Wednesday 30 November 2011

Blogging on the Laptops

On Monday Ms. Lirenman brought the school laptops into the classroom during our writing block so that we could all blog at the same time.  We've used the laptops before but we haven't blogged on them.  At first we sat at our desks blogging away.




Then Ms. Lirenman reminded us that like any other writing block we could write where ever we are most comfortable around the room, as long as we were safe with the laptops.  Here's what happened...






Finally, here are a few pictures of us really concentrating on our blogging.  If you haven't been to our kidblog lately maybe you should check it out. Our writing continues to improve.






Ms. Lirenman was really proud of the way we handled our laptops and she confirmed that they will be back in our classroom again soon.

Learning About Hanukkah - The Dreidel Game

This week we learned that Ms. Lirenman celebrates Hanukkah.  She taught us a little bit about her holiday by sharing her Menorah with us.  She says she will light the Hanukkah candles too so we can see what they look like but she doesn't have any of the special candles yet.

This year Hanukkah starts on Dec 20th at night.  It last for eight nights and each night she will light candles.  She told us about how she eats potato latkes which are a lot like potato pancakes.  She told us that she gives and receives presents too.  Ms. Lirenman read us an exciting story called Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. If you follow the link you can listen to the story being read by the author.

One of our favourite things about learning about Hanukkah is that Ms. L taught us about the dreidel game she played with her brothers and sisters when she was little.  To play the game you spin a dreidel, which is like a toy top.  Depending on which hebrew character the dreidel lands on you either have to put coins into the pile, take coins out of the pile, or do nothing.






Here is a photo cube of pictures of us playing the dreidel game.  Can you guess who was winning in each group? Hint: Take a look at how many pennies each person has.


Thursday 24 November 2011

Fit Kids

About six times a year our gym is taken over by professional athletic trainers. All day long they lead groups of students through a demanding circuit training session that involves balance, reaction, core and muscular strength, muscular endurance, agility, coordination, and speed.  Today was one of those days, our second of the year so far.  This special day is called a Fit Kids day and it's something we (and the rest of the school) look forward to. Here is a little video of some of the awesome training these professional trainers took us through for the first thirty minutes of our day today.


By the way, those professional trainers are incredible grade seven students at our school.  We can't thank them and their teachers enough.  It was another invigorating morning.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Addition Games in the Lab

Today Ms. Lirenman signed up for extra computer time so that we could ALL do addition games on computers in the lab.  We have been playing games from Fun4theBrain.  We like  this website because you can chose addition games.  Once you're on the addition games page you can chose the addition game you want to play and you can chose what type of number sentences you have to answer. Many of us chose to answer number sentences up to eighteen even though at this time of the year we only need to focus on addition to ten.  Here are some photos of us hard at work.  You'll notice that many of us are playing different games than our friends but we are all doing math.  We love math!













Learning Through the Internet

Today Ms. Lirenman showed us a video of a former student from Miss Dunsinger's 1/2 class at Ancaster Meadow School in Ontario.  The student was in Miss Dunsinger's class last year and is now in grade three.  After attending a comic art class over the summer he taught Miss Dunsinger's class how to draw cartoon characters while she filmed him.   Ms. Lirenman was so impressed with his ability to teach her class, she decided to have him teach us too.  We followed all his instructions as carefully as we could and managed to create our own cartoon characters.  Here are some pictures of us learning from the student via the internet and our smartboard.











The really cool thing about this lesson is that it would never have happened without technology.  Ms. Lirenman has been learning a lot about technology and she's trying to teach us as much as she can with the technology that she has available to her.  Who knows maybe one day we'll get to meet this student via computer so we can thank him ourselves for such a great drawing lesson.  In the mean time we'll just use this blog to say, "thank you!" Here are some of our finished products. Enjoy (we sure did).


Have you ever learned from someone that lives far from you but because of technology you were able to learn from them?  We're curious to hear what you did and how.

Friday 18 November 2011

Learning to Comment

This week on our individual blogs we have been learning how to leave comments on blogs.  Ms. Lirenman is trying to get us to read each others blogs, and let the author know that we've read them by leaving comments.  Ms. Lirenman would also like us to end our blog posts with a question so that others will comment on our individual blogs too.  We get so excited when ever we have comments, so please comment! We are trying our best to comment back too.

Thursday 17 November 2011

A Second Visit with Mrs. Schaefer

Mrs. Schaefer visited us again today.  We can't tell you what we are working on though because they might be Christmas gifts for our families.  All that we can tell you is that we worked with clay, we used our creativity, and we are excited to share our finished products with you.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Writing from a Web

Today Ms. Lirenman showed us how to use a web to help us expand our writing.  After the lesson we began our writing.  Someone in our class asked if we could write on the big chart paper.  Ms. Lirenman said YES and many of us chose to write on this big paper.  Here are a few pictures of us busy getting down to our writing.  You'll notice that some of us tried to use webs to help us write more interesting sentences.  Many of us really love writing.










Have you ever written on super big paper? What do you like to do you writing on - in a notebook, on small paper, in a booklet, on large paper, or a computer or.....?

Free Choice Friday

Almost every Friday at the end of the day we are given time to interact socially over a variety of games and activities.  Needless to say we love learning to read, write, and do math but we love socializing and working with our friends in a non structured setting.  Here are a few pictures of us enjoying our Free Choice Friday.

Creating a mansion with Lego. 
The boys took into account windows, air conditioning, and the need for different rooms.

Creating with Kinnex.

 Using teamwork to create a tower structure.

 Role playing in the house/dramatic play area.


 Exploring our creative side.


 Super proud of his new creation. 

Working on a special project.

As you can see from the pictures we all like different activities.  What would you do if you were given Free Choice Friday time too?

Are you curious about the red flowers many of us are wearing?  These pictures were taken on Thursday, Nov. 10, the day before Remembrance Day.  Those flowers are called poppies and they are worn to help us remember all the brave soldiers that fought and lost their lives fighting for our freedom.