Dress Up Days

In addition to Spirit Week activities next week, students will also be invited to dress up each day.

Updated info for Spirit Week

Blog Post for Stevenson Classrooms:

LEGENDARY FLAVOURS & FIRED UP WITH FUN PRESENTS:

Monday March. 23^rd to Friday March.27^th, is our spirit week at Stevenson! We are going to be holding a fundraising food stand. The food stand will be open during am & pm recesses. The proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. You won’t want to miss this… Snacks include:

Monday at the back doors– Milky Monday, selling milk for $1.00 and cookies for $0.25

Tuesday at the back doors – Juice boxes for $0.75 and chips for $1.00

Wednesday at the back doors– Milk for $1.00 and licorice for $0.25

Thursday, outside of the gym during the movie

– Pretzels for $0.75, popcorn for $0.50 and pop for $0.75

Friday, outside of the gym during the basketball game

– Juice boxes for $0.75 and candy bags $1.00

But that’s not all…

On Thursday March 26^th, we are also going to have a movie in the gym at 1pm and it is “Finding Nemo”. Legendary Flavors will sell some treats and snacks for the movie. On Friday March 27^th, we have a basketball game it is students vs. teachers. Legendary Flavors will sell some snacks and drinks during this event as well.

We hope to see you all there. Have fun!

A reminder note will be going home in student's red folders today. 

Play Plans

Yesterday our class got to Skype with Mrs. Caldwell's class in Oak Lake, Manitoba.  They told us about some exciting Play Plans they were making. You should really read Mrs. Caldwell's blog post about Play Plans too!

They explained that before they go to play time, they share their plans in words and then they draw or write them on paper. This helps them to be more focused during play time.

We really liked this idea so today we created our own play plans!  We got to choose one or two ideas about what we would like to play. If we changed our minds, we just made another plan.

Here are some examples of the play plans we made today. Each student took their play play home in their red folder. This will also help to remind them about what they did at school today.





When it was time to play, we followed our plans.  Some students noticed that the classroom was more peaceful. Mrs. Lowe was impressed because we were really growing our brains by playing with a purpose.

Alligator Inquiry

Last week I noticed that some of the students were very interested in alligators. When I asked them if they would like to learn more about them, the answer was a resounding YES!

A photo from Mrs. Lowe's trip to Gatorland in Florida.
The staff were feeding chickens to the alligators.

Today we did some brainstorming about what we know about alligators already and what we wonder about them. 

We made a chart all about alligators.

Then we looked at some books and watched some videos to learn more.

Here's a link to the video we watched:

Alligator Farm: Reading Rainbow

Here's what the students said about today:

We watched a movie about Alligators. - Yuan

The whole classroom likes alligators. - Alfonso

We already know a lot about alligators. - Braydon

We watched a video and it was real cool. - Landyn

I like alligators. - Justine

Alligators can eat fish. - Matthew

Alligators can jump out of the water with their big strong muscles. - Brodie

They can grab chickens with their jaws. - Parker

Alligators can get chickens from far away. - Justin

How does a swamp get dirty? - Malashia

Mr. Miller brought us an alligator puppet to play with.

Alfonso was so proud to share his toy alligator with all of his friends.
We made a swamp for the alligator and his friends to play in.  

We would love it if you would leave a comment below.

Spirit Week

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LEGENDARY FLAVOURS & FIRED UP WITH FUN PRESENTS:

Monday March. 23^rd to Friday March.27^th, is our spirit week at Stevenson! We are going to be holding a fundraising food stand. The food stand will be open during am & pm recesses. The proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders. You won’t want to miss this… Snacks include:

Monday at the back doors– Milky Monday, selling milk and cookies

Tuesday at the back doors – Juice boxes/chips

Wednesday at the back doors– Milk and muffins

Thursday, outside of the gym during the movie

– Pretzels, popcorn and pop

Friday, outside of the gym during the basketball game

– Juice boxes and candy bags

(I will update the blog when prices are announced)

But that’s not all…

On Thursday March 26^th, we are also going to have a movie in the gym and it is “Finding Nemo”. Legendary Flavors will sell some treats and snacks for the movie. On Friday March 27^th, we have a basketball game it is students vs. teachers. Legendary Flavors will sell some snacks and drinks during this event as well.

We hope to see you all there. Have fun!

Primary Colours and Piet Mondrian

The students of Room 8 have been learning all about colours! It all started with some coloured water at Discovery Time.

The students were given red, yellow, and blue water and some eye droppers. It was amazing how quickly they figured out how to make secondary colours using the three primary colours.

We also watched some videos to learn more about primary and secondary colours. The videos inspired us to make our own colour wheel, using our left-over beautiful stuff.

Last week we looked at the work of the artist, Piet Mondrian. We learned that he really loved creating art using primary colours to compliment his vertical and horizontal lines.

You can see the slideshow here.



The kiddos had a lot to say about this:
I noticed primary colours. - Charlotte
It looks like a house map. - Brodie
I like the blue rectangles, they remind me of Minecraft. - Alfonso and Matthew
I see a school map, the blue is a classroom, the yellow is the gym, the white is a music room, and the red is the "doing cool stuff" room. - Jolena
It reminds me of a puzzle. - Renee

After the slideshow the students were inspired to make their very own Mondrian inspired art.  They did such a great job making vertical and horizontal lines and using paint to create the coloured rectangles and squares.

The next day, I noticed that some students were still thinking about Pied Mondrian.

Report Cards and Open House

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Report cards will be going home on Wednesday, March 11. We hope you will read them and reflect on all of the amazing learning your child has been doing.

To see that learning in action, please come and visit our classroom and Open House.
You do not need to make an appointment, just come ready to celebrate your child's accomplishments.

Open House hours:

Thursday, March 12: 4:30-7:00 PM orFriday, March 13: 9:00-11:30 AM

App Smackdown!

This morning we had a great assembly where we got to hear the 2/3 and 4/5 choirs perform their songs from the music festival. We also got to hear 3 students perform poems in french. We were all really impressed!

Then there was an App Smackdown! If you haven't heard of this before, it's a way of sharing lots of really great iPad Apps, really quickly.  Several students and teachers came up to the front to share and demonstrate an app that they are using in their classrooms. Each person got two minutes to talk then someone sounded a gong and they had to stop.

A grade one student sharing about Explain Everything! She was so brave!

Two grade 1 students demonstrating the Sushi Monster app. 

Ms. Remple and her assistants making a music video, using an iPad.

Checking out the new apps we learned about in the assembly.

There were some really great apps shared. These ones are free for iPads and iPhones. You should check them out! The links in the descriptions will take you to the app store to find more information and download.

 Sushi Monster is a hilarious math app! The K's were really excited to try it!

 Endless Wordplay is a great app for beginning spelling. Perfect for K's!

VidRythm is for making your own cool music videos!

Explain Everything is a great tool for screen-casting.

 4Pics1Word is a cool word puzzle apple.

 Stop Motion  is for making stop-motion animated movies.

Air Pipes is a fun app that allows you to use your phone as bagpipes!

Moving Towards Inquiry-Based Learning: A Kindergarten Tale

This weekend we (Mrs. Lowe and Ms. Dowd) had the pleasure of presenting at the Byte (Build Your Teaching Experience) conference in Brandon, Manitoba.

We presented on our journey towards teaching using an inquiry-based approach. Over the past three years we have tried to move away from traditional theme-based teaching to a more inquiry-based approach.

Follow the link to see presentation notes.

Moving Towards Inquiry-Based Learning: A Kindergarten Tale


Our Journey Towards Inquiry-Based Learning: A Kindergarten Tale - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires