Merry Christmas!

Miss. OC is wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year! Enjoy your holidays!

New students?

This week, we got some very tiny, very special new students!

These are salmon eggs. Can you see the black dot inside each egg? These eggs are 'eyed'! That means, they have been fertilized. Each of those black dots is the beginning of a tiny salmon. 

These salmon eggs aren't really sleeping at all. Inside each egg a salmon is busy developing! The salmon will grow inside their eggs for about a month longer and then they'll hatch.

Division 2 will be working hard to meet the needs of our new classmates. We know that fish need water to breathe, because they use their gills to get oxygen from the water. We learned that young salmon need very cold water to grow into strong adult salmon. Our class will be responsible for making sure our salmon have clean, cold water to swim in. Once the salmon hatch from their eggs, we will also have to make sure to feed them every day. We are looking forward to taking care of our salmon as they grow! 

Leave us a comment: 

What do you think about our newest students? 

Do you have an animal at home that you take care of? How do you meet all of its needs? 

Letters from Qatar!

This week we got some very special mail all the way from Qatar! Qatar is a very small country in the Middle East, in the Gulf of Persia.

Miss.OC's friend Valerie teaches at the HUBS International School in Doha Qatar, and her class of Grade 2 students sent us a package. They sent us postcards with letters all about themselves. They also sent us some cool photos of Qatar and drawings. We were very excited!

We want to send a BIG thank-you to our friends in Qatar! We recorded this video message for them; check it out:

 Thank-you for your letters, friends. Our letters are on the way to you!

Leave us a comment: 

What did you like the best about getting mail from Qatar? 

What do you think about our video? 

What questions do you have for our new friends in Qatar?

Crystals

Yesterday Division 2 did a Science experiment with liquids and solids. The liquid we used was water, and we looked at two different solids - salt and borax, a kind of laundry soap. We learned a new word - dissolve! When you mix a solid like salt into a liquid it dissolves in the liquid. It's not disappearing! The salt pieces just fit themselves in between the molecules of water.

Then we mixed borax with water, and it dissolved, too. To get the borax back out again, we had to find a way to get rid of the water. We tried getting rid of some of the water by putting it in cups and letting it dry up. When water dries up, it's really evaporating (that's another new word!). When water evaporates, it fills in the spaces between the molecules in the air. We know that when water goes into the air, it makes clouds, and clouds make rain! We put a pipe cleaner hanging in our glass of water and borax to catch some of the borax as the water evaporated.

After some of the water evaporated, it left the pieces of borax behind.  As the pieces of borax got back together again, they made some interesting shapes. We call these shapes crystals. We had a lot of fun examining our crystals up close with magnifying glasses.

Some students noticed that our crystals look a lot like snowflakes. Snowflakes are crystals, too, only snowflake crystals aren't made of salt or laundry soap, they're made of ice! Ice crystals can form in beautiful patterns, just like these paper snowflakes we made in art class today.

Leave us a comment:


What did you notice about the crystal you made? 


What other things can you think of that are made of crystals? 

And they're off ...

Miss. OC went to the local Post Office this afternoon to mail our letters to Santa.
I hope they'll get to the North Pole in time!

In our letters we told Santa who we are, where we live, and also whether we've been naughty or nice. We've all been very nice, of course! We also told Santa what we'd like to get for Christmas. Some of us had some very important questions for Santa, too! I'm excited to see what Santa will say when he writes back to us.

Leave us a comment: 


What are you wondering about Santa, his reindeer, or the North Pole? 


What are you looking forward to this Christmas? 

What a party!

During the month of November, our students, family, and friends posted a total of 138 comments on our Division 2 Class Blog! 


Yesterday our classroom was filled with parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties, and little brothers and sisters, all there to celebrate a very successful month of Family Blogging. We enjoyed a delicious meal of spaghetti and meatballs with bannock, prepared by our very own Division 2 class.

After sharing a meal with our families, we were excited to show them our classroom technology. We had a lot of fun using our Smart Board! We showed our parents how we can use the Smart Board to play our favourite Math Games. 

We were very patient during some tech-troubles (thank-you!), but we finally all got our laptops up and running. We showed our families how to post comments on our blog. Can you believe that our blog got over 20 comments in just a few hours yesterday?

We really liked sharing our favourite games to play on our laptops. Some of our parents even gave them a try! It was funny to see our parents playing Dance Mat Typing and Live Mathletics.

 

Thank-you to all of the families and friends that joined us in our classroom yesterday, and to everyone who helped us reach our comment goal this month! We hope that you will keep reading our blog and sharing your comments with us during the rest of the year. :)

Let's Celebrate!

That's right, it's time for our ...



Today is the last day of Family Blogging Month and Division 2 is proud to say that we have reached our goal of writing over 100 comments in 1 month! In fact, in the month of November, over 116 comments were posted by our students, family, and friends. Wow! Thank-you to everyone who has joined us to share comments and get conversations started.

If you are joining us for our Family Blogging Celebration today, please leave us a comment to tell us what you think about our blog.

Leave us a comment: 


Introduce yourself: Who are you? 


If you are a student, what do you like about blogging? 


What do you like about our Division 2 blog? 


What would you like to see us write about on our blog? 

Celebrate!

Here are some fun games you can play with your family on the computer! Enjoy!

Moon Rock Patterns

Take a Trip

Make a Robot (and print it, too!)

Make a Face

November is almost over!

November is almost over, and that means you have only ONE MORE DAY to leave a comment during



Of course, we'll keep blogging after November! And, we hope you'll keep coming to visit our blog and leaving us comments. We love reading your comments and writing back!

So much SNOW!

All this snow has got me thinking about building snow forts, rolling snowballs for snowmen, and making snow angels! For those of you who don't want to brave the cold weather, I discovered a way to have fun building things in the snow from the comfort of your living room! Check out ABCya!'s 100 snowballs game. It lets you build shapes using 100 moveable snowballs. I made a snow castle! What will you make?

Kikeyambay

This afternoon, we had the opportunity to see the Kikeyambay dance group perform a play at the High School. They traveled all the way from Victoria, BC to see us, and they brought drums, costumes and talented musicians  from even further away - West Africa!

First, they told us a story about an African king who had played music for the animals on a special instrument. We really enjoyed the music and the costumes were fantastic!

They were amazing dancers, too!

After the story, the dancers changed into new costumes and drummed along with the band. The drumming was very fast - it must have taken years of practice for the musicians to learn.

At the end of the performance, Kikeyambay  invited students and teachers up to the front to join them! Some students learned how to drum, play shakers along to the beat, and even dance. Some brave, brave teachers learned how to dance, too! (Thank-you to Brandon for taking photos of our dancing lessons!) 

Leave us a comment: 

What was your favourite part of today's performance? 

What did you learn about drumming, dancing, or Africa from Kikeyambay?

Have you ever taken dancing lessons? Have you ever taken drumming lessons?  

It's that time of year ...

What's that I see outside our classroom window?

 

It's snow!

Leave us a comment:

Is it snowing where you live? 

 

What do you like to do in the snow?

What is your favourite season, and why?

Remembering

This past weekend in Canada we recognised veterans at Remembrance Day ceremonies. Remembrance Day is observed on November 11th because it was on November 11th, 1918 that soldiers agreed to put down their guns and stop fighting at the end of World War I.

Canadians have fought in wars around the world. One Canadian soldier who we pause to remember on Remembrance Day is Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. He was a doctor during World War I, and he wrote the poem, "In Flanders Fields" about his experience watching soldiers fight and die during the war. In his poem, John McCrae talks about the poppies that grew in the fields where the soldiers fought and were buried. On Remembrance Day, Canadians wear poppies to show that they are remembering the soldiers who lost their lives in war.

Division 2 has been talking about war and how it affects people. During Art class this week we created Word Clouds to show what we think about war and peace.

"A Thunder Cloud of War" by Jevan

"Give me a Bolt" by Katelynn

"This is Dangerous" by Riannon

"Just give me a Thunder of War" by Ebony

"The War for Freedom" by Brooke-Lynne

"Hunter" by Cole

"A Sad Night" by Rain

"Fast and Light" by Brandon

"The Helicopter Bomber" by Preston

"Music of Love" by Jaylee

"Just give me a Sign" by Fuzzy

"Peace of Love" by Alexis

"These are bad words" by Trinity