Highlights from our 2 days at Ralph Klein Park!

It was extremely cold outside, but inside the beautiful building at Ralph Klein Park we were cozy and did lots of learning! Some highlights from our two days spent there were:

- seeing how pollutants make their way to the rivers with a modeled community
- learning about wetlands and how they help clean polluted, dirty water
- exploring, sketching and learning about animals through biofacts
- working as photographers to capture unique aspects of RKP and thinking like photojournalists
- writing poetry inspired by our learning
& so much more!

RKP Field Trip Cancelled tomorrow & Thursday

Ralph Klein Trip Cancelled

Due to the forecasted temperatures dropping into the minus 40 degree range for the next two days we will need to postpone the grade 2 Field Trip to Ralph Klein Park tomorrow and Thursday. Although the students can remain indoors at the site we do not want to risk any potential mechanical failures with the bus that would put our students at risk of exposure to the weather for a prolonged period. We are in the process of trying to reschedule our trip and will advise parents as soon as we have new dates. Sorry for the inconvenience. The Grade 2 Team

Well done, Rm 128 for having perfect attendance on the last two days! I know it's cold, but we've been able to have a ton of fun and learning experiences with EVERYONE considering our perfect attendance in this cold snap! Thank you for making an effort to come to school, even when it's been cold!

Highlights from today:

• we had music and phys. ed back-to-back 
• we learned how to make tints and shades .... a tint is when you add white to a colour and a shade is when you add black to a colour (Drayden)
• we did a math problem with the story P. Bear's New Year's Eve Party (Maddox)
• we got a new student today! Welcome, Bailey!
• we did art based on the artist Ton Schulten's work (Zoey S.)

A note from Mr. Murphy:

Family Travel Survey: Please fill out this quick survey in Survey Monkey so that we can help to understand how the majority of families currently travel to-and-from school: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/K6TYN3B . The survey will be open for the rest of the month of January.

  

Blog from Mrs. Seymour's Class

Wow, what a great day today! Our students were amazingly on task, especially considering the long day inside with the extreme cold temperatures, and a different schedule, and 6 guests in our classroom from Ms. Gardner's class.


Today in science we predicted whether snow would take up more or less space when it melts. Here were our predictions:


Collecting our snow sample (don't worry... they were super bundled and were outside for less than 2 minutes!)

  

Here are our highlights from our learning today:

• When you have snow in a bottle and it's full to 500mL, after one hour it melted down to 75mL (Drayden)
  
• In art, we practiced using a viewfinder (our fingers!) to look at nature. We learned from a Robert Bateman video that we should spend 90% of our time looking at the subject/object in the sketch, and 10% looking at your actual drawing. We tried this for a bit by looking out of our window.

• In math we learned three strategies on how to organize our work for problem-solving:
• make a list
• make a model with materials
• draw a diagram

 

• We also learned all about ALLITERATION... where one sound repeats many times (Jaxon)
• An example of an alliteration is:
• Peppa Pig pranced to get peppermint poppers.
• Pikachu, Panda and Pup polluted Pluto.
• Poor Pikachu didn't get to play Pokemon because Penguin was picking poppies.
• Sweecon went snowboarding on a snowy hill.

Reminders coming home today:
* field trip reminders (peachy-orange paper)
* if your child is interested in choir, they have a form coming home today as well... forms are due back no later than January 21st

It's not too late to volunteer for the field trip on Wednesday or Thursday! Please let us know if you can make it :)

Mrs. Seymour

Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday, Marek!


Highlights from our learning today:

• we used our knowledge of similes to describe Ralph Klein Park (Chasity & Marek)
• Mrs. Cose's class had a safety meeting for Ralph Klein Park, and we have to have full water bottles and be prepared for the weather because it will be very cold (Laith)
• Mrs. Seymour's class worked on some sketching techniques
• we continued our circus-themed Nanatastics in Phys. Ed  

Notes for Mrs. Cose's class about the Monday/Tuesday field trip:

• an orange note is coming home today for you
• bring a full water bottle
• wear your outdoor gear
• be here on time :) 

Mrs. Seymour's class... we are still short volunteers for Wednesday and Thursday. Please, if you have clearance, try to come! :)

Happy Pajama Day! 

Have a wonderful weekend! Stay warm! :)

Thursday, January 9, 2020

We have been working on developing Nature Journaling skills and have been inspired by the works of Robert Bateman. Yesterday we read a book called Robert Bateman The Boy Who Painted Nature, and today we did an art critique of one of his paintings. Some of the things we noticed were:

• Use of realistic measurements (Zaeem)
• Looks like it is coming out of a cave (Stone)
• Animal outside in the snow (Bria)
• Closed eyes, sleeping(Evelyn)
• Circley snow icicles(Rana)
• Short claws (Drew)
• Ears are big, maybe it can hear well(Avery)
• Winter-snow and icicles(Evelyn)
• Forest-lots of snow and trees(Naomi)

In Science, we have started learning about hot and cold temperatures and we watched a video today. We learned that heat can go through walls and you need to take action to stop it (Drayden) and Avery shared that, I didn't know that heat comes off of things like a bus. 

Mrs. Cose's class worked on developing their sketching skills by doing some sketching warm-ups and timed sketches. We did a 10-second, 30-second, 1-minute, and 5-minute sketches.

REMINDERS:

- Tomorrow is PJ Day!!

- Fun Lunch next Thursday (Cose's class can order, Seymour's class need to cancel your orders as you will be at RKP) 

- Volunteers needed for Mrs. Seymour's class on Wednesday and Thursday next week

Today's highlights:
- in PE we did stations. The ones I went to were flower sticks and juggling rings and pins. (Drew)
- in Science we did an experiment. We had cold water, hot water and lukewarm water and put our hands in the hot and cold and then in the lukewarm. The hot hand felt cold and the cold had felt hot.(Rana)
- we learned about Robert Bateman and looked at some of his amazing paintings. They look like photographs. (Drew)
- we worked in our Nature Sketchbooks and learned about different types of lines, shapes and shading techniques. (Addison)
- in Math we  needed to write numbers that had place values, like a number with a 9 in the ones place is 489.(Sayeh)
- we started our day with some independent reading and in writing we were writing simile poems. A simile is a comparison statement that uses "like" or "as" (Zaeem)
           - My hair is black like dark chocolate. (Rana)
           - My eyes are as brown as chocolate.(Laith)
           - My eyes are marbly like marbles. (Avery)
           - My eyes are as bright as the sun. (Bria)

Reminders:
- Dress for the weather
- STEAM club forms due ASAP
- RKP forms due
- Volunteers needed (Cose: Tuesday, Seymour: Wednesday & Thursday)

Happy New Year!

We were SO thankful to be back at school today. We've missed you all so much, it was so wonderful to be back together again!

Happy birthday, Drayden!

Important Fun Lunch Notice
Important reminder for Room 128 (Mrs. Seymour's class): Next week, there is a Fun Lunch scheduled for Thursday, our field trip day. The lunches will not be delivered to Ralph Klein Park. Please cancel your order and send a lunch with your child. You must cancel BEFORE Thursday of this week to get a refund. Mrs. Cose's class is unaffected by Fun Lunch.


We need more volunteers! Please email your teacher directly if you are able to volunteer:
- Mrs. Cose's class is going on Monday and Tuesday, January 13th & 14th
- Mrs. Seymour's class is going on Wednesday and Thursday, January 15th & 16th


Highlights from our learning today:

• We learned that journalists are people who gather reports and we find them on TV, radio, and more! - Jaxon
• For our field trip to Ralph Klein Park we are going to be journalists! 
• We got new writing and math books and reviewed expectations, like start at the pink line (margin) - Drayden
• In math centres we learned some new games to work on our addition and related subtraction skills to 18 - Avery
• We worked on photography using the iPads, with a focus on keeping the camera still so the photos are clear, and we learned about the "rule of thirds"

In Phys. Ed we did "Nanatastics" with a circus theme! We're working on "choice to challenge" ourselves over the next two weeks.

Today was a wonderful beginning to 2020 together. We look forward to an amazing rest of Grade 2!