Recyclables

Hello families,

Just a reminder that we are collecting recyclables for our boats and buoyancy unit.  Please send them in with your child ASAP (anything they think they can use to build a boat).

ALSO, we are in need of used Kurig coffee/tea pods.  We will be using them for our Arbor Day tree art project that we begin this Thursday.

Thank you!

Weekly Spelling Words January 30 - February 2

Grade 1

with
his
they
pit
sit
hit
bit

Grade 2

pole
wire
fight
seen
eat
right
might
sight
tight
flight
bright
lost far
push
pull
strength

Hello 51,

Ms. Nestrovich has forwarded the recipe for that amazing goodbye cake she made, and that had us all begging for more!! She teaches this recipe in her foods class, and promises that it isn't difficult at all.  We loved that it was egg and nut free :) Thanks again for everything Ms. Nestrovich; we will miss you!

Foods Lab Planning Sheet		Name:
Grandmas Chocolate Cake		Oven Temp:	350 F
		Time:	30-40 min
		Duty:
Cookery Principles	Nutrition	Contents of Tray
Cake: muffin method minimal mixing Icing: sugar cookery Soft ball test for candy making	Empty carbohydrate
Equipment		Method
9x13 oblong pan Large mixing bowl Measuring equipment Toothpicks Cooling rack Wooden spoon Metal spatula Glass with cold water	Cake 750ml flour 500ml sugar 125ml cocoa 10 ml baking soda 5 ml salt 125ml cocoa 10 ml vanilla 30 ml vinegar 125ml melted butter 500ml Cold water Icing 750ml brown sugar 5ml vanilla 100ml butter 2ml salt 125ml milk (or alternate milk)	1.     Measure flour and sugar into large bowl. Sift the cocoa, salt and baking soda into the same bowl. Using a wooden spoon mix well. 2.     Make 3 holes in mixture. Put melted butter in one, vanilla in the next and vinegar in the third. 3.     Pour cold water over the whole mixture. Mix until just moistened with the wooden spoon. 4.     Place batter into greased oblong pan. Bake for 30-45 minutes until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean and cake is pulling away from sides of pan. Cool on cooling rack. 5.     Put all icing ingredients into sauce pan except vanilla. 6.     Wait until cake is out of oven to begin heating the icing. 7.     Bring the sugar mixture to a simmer. Boil carefully testing often using soft ball test.  Soft Ball Test: fill a clear glass with cold water drop the hot syrup into the water and observe. Syrup should be in a soft ball, if water is stirred syrup holds its shape and water does not become milky. 8.     If test indicates syrup is ready remove from heat, add vanilla and stir well. 9.    Beat syrup until no longer glossy, pour contents of pot onto cake spread in one direction starting at the end of the cake and moving down. Try not to continually spread the icing as it is fudge, this will create crumbs in icing. 10.  Allow icing to harden, serve.
Test for Doneness:
Standards:

Happy Friday Families!

Just a reminder that we will be having our spelling test on Monday.  The words can be found on this blog in a different post.

Our week in room 51 was accentuated by the Kindergarten assembly this morning, which highlighted the Chinese New Year.  Visitors came from the Chinese community to perform special dances and martial arts for all the students.  Ask your child what they enjoyed the most during the assembly.

Our Inuit investigation continued with several art projects: building dog sleds from popsicle sticks and Ted Harrison paintings of the north, as well as, hand-stitched igloos to add to our paintings to make them 3-D.  We will continue exploring their culture over the next few weeks.

Addition and subtraction with regrouping continued to challenge the students this week, with a focus on some quick mental math games of skip counting.  Next week, we move on to begin looking at 2-D and 3-D shapes.  Working on the laptops, students began learning how to use Powerpoint by experimenting with several times this past week.  They will be presenting their "Passion Project" in Powerpoint form before the end of the year.

In Language Arts the students continued their investigation of character traits by inquiring about their own character traits and also focusing on some story characters.  This included a lot of written work and self-portrait sketching.

This was the final week in gym for gymnastics, concluding with "Mission Impossible" of course!  I am sure most of the students will miss this.  Ask your child to share with you their favourite parts of "Mission Impossible"

Swimming will begin in February.  Group B will be going first during the week of February 6-9.  We will keep you posted.

As we conclude our week we say a sad farewell to Mrs. Nestrovich, who has volunteered her time the past few weeks to teach our students how to sew.  As part of our social studies unit on the Inuit, the grade 1s and 2s made a stuffed igloo to attach to their Ted Harrison painting.  We are grateful to her for her time and her talents.

Have a super weekend!

Room 51 - Mrs. McArthur & Ms. Klein

Thursday, January 26

Good evening to all,

A short note to inform you that our Friday spelling test will be postponed until Monday.

Also,  we will be having an assembly tomorrow morning to celebrate Chinese New Year.  Some special guests from Calgary's Chinese community will be performing a variety of dances for all the students.  All students, teachers and staff have been asked to wear RED to commemorate the day.

Enjoy your evening.

Spelling Words - January 24-27

Grade 1

for
on
are
as
back
sack
black
snack

Grade 2

very
after
things
our
just
girl
dirt
shirt
third
thirst
yellow
got
life
cycle

Spelling lists January 23 - 27

Spelling list Jan 23-27

Grade 1

for

on

are

as

back

sack

black

snack

Spelling list Jan 23-27

Grade 2

after
things
our
just

girl
dirt
shirt
third
thirst
bird
yellow
got
life
cycle

Hello Room 51 families and friends,

Hopefully you are on your way to enjoying a much warmer sunny weekend!

Once again our Friday whipped by, as did the entire week.  The students have been hard at work on so many different things.  Their puppet theatre STEAM projects have turned out beautifully; most of the filming is complete and posted to IRIS. The next step will be using their puppets and the green screen to make fun movies with an assortment of backgrounds.  The students are also engaged in a beautiful art project that is based on the works of Ted Harrison.  They are multi-medium works that involve painting, sewing and yarn and WOW are they looking great!!  We have some amazing little sewers in our room and more on the way next week (speaking of art, we are always thrilled to have volunteers for our Thursday afternoon art projects, or anytime you feel like dropping in).  In math the students are working on addition and subtraction, with and without regrouping, to 100 and beyond; yes the grade 1's are working with some of those great big numbers too.  They are starting to get quicker with their math fact recalls, but can always use more practice so maybe spice up those car rides with some addition math drills :)

There has been a lot of invested non-fiction reading this week as we've started our passion "I Wonder" projects, and research for our Inuit unit.  It's amazing what many of them have managed to find out in a very short period of time.  They have been creating polar bear "wheels of wisdom," and there really is a lot of wisdom showing up!  This week was mission impossible in gym and we also had Club Friday today.  Everyone found their way to their new clubs without incident, and there was a lot of excitement after so though we didn't have much time to talk about the clubs it is definitely sounding like a good time was had by all.

We are still collecting swim forms so please send those back with your children if you have one at home, and if you are able to volunteer for swimming please let us know so that we can sort out our numbers.  We will especially be looking for dad volunteers to help in the boys washroom.

Have a fantastic week,

The 51 team

Spelling Words - January 16-20

Grade 1

than
it
he
was
map
cap
nap
tap

Grade 2

live
cool
give
most
saw
law
raw
jar
straw
draw
country
ocean
title
motion
change

Friday, January 13th

A few more notes...

We did not have the opportunity to do our spelling test, which means that we will do it on Monday morning.  This gives the students a few extra days to study their words.  A list can be found in the envelope pouch on the inside of their communication folders.

SWIMMING

We still have not received all of the "Swimming Ability" forms and/or fees.  Please complete the forms and return it ASAP if you have not done so already.

If you have made a decision to not have your child attend swimming lessons please consider this:

Swimming is a life skill and all students are highly encouraged to participate.  Students who are not swimming will stay at the school and will be supported in another classroom during this time.

Boats and Buoyancy

Please keep collecting and send in any recyclable materials for this unit.  All materials will be pooled together and shared with all students to investigate and create.

Thanks!

Julie & Kim

Happy Friday the 13^th Families!

A bit of bad news for all of you who suffer from friggatriskaidekaphobia – all years will have at least one Friday the 13th. The good news is that there cannot be more than three Friday the 13ths in any given calendar year. The longest one can go without seeing a Friday the 13th is 14 months.

Students of Room 51 were excited this week to learn how to draw a boy and a girl, who is not a stick person, during our guided drawing lesson.  This will help the students to better draw a picture of themselves to accompany their secret person character writing.  This, they have been working on throughout the week during the writing portion of our Daily 5.  With what they have been learning about character in stories, they are taking a closer look at themselves to determine their character traits.  Their writing and their full-bodied self-portrait will be displayed on our bulletin board, as we did with their monster assignment.

Mrs. McArthur took the story of, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and presented it to our learners through the oral tradition, similar to how stories are told by the First Nations people.  During her retell, students did a visualization of the parable, sketching the story in their visual journals.  This was followed up the next day with a written assignment, where the children had to identify the “boys” character traits and back up their claim with details from the story.  That was a challenging task for all the students.  Ask your child what character traits they discovered the “boy” had and why they think so.

Gymnastics was the rage this week during gym class, with enthusists climbing, rolling, tumbling and balancing their hearts out.  During music, they have been having loads of fun playing musical instruments.

We continued our focus in math this past week working on place value and regrouping through addition practice with numbers up to 50 for the grade ones and with 2-digit numbers up to 100 for the grade two’s.  We also played an addition math game of Bingo on Friday.

The “Blue Days” have had the children confined to the classroom during their lunch recess, but they have enjoyed playing sports charades and creating works of art with or on paper.  Ask your child what they have been doing indoors on their “Blue Days”.

While we continue to work on our STEAM inquiry in science, with our gingerbread theatres, we began a new unit in social studies.  We have begun learning about the people of Iqaluit through discussion, mapping and watching a video.  Ask your child what throat singing is all about.  Maybe they can even show you an example.

We had some special visitors in our classroom this week.  Emily’s grandparents from South Africa joined us during the last 15 minutes of our day on Thursday.  The students asked many questions about where they came from and they asked us about some winters things they were wondering about.

Have a great weekend families!

Room 51