Feb 7- 11. & Feb 1- 4


Our week was full of exploration and learning of new ideas.  Here are some of the things we worked on through the week:

On Monday we finished our frozen land art from the week before. It looked beautiful for a very short period of time due to our sunny weather. Everyone enjoyed the experience of creating, gifting and recording it in our reflectie writing.




In Math, grade ones are working on becoming more efficient and accurate adding numbers with sums up to twenty.  They also learned how to solve equations with three addends.  The grade twos have shown a great understanding of two digit addition.  This week we began to work on using the base ten blocks to show what happens when we have more than 10 - ones blocks. This will continue next week and then we will begin using the algorithm.


Our Social Studies learning about the Arctic has wrapped up and we are now learning about the prairies.  Students explored where the prairies are in Canada and what it looks like on the prairies.  We also learned about the map of Canada and which proviences are a part of the prairies.

In Science, we explored how condensation creates clouds.  We did an experiment to see how much water is needed in a cloud before it is saturated enough to rain.  Students had a great time making predictions and testing their theories.

We continued our art exploration of colour through a creative painting experience with acrylic paint on canvas.  Students were given some painter’s tape to put on their canvas and then mixed primary colours to create secondary and tertiary colours for their art.  They also experimented with creating tint through adding white.  After the paint dried, they removed the tape and filled the resulting negative space with gold or silver like potters in Japan do in kinstugi.  Our final step was to use stencils and black paint to add patterns to our work.  Our finished pieces are quite striking.


Due to covid, we started our Valentine’s preparations a little early this year.  On Friday, students created valentine holders and distributed their Valentines to their friends.  They will be quarantined over the weekend and will be sent home on Monday.  We will also do some special activities on Monday to celebrate the holiday.

Next week, in addition to Valentine’s Day, we will also be celebrating Carnaval Du Tuscany.  We hope that everyone is busy filling containers with water and freezing them for our Palais De Glace activity on Tuesday.  

Upcoming Events

Monday Feb 14 - Home Reading exchange & Valentine's bag goes home

Tuesday Feb 15 - Palais De Glace

Wednesday Feb 16 - Home Reading exchange 

Thursday Feb 17 - Friday Feb 18 - Teacher’s Convention - No School for Students

Monday Feb 20 - Family Day - No School for Students

Tuesday Feb 21 - Home Reading exchange


Feb 1- 4

It is a start of a new and busy month of learning.  Here are some of the things we have been up to this past week:

On Tuesday we added the water to the land art we have been working on.  We had perfect weather to set out our water art and watch it freeze into ice.  We wrote a message to Na'a about how beautiful the objects we used are and how we feel about nature and the gifts it gives us.  We also wrote about what we hope others will notice or think when they see the art we have created. 



In Math we made a February calendar.  Students put on the month, days, and numbers and then added important dates.  We use the calendars as ways to talk about how we measure time, how we use ordinal numbers, and how to locate and read dates on a calendar. 

We are continuing our work on addition with all students.  Grade ones are working on knowing the doubles up to 10+10 automatically as this is very helpful in becoming proficient in addition and will also help with subtraction.  Grade twos are working on using decomposing two digit numbers to help with addition.  Give them a two digit by two digit question and ask them how to use a number tree to help them add.

We had two wonderful presentations by "Grandma Carol" who shared pictures and experiences about living in the arctic.  She also showed us some of the interesting artifacts that she brought home from her time in the north.  Many thanks to her for enriching our students and helping them to understand about life in the northern parts of Canada.

Everyone finished up with their “Mitten Story” writing this week.  Students did such a great job of capturing the spirit of the original story and putting their own twist on the tale by using different arctic animals. 

A new focus in our Language Arts work is to develop greater fluency and accuracy in our writing through the learning of spelling long vowel patterns.  As students develop the ability to create longer pieces of writing, being able to write many of the words easily and with more standard spelling will allow them to communicate their message with more clarity to their reader.

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