Gingerbread Mania!

Over the last few weeks we have been reading many different versions of "The Gingerbread Man." We have comparing what is the same in each of the stories and also what is different.

On Friday we opened our bakery and voted on the name "Pretty Bakery." The bakery has room for baking, a patio and even a drive through for coffee and doughnuts.  The students in our class have been vary busy playing and learning in the bakery.

Today we baked REAL gingerbread men, but when we went to get them out of the oven we realized they had run away! Luckily they left clues behind and we were able to follow the clues to find them hiding in our classroom!

Looking for clues in Mrs. Couch's office.

Once we found the cookies, we decorated them with icing and candies. They were a very yummy snack!

Have you ever tried Gingerbread cookies?

What part do you eat first?

What Can You See?

Way back in October I saw a blog post by an amazing teacher in Ontario, Angie Harrison. She proposed a project called "What Can You See?" where students observed and then wrote about all of the things they could see from their classroom windows. You can check out her original post here and you can find a collection of posts here.

We looked at a number of submissions by different classrooms and the students begged to make their own book.  Because we do not have a window in our classroom we decided to go for a walk around our school and take pictures of all of the things we could see. Over the next few weeks we wrote the text for our book.

Finally, Mr. Miller, our Vice Principal came and helped us to record an original song to go with our story.

This project has helped to inspire some amazing discussions and even collaborations with other classrooms. We hope you like our book and we can't wait to see more books added to the project.

Our We Can See project.

We would love to see what some of you can see. Please feel free to send us your own "What Can You See?" book. 

Play date

Today we had a play date with our grade 4/5 buddies. We usually read together but today they came to our classroom to play with us. (The lights were off in our classroom because we are still really excited about exploring light and shadows).

It was fun playing with the kids from room 3. -Kyran

It was fun doing art with my buddy - Oliver

I played tic-tac-toe on the smart board - Jessica and Delilah

I missed my reading buddy. He was playing hockey today. - Ashton

I had fun playing with Austin. - Annabelle

I liked my reading buddies picture on the computer. Kyran

I liked when we were playing camping with my reading buddy. - Julia

Just before recess we got an email from room 3. We were so excited to get mail! Here's what they said:

Thank you for inviting us to play. Here are some of our thoughts:

I like the wooden bench you had, and playing in the dark was fun - Tessa D.

I thought the Kindergartens cooperated really well - Sarah

I enjoyed playing with them by the Cafe - Kirstin

I liked using the puppets to make a show - Carter

I felt it was very spacious and I really loved how almost everyone found someone to play with. I enjoyed it. Brayden

There were many fun things to do -Chair

I liked that my buddy was showing me different things to do - Nick

I liked the light bright - CJ

Playing Tic-Tac-Toe on the Smartboard was fun. I was impressed that the Kindergartens beat me. - Mariah

The Kindergartens listen really well when I read to them. -Tessa T.

Watching the Grade 4s and 5s play and have fun was great to see. Thank you for the invitation. - Mrs. MacKay

We LOVED the wooden table and tree stumps. - Everyone

Jingle Bell Jukebox

Today I snuck down to the music room to snap some photos of the K's in action.  They are working hard to prepare for the Winter Concert on December 19th. There will be two shows starting at 1:30 and 7:00.

They can't wait to show you what they've been working on!

Exploring light and shadows

Wow, today was an exciting day in our classroom! We continued to explore light and shadows with books, puppets, cellophane paper, flashlights, lamps, and overhead projects.

Watching his bird's shadow fly.

Using a flashlight to make dancing lights on the ceiling.

Shadow puppets.

Exploring colours with cellophane paper.

Using the flashlights for telling stories around the "campfire."

We read some books about shadows. - Mercedez

We played campfire with flashlights. - Jessica

We made violet with the papers we can see through. I think we used green and purple together. - Kiara

We had fun learning about light. - Aaliyah

I made a dog with my hand. My hand blocks the light to make a shadow. - Kyran

I wonder how to make a puppet show with shadows? - Annabelle

I held the light and made a butterfly. - Abigail

We learned about the projector. I learned that we can make puppets with them. - Delilah

I like what we did today, making puppets. - Oliver

Readers: Where do you see shadows?

Do you know how to make a shadow puppet with your hand? We would love to hear from you!

Exploring Light and Snowflakes

Yesterday the most wonderful thing happened, we got a message on our blog from Mrs. Babalis' class in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

You can find their blog here.

They were inspired by our blog to make their own symmetrical snowflakes.  They built snowflakes on the light table, the overhead projector and the math carpet. Here are some of the snowflakes they made:

We had never seen an overhead projector or a light table so Mrs. Lowe brought one to our class.

We built beautiful snowflakes with the math pattern blocks and they were shooting up onto the wall!
We noticed that when we put the pattern blocks on top of each other they changed colours.

During play time kids tried putting lots of different things on the overhead to see if the light would shine through.  Maybe tomorrow we could do some more exploring to see which kinds of things let the light shine through and which do not.

Thank you Mrs. Babalis' class for inspiring our learning!

We are in love!

Our class has fallen in love with Elephant and Piggie! 

They are featured in a series of books by Mo Willems. When we read them everyone laughs so hard because they are hilarious! Many students borrowed them from the library this week.

These are some of the books we've read recently:

If you haven't read these books, you should definitely check them out!