Hello Families,
We are gathering bottle caps for an upcoming "major interdisciplinary project". If and when you have any can you please clean them and send them to school for us to use. Caps for milk jugs, gatorades, pop bottles, salad dressings, etc. will all be suitable.
This collection will be ongoing for several months. Thanks for your help!
Ms. Brown
November is movement month at LBS! We are encouraging students to be active throughout the winter with a movement challenge for move-ember :).
Students are encouraged to keep track of their movement minutes outside of school time from November 1-30. The class that earns the most movement minutes at the end of the month will earn a special reward! Please support your child in tracking their movement minutes either on Google Classroom or hardcopy (this will be specified by your child's teacher).
*Room 2 - I will send a hard copy home on November 1st. Additional copies will be available on Google Classroom if needed!
Let’s encourage each other to be active and healthy! See the video for more information about our at school and at home challenges for the month.
Hello Families,
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| Passing Practice |
I hope everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving weekend! Sounds like there were lots of fun festivities happening!
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| Crazy Hair Day |
This week we have been working hard getting prepared for the October learning assembly where we are sharing the work we have been doing around descriptive writing with the whole school! We have been learning about and creating our own similes to assist in descriptions and today we talked about the importance of being as specific as possible. Here are some of our classroom thoughts about descriptive writing:
What is descriptive writing?
- Words that explain
- Writing about something really descriptive, the writing has a lot of detail
- Using specific words
- Going beyond the obvious and looking for the unique features
- Thinking outside the box
- Using sight, smell, hearing, taste, feeling/touching
- Helps people understand what you’re talking or writing about
- Uses similes
- Follows a theme!!!!!
**Paints a picture in your head about what is being described!**
During our October assembly, we will be creating and sharing our descriptive paragraphs about our Halloween costumes. We are hoping they will be descriptive enough for the audience to be able to guess. We will also be creating an interactive board in the hallway for guesses to be ongoing in hopes of engaging the whole school community.
We are also going to be creating artwork around our simile learning to share in the school display case near the office. I will be sure to post pictures as we complete the work, however, here is the exemplar I created showing the combination of 2 ideas into one piece of art.
This week for outdoor learning, we learned about, sketched, and labeled the cedar tree. We also used cedar to smudge and learned it is another sacred medicine that is used for clarity of mind. We were able to spot many cedar trees in and around the school.
Tomorrow, we will learn more about building structures and towers and revisit a challenge from a few weeks ago that paired with one of my favourite classroom books, Iggy Peck, Architect!
We have also been learning lots about place value and playing some place value games. The game we learn next week will be easy to play at home. Next Tuesday, ask your child to share the place value game with you.
Thanks so much to everyone who purchased or returned their ADmazing Savings Books! Today, student passwords for RazKids and computer logins are going home. Please keep these somewhere safe so they can be referenced over the years at LBS!
If you would like to order from the online Scholastic catalog for October, please place your orders online! :) Classroom code: RC134162
Upcoming Dates:
October 18 - PD Day
October 21 - PJ Day
October 27 - our assembly (will be recorded and distributed for families)
October 29 - costume day at school - no full face masks (covid masks only), no weapons, no blood/gore, no shared snacks
Take care,
Ms. Brown
Hello Families,
We have been slowly working on developing our skills for descriptive writing! Ms. Kassam and I shared this information through a teacher and school lens at the LBS parent council meeting last night. I have attached images from the slides we shared to give you some insight about what we are doing in the classroom and to understand some of the things we will be looking for in grade 2 and 3 writing.
Enjoy!
Ms. Brown
Hello Families,
This week, we focused on exploring Truth and Reconciliation to honour Indigenous people. We had a class discussion about what it means to wear orange and why this is significant. Students demonstrated varying levels of understanding around this topic, however, students were all able to think critically and demonstrate empathy. We did some activities about what makes school a safe place to be and completed reflections on the stories we listened to. This learning was also supported through an assembly hosted by two of the grade 4/5 classes. Through our weekly outdoor learning times, smudges, and connections to storytelling about the land, we will continue to explore Indigenous ways of knowing and being throughout the school year.
We also achieved our goal of 25 minutes of silent reading during our Daily 5 time, horay! This means we can slowly being to integrate different types of reading practice into our daily routines, including buddy reading, reading on Raz Kids, etc.
We are continuing to investigate probability and data collection in math and refresh our basic addition and subtraction skills through games. Next week, we will begin assembling our 3D graphs, pictures to come!
A couple of reminders:
1. Students do not have a microwave available for their use at lunch. Lunch and snack are "pack in, pack out" meaning students will take everything from their lunch back home again for disposal. Additionally, students require their own cutlery, if required.
2. Due to covid restrictions, we are still not allowed to access water fountains in the school for drinking. Please send a water bottle daily.
3. Personal items such as cards, stuffed animals, toys, etc. must stay at home. They become very distracting for students. Please ensure your child is leaving all personal items at home.
Thanks for your support!
Ms. Brown
The Terry Fox Run was awesome! Here is a link to the video we shared at the school assembly! :)
Here is a copy of the email message that was sent out today!
Hello Families,
Normally, this time of the year is a wonderful time to welcome you into the classroom for our LBS Open House and host the Back to School BBQ. Unfortunately, due to Covid restrictions, we are unable to host you in the school space at this time. In lieu of this, I have created a video to virtually welcome you to our school space and classroom. As previously mentioned on the blog, if you have specific questions and would like to find a time to connect virtually tomorrow (Friday) please email me and we can set something up.
I hope you enjoy the virtual tour! Feel free to pause the video throughout and ask your child for information about school spaces and classroom routines!
Video Link: https://youtu.be/PHYheTF9kZw
Take care,
Lindsay Brown
Hello Families,
We made it through the first full week of school! Horay!
It was a great week of learning in our class. We have been working on letter and sound assessments and some math assessments so I can identify next steps in student learning. We have also been practicing our learned sketching techniques through scientific sketches of the buffalo sage plant.
We had our first official outdoor learning session on Tuesday morning and loved it! We brought our field journals and yoga mats outside and participated in a smudge and a sit spot reflection. If you are not familiar with smudging, it is a First Nations practice used to, "stop, slow down, and become mindful and centred. This allows people to remember, connect, and be grounded in the event, task, or purpose at hand. Smudging also allows people to let go of negative feelings and thoughts" (Government of Manitoba). Students always have the option to pass if they do not feel comfortable participating.
Many students have requested more opportunities for outdoor learning, so I thought it would be a great idea to continue outdoor learning every Tuesday morning! We can use this weekly practice to connect with nature and make observations about the changing seasons, while building our feelings of connection and familiarity to place.
Students enjoyed collecting data on each others favourite types of pizza! Surprisingly, we have a lot of friends in our class who love mushroom pizza!! We learned about accurately labelling both the y and x axis of our graph, and most of us still need more practice with our graphing accuracy. Next week, we will explore graphing using some hands on materials, it should be a lot of fun.
We also learned about the difference between probability and coincidence when it comes to the sums of two dice. We will use this newly learned understanding of probability to create our own bingo games next week for "math game Monday".
Here are some updates from the school:
1. Please note the bell rings at 8:10am and doors will be closing at that time. If you arrive later then 8:10am please send your child to the office.
2. Due to the restrictions in place with covid we cannot accept any birthday treats this year.
3. MAPSS Fundraising - Calling All Volunteers
We have been fortunate enough to receive a casino date. We would love to your help in volunteering. You can find the volunteer sign up page at the link below.
What is Montessori Alternative Public School Society (MAPSS)?
MAPSS helps make public Montessori school possible. CBE provides equal funding to all schools. However, this funding does not cover the cost of Montessori Materials integral to Montessori education. MAPSS raises funds to purchase Montessori materials, provide Montessori teacher training, present parent education, and purchase Montessori parent resources for each school.
4. LBS School Council
We have many open positions for our School Council, including Chair. If you are interested in learning more about these volunteer opportunities, please contact Jennifer Rooke, jlrooke@cbe.ab.ca . We will be having our first meeting on Tuesday, September 21st at 6:30pm. Council will share updates as well as describe some of the opportunities to get involved.
5. Teacher Meetings
My "meet the teacher" video will be released via school messenger next Thursday at 4:00PM for you to view. Please contact me via email if you would like to schedule a 5-10min virtual meeting on Friday, September 24 and we can arrange a time!
Hello Families,
I will be participating in the Scholastic Reading Club program this year. It's a great way to build your home library, and money spent through Scholastic also supports buying books for our classroom library! This year, in an effort to be environmentally friendly, I will not be sending the flyers home. Flyers are available online.
September online orders will be due on Friday, September 24th. Here is the parent letter and link to the flyer. Please use the class code below when ordering!
ADmazing Savings Coupon Books
ADmazing Savings Fundraiser has begun! The proceeds from this fundraising activity will be used directly in your child’s classroom. Books are available for $25.00 each, of which Lake Bonavista will use $11.50 for the benefit of our students.
If you wish to take advantage of these discounts, please complete the order form printed on the back on the ADmazing envelope, and enclose the correct amount of money - $25.00 per book ordered. - directly to your child’s classroom teacher by Thursday, October 7th, 2021 or earlier.
Please ensure if you are returning the book that you have not scratched off the code area for the app, as the book will not be returnable if the code is visible.
Additional books for Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer or Southern Alberta may be ordered at $25.00 each for family, friends and relatives. If you wish to order additional books, please send your order as soon as possible to your child’s teacher so that the order can be filled. As a school, we discourage door-to-door solicitation.
It's the most wonderful time of the year........ :)
Terry Fox Run 2021
We will be having our Annual Terry Fox Run on Wednesday, September 22, 2021. Teachers will be discussing with students the life of Terry Fox and the contributions he has made to cancer research as well as coming together in the afternoon for a virtual wrap up assembly. Students are encouraged to wear blue/white/ or their school t-shirt on this day.
Students can dedicate their run to someone who they know has been affected by cancer. Please speak to your child prior to our run and if they choose to dedicate their run to someone, they can share this in their class sharing circle prior to or after their run.
Should you wish to make a donation online, please use the following link to donate through the Terry Fox website:
Hello Families,
I hope you enjoyed the long weekend! We are settling in nicely in room 2! This week we've been talking about pizza... A LOT! You might even get some pretty convincing arguments about why you should have pizza on the weekend... :)
We looked at and created lists of descriptive words for pizza as a fun way to remember to incorporate adjectives in our writing work. We also looked at persuasive writing using the journal prompt below!
Next week we are going to explore graphing, data collecting, and surveys with our favourite kinds of pizza. We continue to look at data collection through our pigeon story read-alouds and practice of basic addition facts through repeated practice of the game "whats my number" with added complexities in each game.
We also looked at how math and numbers are everywhere through some work on "math about me". Here are some photos from our learning this week!
September 22 - Terry Fox Run, information to come
September 29 - Orange Shirt Day
September 30 - no school
Have a great weekend,
Ms. Brown
Hello Families!
We have had a wonderful first week of school in grade 2 and 3 at LBS! I am so impressed with how quickly all students have adjusted to the routines and expectations of back to school. We have already been able to start our mornings with Montessori work period, where students are independently completing must do work and selecting responsible choice materials!
Thursday morning we spent some time outside listening to and learning from nature. We brought yoga mats outside and experienced nature through our 4 senses (tasting was not encouraged, haha). I also shared a story of how the buffalo sage (aka prairie sage) got its name and we practiced a dry smudge with some dried sage. Ask your child to share the buffalo sage story with you.
We have been learning about one another through games and writing activities. Next week, we will also use data collection to get to know each other better. We started looking at data today by creating a bar graph to vote for which Pigeon story we wanted to read.
The class is collaborating nicely and we have already started to develop a thoughtful, considerate, and engaged student culture. I am so happy to have such a wonderful group of kiddos!
Please return the "student homework" sent home on Thursday if you haven't already, it is called "Getting to Know You: Guess Who?" In addition, please return the grey envelope of student information at your earliest convenience. If your child has allergies or medical concerns please let me know via email ASAP as it sometimes takes time for the office to process information and get it back to the classroom teachers.
Wishing everyone an awesome long weekend and I will see everyone on Tuesday!
Take care,
Ms. Brown
