle with the question, What can we learn from the land? while the other half of students did a walk alongside to learn about different Blackfoot oral stories from the Fish Creek Park area.  Then the groups swapped roles. We finished our day with a 5 minute sit spot, to sit and privately reflect upon and observe the land. 

Last week, on Friday, we begun our 30 by 30 Nature Challenge! This means, students will be spending a minimum of 30 minutes outside for the next 30 days in a row. For the grade 2's, this will be familiar from last year. On Friday, we went outside to meet the trees of Lake Boavista School, we collected some artifacts from Birch, Spruce, Crabapple, and Poplar trees in our school field. As we will be going outside every day, please ensure students are dressed appropriately to be outside daily for 30 plus minutes. 

This weeks word work will be coming home on bright orange/yellow paper and will be sent home tomorrow. In addition, tomorrow will be our draw for the April Laser Tag Reading Rewards challenge.

We are swimming on Tuesday and Thursday this week, please try to send some extra snacks as everyone has been extra hungry on swimming/field trip days.

Take care families, 

Lindsay Brown

Fish Creek Park Tomorrow

Hello Families,

This is just a reminder for everyone that we are visiting Fish Creek Park tomorrow for the whole day! Woohoo! After the snowfall yesterday, I expect the ground will be very wet and muddy, please ensure all children are dressed appropriately for a full day of outdoor exploration. If your child has boots and slush pants this would be most ideal. Layered clothing would also be beneficial as the temperature will likely warm up as the day goes on. 

In addition, all students will be bringing their backpacks to Fish Creek. Please remove any non-essentials from backpacks tonight, as students should only require water bottles, lunch kits, hats, and sunscreen for tomorrow!

Thanks a lot, I am looking forward to a fantastic day of outdoor learning!

Lindsay Brown

Fun Lunch/Swimming Update

Hi Families, 

An update regarding the conflict that exists with our swim lesson schedule and Fun Lunches. There are two more Fun Lunches scheduled during our swim lessons: Thursday, May 2^nd and Thursday, May 9^th.

If you have already ordered Fun Lunch, we recommend you cancel it through the Healthy Hunger website ASAP. You will be refunded your money. In our experience, Fun Lunch is best fresh and there's no guarantee there will be enough room in the school fridge to safely store all the lunches or that in the busyness of the end of the day it will be remembered and taken home.

From the Healthy Hunger Website FAQ,

Can I cancel an order after I have paid for it?

Yes. All orders can be cancelled or deleted as long as it is before the 5-day cut-off. To cancel an order, go to the "My Orders" tab and select "My saved Orders". You will see all of your up-coming orders with a "Delete" button to the right. When you delete an order, your refund will be automatically sent to your method of payment. It will show on your Credit Card or bank account within 5 business days.  

www.healthyhunger.ca

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact myself or the Fun Lunch coordinator:funlunchlbs@gmail.com

Thank you.

Lindsay Brown

Fun Lunch and Swimming Conflict

Hi Families,

My apologies for the late notice on this email message.

It has been brought to our attention that there is a conflict regarding tomorrow’s Fun Lunch and our swimming schedule.

Our class (Room 11, Ms. Brown) leaves for the Trico Centre during regular lunchtime.

Arrangements have been made with administration and the lunchroom supervisors to provide an earlier eating time for our classroom.

Unfortunately, it is uncertain whether the Little Caesars Fun Lunch will arrive in time for this earlier eating time.

As a backup, please pack your child additional snacks to eat during the earlier arranged lunchtime. Their Fun Lunch will be available when we return from the Trico Centre if they care to eat then (1:30pm), or bring home with them at the end of the day. 

Please watch for an email with updates for Fun Lunches that fall on Thursday, May 2^nd and Thursday, May 9^th.

Thank you for your understanding.

Ms. Brown

April 17, 2019

Hello Families,

Thanks to everyone who has returned their swimming field trip forms! They will be sent to Trico today so the groups can be determined. We have also filled the male volunteer roles :)!

We are having tons of fun with our color days, and have used this opportunity to build our descriptive language! We are learning different words to describe colors and the feelings that connect to those colors, based on the book we are reading , In My Heart: A book of feelings by Jo Witek. Many students are working towards adding descriptive language in their personal narrative writing, and having this visual has really helped. Take a look:

The next step will be to begin our wall story, an interactive way to practice language! 

Word work was sent home on a light yellow sheet this week. For the last two weeks, I have been selecting words from their journal entries that are currently being spelled incorrectly. We had a class discussion about how this makes our word work a little bit trickier because the words do not follow a familiar blend or vowel pattern, for example, all sh words, or ai words. Students will continue to work towards mastery in this program. Spelling is a grade 2 outcome in the curriculum, however, the grade 1's are doing really well with learning and implementing their spelling words into writing!

Last week we had our first math conference, where students shared how they solved various mild, medium, and spicy challenges. This was a fantastic learning opportunity, and everyone was able to incorporate some peer feedback into their work. After the math conference, all students had a better idea of how to organize and represent their work! I am really proud of their math learning!!

Please remember that Monday, April 22 is a PD day for teachers, thus, no school for students. In addition, swimming starts next Thursday, April 25!

Happy Easter and happy long weekend to all! :)

Lindsay Brown

Volunteers Please!! :)

Hello Families, 

We have a bunch of super exciting field trips coming up! Please let me know as soon as possible if you are available to volunteer for any of these dates:

Monday, April 29 - full day field trip to Fish Creek Park
Monday, May 6 - full day field trip to Fish Creek Park
Monday, May 13 - full day field trip to Fish Creek Park
Wednesday, May 22- full day field trip to Fish Creek Park

Thursday, May 23 - full day field trip to Arts Commons

In addition, I am still actively seeking lots of volunteers (especially men) for our swimming program, here is the schedule:

Thursday, April 25

Tuesday, April 30

Thursday, May 2

Tuesday, May 7

Thursday, May 9

Tuesday, May 14

Ms. Thomas (Room 8) Miss Brown (Room 11)

DEPART LBS: 12:20 p.m.

SWIM LESSON: 12:45 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

RETURN TO LBS: 1:35 p.m.

** As a volunteer, you are welcome to meet us at Trico around 12:25pm/12:30pm to support students getting ready in the change rooms!

Send me an email if you can join us for these exciting opportunities!!! :) librown@cbe.ab.ca

Thanks!
Lindsay Brown

April 8, 2019

Hello Families, 

We went outside for our Phys. Ed. today and learned (or replayed) a super fun game called Go for the Gold! Everyone had tons of fun! It will be a great game for us to play outside on days when the sun is shining like it was today. 

We learned about adding descriptive words (or adjectives) to our writing to stretch our sentences.  First, we shared about our weekend experiences, with a focus on describing one specific thing, for example, one student shared they had a chocolate donut covered in sprinkles and it was "sticky".  Another student shared that when they were ice skating, the ice was "shiny and slippery". Students were challenged to add 1, 3 or 5 descriptive words to their journal writing today. We also worked together to add descriptive words to my sentence, "On the weekend I went for a run." by adding "On the weekend I went for a speedy, sunny run."

We are learning new things in math, too! Last week we learned a new game called Golf (may be different from the version you play at home) to practice fact fluency for addition and subtraction. Many students are having some difficulty with the understanding that in a subtraction sentence, the largest number comes first. Today, we practiced some new word problems for some real life problems I had over the weekend, for example:

Mild Task

Ms. Brown made granola bars on the weekend. She wants to eat two (2) bars each day for the whole week, including the weekend. How many granola bars does she need to make?

Color Days!! 

We are also beginning a super fun exploration of color, descriptive language and story telling tomorrow! Every day for the next 8 days, students will be asked to wear a different color. We are working with a wall story about colors and feelings to target building fluency through repeated sentence structure connecting feelings to color, building color vocabulary, descriptive feeling word, and sight word recognition. Here's the color schedule:

Tuesday, April 9 - wear YELLOW

Wednesday, April 10 - wear ORANGE

Thursday, April 11 - wear WHITE

Friday, April 12 - wear RED

Monday, April 15 - wear GREY

Tuesday, April 16 - wear GREEN

Wednesday, April 17 - wear BLUE

Thursday, April 18 - wear PURPLE

Any shade of the color is perfect as we are hoping to have a large variety within each color to help us develop the descriptive vocabulary and organize ourselves from lightest to darkest. Please do not feel obligated to buy anything new, the closest color will be just fine!

Take care, 

Lindsay Brown

April 2, 2019

Hello Families, 

I hope you were able to enjoy some family time over the Spring Break. It is great to be back and everyones work has been exceptional this week! Way to go kiddos!

Yesterday, we learned a new math game called Hundreds Board Connect Four. We played grade 1's against grade 2's, and it was a very close game. This game is in your Math Games booklet that was sent home at conferences. Today, we practiced using skip counting in word problems, and how to represent our understanding with math materials, and pictorially in our notebooks. Here are the different challenge questions students worked on:

Mild Challenge:

Colbie is selling girl guide cookies for $5 each. She has 8 boxes to sell, how much money will she make in total?

Medium Challenge:

 Colbie has a goal to earn $100. If the girl guide cookies are $5 per box, how many boxes will she need to sell to reach her goal?

Spicy Challenge:

 Colbie has $17 in donations and sells 9 boxes of cookies at $5 each. How much money does she have in all?

Within our Montessori environment, students are consistently encouraged to choose work that is "just right" for them, and it was great to see risk taking and independent work throughout this task!

New word lists were sent home yesterday on bright red paper. The word work seems to be going great, with students really building understanding of letter blends, digraphs, common vowel pairings, and spelling. This afternoon, we started categorizing and sorting different color words. This will help develop comprehension, vocabulary, and descriptive writing. Students worked in teams to sort color words based, and as a whole class we will create a vocabulary list to access in the classroom.

We have started up our Laser Tag Reading Rewards program again for the month of April. It will run in the same way as last month, with students being responsible for entering their submissions daily. Thanks for continuing to support the reading at home!

The Scholastic flyers for April were sent home yesterday, and orders will be due on Friday, April 12th. A reminder that the promo code CLIFFORD is still effective for a free book on all orders over $30. Thank you!

In addition, swimming starts at the end of April! We will be in need of parent volunteers (especially men) with valid police clearances to assist with change room supervision. Below are our swimming dates and times, please let me know ASAP if you can accompany us on any of the swim dates! It would be greatly appreciated!!

Thursday, April 25

Tuesday, April 30

Thursday, May 2

Tuesday, May 7

Thursday, May 9

Tuesday, May 14

Ms. Thomas (Room 8) Miss Brown (Room 11)

DEPART LBS: 12:20 p.m.

SWIM LESSON: 12:45 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.

RETURN TO LBS: 1:35 p.m.

** As a volunteer, you are welcome to meet us at Trico around 12:25pm/12:30pm to support students getting ready!

We also have a few students left for Guest Reader - 
This week: Wednesday - Avery, Thursday - Sophie T., Friday - Kai
Next week: Monday - Mina, Tuesday - Elise

Take care, 

Lindsay Brown