Flooding- NO SCHOOL

This is kind of unheard of, we go to school even if it is -40 and the roads are terrible in the winter. Today schools have officially been closed in Calgary! The flooding is unreal, and it is even worse in some surrounding communities as well (Canmore, High River others). 

Thoughts and prayers with the 75000 people evacuated our of their homes and hoping everyone stays safe today. 

Looks like a movie on the couch in PJ's kind of Friday!

Mrs. Dunn

Father's Day Part 2 and.... MICE!!!!!

After firing our Father's Day plaques in the kiln, we finally got to paint today and they turned out AMAZING!

First we used Tempera paint and did the entire thing yellow. Then I mixed acrylic with some white and water (a super suggestion from my artsy partner teacher) and painted the word DAD in blue. We then painted the face, and used sharpie for the hair and dots on the eyes. The kids were so proud of their work!!!

On a completely unrelated note, after we finished painting, we had a visit from a . . . well . . . rather unwanted visitor today. MICE. Cue children and their teacher running and screeching and hopping up on top of chairs. Yah, so not a lot of productive work can get done when this happens. Trying to complete agendas amid shouts of "It's over there!" "AHHHH I just saw it" does not really work. 

So I decided to try and get it. Because really, how will we get anything done otherwise. After a few tries, I finally got a bowl over top of the mouse and the children shouted hurrays, as of course this makes me very heroic (this will make an awesome story to tell parents tonight, oh boy) Then one student goes, uuuuhhhh I think it escaped. So, I go over and sure enough I see that little guy out and about. I couldn't figure it out so I lifted the bowl and BAHHHH there are two of them. I  shouted in terror told the students to remain calm and put the bowl back over the other one but still one escaped. This went on for a while trying to catch the second one until finally it was time to go home, and the custodian came to round up the mice.

Talk about an exciting afternoon.

Mrs. Dunn

Father's Day

I found this amazing project just in time for Father's Day from the amazing Gail (That Artist Woman). Check out the inspiration here. They turned out super cute, each one really looked unique.

I have also created a Father's Day resource based on the "If you give a" stories. Check it out!

If you Give a Dad a Marshmallow

Mrs. Dunn

Urban and Rural

Sometimes I find Social slightly challenging to make... enticing shall we say... to the students. It usually depends on the topic and their experience with it, but making some things relatable to a six year old when they have never seen it before can be a challenge. I am trying to mix it into other subject areas, such as art, to achieve this. Our latest and greatest topic is centered around urban and rural. Of course we have discussed, read stories, made charts, watched videos but I wanted to tie everything together with a fun art project to go into our Social Alphabet book.

U is for Urban. In the city I can see...

Here is the art project: We painted the sky in yellow and red swirls and then glued the silhouetted buildings onto it. Next time I think I will have the students add other things we find in the city, but we are just plain running out of time!!

R is for Rural. In the country I can see...

We used straws and painted half the page blue dots and half the page with green dots.

Then the students picked an animal and made it out of these shapes.

Here is an example of what the project looked like when completed

Mrs. Dunn

Mother's Day

Although Mother's Day has come and gone, I thought I would post the cutie cards that we made. The kids made frames from clay, wrapped in tissue paper, and then we put these cupcakes on top as a card.

Turned out super cute. Kids could pick any special lady in their life, I had a different card for each (sister, Grandma, etc).

Check it out here, along with a mini descriptive writing booklet.

 If you give a Mom a cupcake

Mrs. Dunn

Eric Carle and Spring Centres

This month's centres have an author focus on Eric Carle, of course so many of his books fit perfectly with springtime and the units we study in Science.

Puppet Centre

Students were making caterpillars, which also fits with building things as students need to make this kind of a puppet (accordion style)

Listening Centre

Students sequenced the story "Mixed up Chameleon" after watching it on the Smartboard. They LOVE this story, such a good one.

Thematic Book

Students wrote their own version of the very hungry caterpillar story. 

Journal

Students did some writing about spring time. I always give them a picture to glue on otherwise they spend the entire centre drawing pictures and colouring instead of writing!

Guided Reading

After reading and discussing with the guided reading group, they did a response in their booklet.

Working with words

I found this ridiculously cute word family craft on Teachers Pay Teachers from Susan Moran- TGIF here. Makes for easy differentiation just change the word family or the number of words they need to write!

Writing

One of my amazing partner teachers gave me this cool activity to go with the mixed up chameleon. The kids pick which creature they would be if they were the chameleon and then glue on the body parts and write about it. So cute!!

Last centre is just sight word BINGO nothing too exciting there.

Also, we did a little craft to do some retelling with the mixed up chameleon. The kids made coloured the chameleon and cut out the centre of his body.. I will laminate and put on popsicle sticks. They created the background with all the different places the chameleon goes for the retelling.

Mrs. Dunn

Another video! Skip counting

Every morning in math since about November I have played a flash it game with my students to develop subitizing skills and number sense. I put groups of objects, starting small in different arrangements and groups on the smart board, and flash three times. This way the children don't have time to count and must recognize arrangements quickly. After we practiced this lots, we have now started working on using flash it to skip count. Again, it forces the students to group and count because there is not enough time to count each individual object.
After we count the objects, student make groups of two students (peanut butter and jelly) and then tell each other how many they saw and verbalize how they know the number based on groupings and how they counted. 
I think this all sounds a bit confusing, watch the video below to see how it's done!!

Mrs. Dunn