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

The Ice cream Puzzle

On Friday, students in Division 2 were posed with a big problem:

 Your mother has sent you to go get ice cream cones for the whole family, all 5 of you, only, you can't remember who ordered what! You're pretty sure some people ordered chocolate, and some ordered strawberry, but you don't remember how many of each!

Students set to work on figuring out how many different orders they could make at the ice cream store, knowing they had to bring back enough for 5 people and that chocolate and strawberry were the flavours their family requested. 

In groups of 3 and 4, we worked together to brainstorm possible solutions, record our ideas, and share our ideas with the class. We had fun working with coloured chalk on the giant chalkboard, recording our work with whiteboard markers, writing on the smartboard, and solving our problems on the windows! 

Check out our brilliant minds at work! 

We talked to each other to share our ideas.

We all got to share our thinking.

We used words and pictures to record our solutions.

We took turns sharing our materials.

 
Leave us a comment:


What combination of chocolate and strawberry would you order for your family at the ice cream store? 


How many combinations can you think of? 


What did you like about our problem-solving Friday?

To all our Commenters:

Division 2 would like to thank all of our family, friends, and visitors from around the world who are commenting on our blog! Thanks to you, we are already halfway to our goal of reaching 100 comments during the month of November. As of Friday afternoon, we have reached ...






We love hearing from all of you and we have been working hard on commenting back. Click on the comment link at the end of any post to check out the comment conversations that are starting! If you haven't left us a comment yet, and you'd like to, here's how:

First, click on the comment link at the end of the post you'd like to comment on.

click on photo to enlarge

 Then, scroll past the other comments on the post to the bottom of the page. Check out what others have been saying!

click on photo to enlarge

 Finally, post your own comment using these 3 easy steps.

click on photo to enlarge

Happy commenting!

Math Art

Last week, we used the pumpkin seeds we harvested from our pumpkins to count in groups of ten all the way to one hundred. Check out our cool creations!

 

Today we used our finished artwork to count even higher. Counting each piece of art as one hundred, we were able to skip count by hundreds all the way to one thousand! Take a look at our skip counting artwork on display in the hallway.

Leave us a comment: 


Can you skip count by 100's to 1000? 


If your class counted by 100s, and each person counted one group of 100, how high could you count? 

November is Family Blogging Month

Division 2 has an important announcement to make ...

November is




During the month of November, we will be inviting parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and friends to comment on our blog. We'll keep track of how many comments we get - we're hoping to reach a grand total of 100 comments in the month of November!

Happy blogging!


Leave us a comment:

What do you like about blogging? 

If you are a family member or friend of a student in our class, introduce yourself to us!

Pumpkin Science

Since picking pumpkins at the pumpkin patch, our class has been using our pumpkins during Science class for some interesting investigations!

First, we investigated the size of our pumpkins. We began by estimating which pumpkin we thought might be the largest, and which might be the smallest. We talked about different ways of estimating, and then we tried them out! We started by putting our pumpkins into two categories - large pumpkins, and small pumpkins. Then we compared our pumpkin to others in the same category. Finally, we lined all of our pumpkins up and used our observations to decide which pumpkin was the smallest and which was the largest.

After estimating the size of our pumpkins, we measured them. Because a pumpkin is round and our rulers are flat, we used a piece of string wrapped around our pumpkin to mark out its size. Then, we measured the length of our string to see how big around our pumpkins were. We have been working on recording our results in a bar graph!

We also made some estimates about the seeds inside our pumpkins! After guessing that large pumpkins might have more seeds than small pumpkins, we took a look inside Miss. OC's pumpkin and made an estimate about how many seeds it held. We looked inside each of our pumpkins, too, and estimated how many seeds there were inside! After making our estimates, we each thought of a counting strategy and began counting our seeds. Some of us counted by 10's, 20's, 5's, and even 1's! Counting seeds one by one took a long time! Finally, we compared our estimates to our final count. Practicing estimating is making our estimates more accurate!

Of course, once our pumpkins were empty, we couldn't just let them go to waste! With the help of some very eager volunteers, we carved our pumpkins into jack o'lanterns. Take a look at our amazing pumpkin carvings.

But whatever happened to the seeds we harvested? We turned them into Math Art! Check back tomorrow for photos of our pumpkin seed art. :)

Leave us a comment:

Have you ever carved a jack o'lantern before? 

Do you have any tips for making an accurate estimate?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Division 2! We had an excellent time at school on Halloween day. We dressed up in our costumes, hunted for hidden skeletons around our classroom, danced until our feet were sore, and created some Math Art with the pumpkin seeds we harvested.

Leave us a comment:

How did you spend your Halloween? 

What is your favourite part about Halloween? 

What were you dressed up as this Halloween?