Happy Holidays!

Hello Families,

Thank you so much for all of your amazing contributions to our celebration yesterday! It certainly was an amazing end to a fabulous year thus far! :)

Instead of giving individual gifts and/or cards for students this year I made a contribution to Brown Bagging for Kids on behalf of our classroom. If you're not familiar with this organization they provide food for children in need in Calgary. Here is a link to their website if you'd like to know more: https://bb4ck.org/what-we-do/

Happy Holidays to all!! I look forward to seeing everyone again in the new year!

Ms. Brown

Games

Hello Families,

Lake Bonavista School is looking for donations of board games, card games, puzzles and coloring books. If you have any gently used games that your family has outgrown, would you consider donating them to the school?

We are particularly interested in ‘classic’ games, as well as any additional games or puzzles that are appropriate for approximately ages 5-12, multi-player, and support turn taking and collaboration.

Please only send games complete with all pieces, and that do not require batteries, plugging in, or access to computers/tablets or other technology.

Our wish-list includes, but is not limited to:

Puzzles under 100 pieces

Battleship

Checkers

Connect 4

Jenga

Variations of Memory

Chutes and Ladders

Guess Who?

Eye Found It! Games

Quirkle

Sorry

Spot It

Blokus

Santorini

Animal Upon Animal

Outfoxed

With gratitude,

Lake Bonavista School    

Celebration Snacks

Hello Families,

Here is what is being brought to the celebration thus far, I think we should have plenty of snacks with this assortment:

- Plates and napkins
- Snack
- Fruit
- Goody bags
- Gluten-Free Mini Muffins
- Salty Snack
- Juice Boxes

Thanks for your help and support in our celebration!

Take care,
Lindsay

December 16, 2019

Hello Families, 

I hope you were all able to enjoy the wonderful Winter Concert put on by the students at Lake Bonavista School! They always do such a lovely job at spreading holiday excitement and joy. I know the concert is a highlight for many students in Room 11! 

Caroling
This week we have opportunities for families to join us for caroling in the gym, if you're interested we will be caroling on Tuesday, December 17 at 12:45PM, Wednesday, December 18 at 8:30AM, and Thursday, December 19 at 12:45PM. 

Winter Celebration
On Thursday, December 19th in the afternoon we will have a small celebration to end the 2019 year as a group! Students are invited to wear holiday sweaters for this event. If you'd like to provide plates, napkins, or snacks for a group of 22 students that would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you'd like to come and join us for treats and celebrations you're more than welcome, just come through the main office anytime after 1:15PM and join us in the classroom!

Current Learning
We are working hard at wrapping up a few important pieces of learning before going our separate ways for the winter break. The biggest piece of this work is around the Memory Museum. Last week, students used their 5 senses to recall the memory that is connected to their museum artifact. Using their visual journals and palm prints, we brainstormed and documented the memories through words and pictures. From here, grade two students (along with a few grade ones) turned their brainstorming into sentences to reflect the memory artifact information cards that came with the museokits (as seen in previous blog posts). Thus, the final product for some students will be a written artifact card. For other students, they will orally share their memories from the visual journal page, and I will help them document by acting as their scribe, to ensure success for all students. I am hoping to have the memory artifacts returned by Thursday so they will be home over the break!

Here are the pictures of our Memory Museum.

We continue to work with our big buddies to complete our animal artwork that incorporates sketching techniques, giving and receiving effective feedback, repeating patterns, and self-assessment of work.  Today, students moved to their good copy work and shared how they would implement the feedback they received about their drafts. This is another piece of work we are hoping to have completed before the break. Here are some pictures from the work today, the improvement between drafts is really evident which shows students were doing an excellent job at incorporating their feedback and revising their work to make it better!

We brought our "On the weekend I..." journal writing back in time today... to 100 years ago!! We learned from the museokits that 100 years ago, there were no pencils and erasers to write with! Instead, all students had to use what is called a "straight pen" and ink for writing. We practiced this in our own version using skinny paintbrushes and black "ink" (paint). Students had to create their own lines in their journals to write on and then paint their journal entries, you may have seen evidence of this work on SeeSaw. While this was happening I told them it needed to be completely silent work like in the schools of 100 years ago... needless to say this brought on lots of giggles and laughter from the kids!

Last, here are our math puzzles from today. We are still working with doubles facts but in a different way!

Important Dates:

Wednesday, December 18 - last library session for stuents in Room 11, can take a book home for the holidays

Thursday, December 19 - Last day of classes for students, holiday sweaters

Monday, January 6 - School resumes

Take care, 

Lindsay Brown

Tickets and Scholastic

Hello All,

Winter Concert
Yesterday, the Winter Concert tickets were sent home with the oldest child in your family. Please note that ALL people attending the concert require a ticket, including babies. If you require additional tickets please contact the office to be entered into the raffle to get extras.

Please arrive at the school at 5:40PM on Thursday, December 12, and your child can come down to the classroom.

Scholastic
Scholastic orders are due this Friday, December 13 at 3:00PM. If you'd like your order to be secretive (ie. Christmas presents) please let me know via email and I can package them up to keep them a secret from your child.


Take care!
Lindsay Brown

AARCS FUNDRAISER

AARCS Fundraiser

Rooms 12, 16, 13 and 4 are doing another fundraiser this year to raise money for the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS). During the daytime and evening winter concert shows on Thursday, December 12th, we will be selling homemade Crunchy Tuna Cat Treats and Wowbutter Banana Dog Bites. Each bag will cost $3 and all proceeds will go towards AARCS to help ensure the animals in their care have their basic necessities this holiday season. Please bring cash if you are interested in purchasing treats for your own pets or as a holiday gift! Thank you for your support!

If you have any questions please email Ms. Midgley (lemidgley@cbe.ab.ca) or Mrs. Ireland (hlireland@cbe.ab.ca)

December 6, 2019

Hello Families,

We have had another busy and exciting week exploring with the grade 1 and 2 Muesokits from Glenbow Museum. Last week, we explored kitchen tools from the past (about 100 years ago) and looked at artifacts making connections and comparisons to what is currently in our kitchens at home.

This week, we have the One Room Schoolhouse kit. We have explored and deepened our understanding of life in the past by making mind-maps about what is in a school, sharing our ideas, and adding information and then talking about how things may have changed since 100 years ago. Today we learned more about the artifacts and documented using a Venn Diagram.

We also talked about the difference between math strategies and math materials and made an anchor chart to support our understanding. Last week, students were learning and practicing their doubles facts through the games that were shared on my previous blog. This week we spiced things up by implementing doubles facts, along with other strategies into word problems. This was a surprisingly challenging activity for the majority of students. They also completed a self assessment after completion. Here is what that work looked like:

Dec 3, 2019

Doubles Word Problems:

Itzy and her twin sister Zoey have all the same toys. Each of them has: 

8 markers	4 dolls
6 coloring books	16 stuffed animals

Mild

How many markers do Itzy and Zoey have ALTOGETHER?

Medium

How many markers, dolls, and coloring books do Itzy and Zoey have IN TOTAL?

Spicy

How many markers, dolls, coloring books, and stuffed animals do Itzy and Zoey have IN ALL?

Personal Reflection: I chose work that is “just right” for me – Yes / No My work is organized and easy to understand - Yes / No I used an efficient strategy or strategies: ________________________________ Next time I will improve my work by: ____________________________________

To improve this work in future, we will complete a "math conference" next week where different students will share their strategies for organization and problem solving so we can learn from one another. Then there will be a parallel task to see how new skills and ideas are implemented after the peer learning takes place. Here is the work that will be shared at math conferences:

In addition, with our big buddies in Mrs. Morden's class, we have been learning new sketching techniques called Pen Sketching Techniques. We were inspired by the cute Telus holiday animals to create artwork alongside our buddies where we can implement different sketching techniques as well as demonstrate our understanding of patterning and our growing understanding of providing one another with effective feedback. Here are some pictures of the students hard at work practicing their newly learned techniques:

Please note that anyone attending the Winter Concert on Thursday, December 12th needs a ticket! Even babies count as people who require tickets. If you need extra tickets please notify the office so you can be entered into the lottery. As a great alternative we also offer daytime shows at 9:30AM and 12:45PM. Our class will be participating in the 9:30AM show. 

Also, next Friday, December 13th is a school wide PJ DAY for everyone who would like to participate! :)

Enjoy your weekend!

Lindsay

Winter Concert

Hello parents!

Our Winter Concert is just over a week away!

Students performing in the 6:00 show (rooms 3,5,6,10,11,12 and 16) need to arrive at school at 5:40 pm on Thursday Dec. 12. 

Students performing in the 7:30 show (rooms 2.4.7.8.9.13.17) need to arrive at school at 7:10 pm on Thursday Dec. 12.

Students in Grades 1-4 can wear what they like to the concert.  No hats/novelty headbands please so we can see everyone’s smiling faces when they are on the stage! 

Thank you for your support, the students are excited.

Julie Kawchuk

Jrhayneskawc@cbe.ab.ca

PS. We are looking for donations to decorate the gym, we are in search of:

• Wrapping paper – sufficient to wrap large and medium sized boxes
• Scrapbook paper appropriate to make snowflakes

:)