Elder's Tea

Last week, on March 27th, Division 2 hosted our Elders and community members for our school's monthly Elder's Tea. Our class worked hard to prepare for Elder's tea, learning how to play the drum and learning the rhythm and words of many new drumming songs. When our Elders arrived, we played them a Welcome song.

Click on the video above to hear a complete recording of our Welcome song.  

After our Welcome, we showed our Elders the other songs we learned to play with Harvey.  Even though they were a bit nervous to play for an audience for the first time, Division 2 did an excellent job of drumming and singing with confidence. Some brave volunteers sang the Laughing song for our guests, and we even got some parents up to play with us!

The Laughing song was a big hit!

After drumming, we shared snacks with our guests and showed them around our classroom. There were so many smiling faces at our Elder's Tea this month.

Baby sisters get in on the drumming.

Riannon's own drum.

Lots of hugs to go around.

Check out those smiles!

There was lots of love for the little ones! 

We had a great turn out.

Three generations of ladies!

Families had a chance to check out some of our awesome art work. 

What a fantastic afternoon!

Leave us a comment: 


Which of your family members and Elders came to our Elder's tea? 


What was it like to perform in front of an audience? 


What was your favourite part of the Elder's tea? 

Elder's Tea - Tuesday March 27th

Division 2 will be hosting Lytton Elementary School's monthly Elder's Tea on Tuesday, March 27th at 2:00pm. 

Please join us for coffee, tea, and snacks. Bring your drum, and join us in a drumming circle. 

If you've been reading our blog lately, you'll have seen that we have been practicing drumming with Harvey Dunstan every Friday. We are so excited to share our drumming with our Elders at the Elder's tea! Don't forget to bring your drum with you to the Tea so that you can join us in singing and drumming all our favourite songs.

This week, our class made paper drums to give to our Elders as an invitation to the Elder's Tea. Take a look at our beautiful artwork!

Our paper drums took a lot of work to make. We made the drum "skins" out of crumpled paper and painted them with tea bags! When the tea dried, it had stained our paper a light brown. The crinkles in the paper held on to more of the pigment of the tea, so that is what made the darker brown lines and spots. We made our drum frames with card stock and laced them with twine and raffia. When our drums were assembled, we painted on designs. We modelled our drum invitations after the drums we play with when we practice drumming with Harvey. 

We can't wait to show you everything we've learned about drumming! See you on the 27th! 

Leave us a comment: 

Who will you be inviting to our Elder's tea? 

Ask your Elder: What is their favourite drumming song? 

What song is your favourite to drum or sing? 

Mixing Tones

In Art last week, we learned how to mix tones of a colour by adding drops of a colour to white paint. When you mix one drop of coloured paint with white paint, you get a very pale tone. When you add a lot of drops of colour to white paint, you get a darker tone.

Jevan's many tones of yellow

We chose our favourite colours and created 5 tones by mixing paint. Then, we used our tones to create art that featured just one colour. It was a fun experiment to see how much detail and interest we could create in a painting with only one colour.

Riannon's purple tones

Katelynn's blue tones

Brooke-Lynne's tones of red

Christopher's tones of blue

Jaylee's purple tones

Preston's tones of yellow

Ebony's purple tones

Alexis and Trinity experimented with making shades of grey. They started with white paint and added drops of black paint. The less black paint they added, the lighter the shade of grey. Alexis' painting really shows off the changes in shades! She created a graduated colour pattern by painting stripes of grey that show a gradual change from dark, to medium, to light.

Alexis' shades of grey

Leave us a comment: 


If you could only see tones of one colour, what colour would you want your world to be? 


Pink is a lighter tone of red. Can you think of any other tones that have their own colour names? 

Building with Shapes

This week we have been learning about shapes in Math class. We have learned about how to recognise different shapes around our classroom and the different attributes of shapes, like sides and vertices. We use pattern blocks to practice sorting shapes and recognising differences and similarities in shapes.

Christopher used our pattern blocks to build a giant shape! The blue pattern blocks in our set are parallelograms. Christopher made a giant parallelogram using different pattern blocks as tiles. When you tile a surface, you use blocks or flat tiles to cover the whole surface with no spaces or overlaps.

Leave Christopher a comment: 


What shapes can you see inside Christopher's parallelogram? 


What other shapes would you like to see Christopher create with tiles? 

Cowie the Stuffy **Family Blogging Month Winner**

Preston was one of the winners of our Family Blogging Month Challenge. Preston and his relatives worked hard to make lots of comments on our blog during the month of November. Preston won the chance to write his own post for our blog. Preston decided to write about one of his favourite toys. Check out his lovely post and leave him a comment!


This is my stuffy Cowie. He is 3 years old. I got Cowie at fun fair when I was 5. Cowie has had lots of adventures in past the 3 years.

Cowie joins our family on trips. When we go to Kamloops, Cowie comes with us to the gas station to get snacks before we leave . In the car, Cowie and I play my DS. While we're shopping in Kamloops, Cowie hangs out in my pocket.

One time, Cowie came camping with me. In September last year, Cowie and I went camping at my friend Skyler's house.We built a fort to sleep in! We stayed there for 4 days.Cowie got to play with Skyler's stuffies and make new friend.

When I was 6 years old, Cowie got a new friend. At Fun Fair I played a game where I had to throw a ball into a basketball net. I won and I got to pick out a prize. I picked Piggie. Piggie is just like Cowie! They are friends. Cowie and Piggie like to hang togther.One time, they got lost! In my basement toy room there are toys all over the floor - you can't even see the floor! My mom and dad cleaned up all the toys one day with my and my sister and Cowie and Piggie got put in a bin and moved to the storage room. I didn't know they were in  there! I looked for Cowie and Piggie for two months! Me and my sister and my friend Mackenzie were looking for another toy one day, when we spotted Piggie and Cowie! I was very happy to see them again.

In that picture with Cowie he got bit by a dog at Cache Creek. My sewed him up.

Leave Preston a comment: 

Do you have a favourite toy?

Did you ever have a toy get lost in the basement?

One Thousand Visitors!

This is Division 2's first year blogging, and we have been working hard to write about interesting things on our blog and make quality comments on posts. One of the best parts about blogging is getting new visitors. We love it when our family and friends visit the blog to leave us a comment, and it is also exciting when friends from around the world stop by.

Our Clustermap in the top right corner of the blog keeps track of how many people visit our blog, and what countries they are from. The number tally is called a visitor count. Today, our visitor count reached a 4 digit number!





Wow! Over 1000 visitors have visited our blog since September, 2010! Did you know that only 676 of those visitors were from Canada? That means we are also getting hundreds of visitors from outside of our own country, too! Amazing!

Leave us a comment:

Do some exploring! Click on the Clustermap and see if you can count how many different countries have visited our blog! What did you discover?

Do the math ... 676 people have visited our blog from Canada. How many people have visited our blog from outside of Canada?

Have you ever travelled to any of the places on our Clustermap?

Online Stories

I found some entertaining online stories for you! You can read them by yourself, with a parent, or with your brothers and sisters.

If I were a cloud ... by jnelly

If I were a cloud... by jnelly on Storybird

Just Plain Benedict ... by SMattox
Just Plain Benedict by SMattox on Storybird

It's Not Fair ... by drronovick

It's Not Fair by drronovick on Storybird

Leave us a comment: 

Which story was your favourite, and why? 


What do the characters in these 3 stories have in common? 

World Math Games

The World Math Games are on Tuesday, March 6th and you can participate in Math challenges against students your age from around the world! There are prizes to be won for students who answer the most correct questions in their age group. Because you are all Mathletics users, you are already signed up to participate!

To participate, just log into your Mathletics account and click on Live Mathletics. A window will open and give you the option of playing Live Mathletics or participating in the World Math Games. Just click on the World Math Games button to head there! Play as many games as you can on Tuesday, March 6th. The more correct answers you get, the more points you earn!

You can also practice before the games start. Again, just log into your Mathletics account and click on Live Mathletics. Before Tuesday, you will have the option to play Live Mathletics or practice for the World Math Games. Click on Practice to head there!

Good luck everyone!

Please email me if you have forgotten your Mathletics password.