Building and Testing our Water Filters

Today we finally(!) got the opportunity to build and test our water filters. Some of us found out that we were successful, whereas others of us quickly found out that we still had dirty water.

**Our challenge this weekend is to re-deign our filters with either the same or different materials on our plan sheets that came home. Test them out at home and be ready to share our new designs at school for Monday! (We can either bring our new water filter to school or just take a picture and send it to Miss. Moore.

Reminders:
1. Hull's Wood field study forms went home today. Please complete and return.
2. March conference bookings open up on March 11th at 7am.
3, Scholastic book orders due back no later than Friday, March 6th.

Learning About the Past at the Glenbow Museum

Here are 3 new things that we learned about museums or the early days of Calgary.
1. "Today I learned that the Glenbow Museum has a rocks and minerals gallery and it looks very beautiful. My favorite mineral was the Opal and the meteorite." E.A.
2. "Today I learned about that used to build their houses out of wood, but they would catch on fire so they made them out of Sandstone." M.L.
3. "Today I learned that farmers used to put numbers and letters on cows so they don't get mixed up. I also learned what my birthstone was. It is a green emerald." P.D.

Exciting news!!! The Glenbow Museum is having a Community Day this Sunday, March 1st. You can go to the museum for FREE between 9am and 5pm.

Reminders:
1. Field study list went home yesterday. Thanks to those parents who have already emailed back to volunteer.

Pink Shirt Day!

Today in Room 2 many of us wore pink to recognize Pink Shirt Day. Do you know why we wear pink?
I'd encourage you talk with your child about what they did at school today to show kindness towards others-we had a lot of kindness moments today!

Tomorrow we are going to the Glenbow Museum. Please send a garbage free, non-heatable lunch with your child. Also a full water bottle.

3 Things We learned today:
1. "With Ms. Sarah we learned the 5 elements of photography. Here are some of the examples; symmetry which means symmetrical, another one called shapes, color, pattern and texture." A.C.
2. "In Music we learned a song called  Eau Claire de la Lune on the xylophones. Today we switched the instruments so that means we 'snaked.'" A.D.
3. "In Gym we learned a game where one person has a pinny and they tried to steal the puck from the other people. There is one goalie and the person with the pinny have to help the goalie." J.T.

Reminders:
1. Here is a list of upcoming field studies for the remainder of the year. I have indicated beside each if we need volunteers or not:
    a) Hull's Wood: Tuesday, March 10th in the a.m. Volunteers full.
    b) Apple Store: Wednesday, March 18th in the a.m. 2 more volunteers needed.
    c) Downtown Walk, Tuesday, April 14th in the p.m. 4 volunteers needed
    d) CPAWS at Nose Hill Park, Tuesday, April 21st all day. 2 more volunteers needed.
    e) Chinook Honey Farm, Thursday, May 7th all day. 4 volunteers needed.
    f) Weaselhead park, Wednesday, June 3rd all day. 4 volunteers needed.
    g) Heritage Park, Tuesday, June 16th all day. 4 volunteers needed.
If you would like to volunteer for any of these trips, please email me!
2. Bread making letter went home today. Please only return if YOU DO not want your child to participate.
3. Scholastic book orders went home today. Please return no later than Friday, March 6th.

How do we make flour?

Today we had our 2nd lesson about the farm. It was all about how we turn wheat into flour. We got to see all the different types of grain and crops that a farmer may grow. We then looked very carefully at wheat seeds. Mrs. Ramsay helped us to grind the seeds into real flour!

3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "In Social Studies we were thinking about what people did 120 years ago. I thought their clothing looked a bit weird and also I think they rode around with horse carriages and also their homes looked. like tipi's." F.O.
2. "With Mrs. Ramsay I learned how to make flour so we read a book called The Little Red Hen. The Little Red Hen was trying to plant and the animals said no when she asked them to help. The animals were not helping her and the little red hen said no when the animals wanted some of the bread." A.C.
3. "In Writer's Workshop I learned about the 4 Square Plan. It is to help them make a book." A.B.

Reminders:
1. Pink Shirt day tomorrow. Wear pink to show kindness!
2. Glenbow Museum field study on Thursday.
3. Apple Store field study on March 18th. We would appreciate 3 volunteers. This is a morning field study only.

Where does our Water Go?

We had an exciting Monday! We had 2 special guests-Green Calgary and Ms. Sarah.
We started our day with Green Calgary who presented us with the challenge of creating a community that would be able to have animals, people, buildings, roads and water. Where would we put each thing?
Then we had some toxins enter our communities-fertilizer, gasoline and old paint were 'poured' into our water systems. We got to see first hand what happens to not only our water, but the animals and people when these poisons enter our systems. We also learned where the water goes once it enters the drains. I'd encourage you to ask your child about ways to be resourceful with our water.
We had our first photography session with Ms. Sarah. Today we learned how the first camera worked and we actually made a human camera!

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Reminders:
1. Glenbow Museum field study this Thursday. I am still missing a handful of forms. Please return ASAP.
2. We are going to the Apple Store on March 18th in the morning. This field study will focus on learning new apps to help us enhance our writing. If you would like to volunteer, please email me.

Learning about Farming!

Today we were fortunate to have Mrs. Ramsay teach us about the process of planting, growing and harvesting grain. Many of us were very interested in the big machines used to help with this process. This is the first of 4 lessons Mrs. Ramsay will help us with as we learn how to make our own flour-just like they do in one of our Canadian communities, Saskatoon!


Reminders:
1. Pink Shirt Day on Wednesday, February 26th. Our focus will be around kindness and how wearing pink represents this.
2. Glenbow Museum Field Study forms due back now.
3. Science Home Journals went home today. Please finish responding and send back next week.

It's the 100th Day of School!

We had a lot of fun today celebrating the 100th day of school. Here was some of our favorite learning tasks around the number 100!
1. "Today in the 100th of school celebration we did 100 numbers sentences to make 100. I only did 30 and some people did 50, but no people got on the other side of the paper." F.O.
2. "In Science we were seeing if different materials like corks or straws could or float or sink." S.O.
3. "Today in the 100th day of School celebration we made crowns that we got to color and cut out. The crowns were about 'we are 100 days smarter than the first day of Grade 2." M.L.

Reminders:
1. Science Home Journals are due back. Tomorrow we get a new problem.
2. Fun snack tomorrow. It is pretzels.
3. Glenbow Museum fieldtrip forms due back tomorrow.

A early Celebration for the 100th Day of School

Today we did a little 'pre-celebration' to our 100th day of school which is tomorrow. This afternoon each Grade 2 teacher led an activity related to the number 100. I encourage you to ask your child what their favorite activity was and how it was connected to 100. They have also come home with some learning evidence from those activities.

We continue to work on showing kindness towards others, our classroom and ourselves. Room 2 has been working on 1st time listening. This is something that we all struggled with today. Miss. Krpan and Miss. Moore had to explain to students the importance of why we need to be good listeners and respectful towards others at school so that we can go on field studies out in public places. We will continue to try and 'catch kindness' in our room over the next several weeks.


3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "For our 100th Day Activity we went Room 11 and we pretended we had $100 bill and we wrote what we would buy with the $100 bill." A.B.
2. "In Math we did an estimation of how many cinnamon hearts would be in the bag. There were 684 hearts in the bag." M.L.

 
 3. "In Music we learned a new song on the xylophones." H.B.















Reminders:
1. Glenbow Museum field study forms are now due back.
2. GREEN Calgary in-school presentation letter went home today. Please read regarding cost of the presentation.
3. Fun snack on Friday. It is Around the Bend pretzels.

Float or Sink?

3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "In Science we had materials and we made hypotheses' about what would float and sink.We are going to use the water to test the materials tomorrow." A.B.
2. "In Gym we learned a new game and it's kind of like line tag but with hockey sticks. We are handling the sticks on lines and there are 4 or 5 people 'it'. You are walking on the lines and the tag people have to walk on the lines and have to tag you." J.T.
3. "In Math we learned a new strategy called regrouping. Our challenge was to draw and to write numbers and regroup." A.D.

Reminders:
1. Glenbow Museum forms went home today. Please complete and return A.S.A.P.

2. Fun Snack on Friday. It is Around the Bend Pretzels.

Happy Valentine's Day!

3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "In Art we painted a Valentine's painting with a heart. What was special was there was Math in it. The Math in it was doing patterns and the Science was how the black crayon didn't fade away when the paint went on top of it." R.L.
2. "In Math we guessed how many jube-jube hearts were in the bag." A.Z.
3. "In Gym we did passing in hockey. We learned to pass the puck properly by not slapping the puck." E.A.

This week we have been focusing on kindness. Your child should be bringing home a sheet today that we completed last week. It shows a goal that they created for themselves related to kindness. I have encouraged each child to have a conversation with Mom and/or Dad around their goal and whether or not they were able to meet it. If so, celebrate and set a new goal! If not, what changes could they make to hopefully work on it next week.

Enjoy your long weekend! I encourage you to join many other people who are doing a No-Tech Family Day. How could you plan to spend Family Day with no technology involved?

Reminders:
1. No school Thursday, Friday or Monday.
2. Thank you for those of you willing to volunteer. We now have enough volunteers for our trips to Hulls Wood and the Glenbow Museum.
3. Shortly after February 21st the Grade 2 team will be sending home a list of the remaining field studies for the year. This should hopefully help out with your planning on volunteering for future trips.

How Does Our Heart Pump Blood?

3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "In Science we did a mystery problem. How does your heart pump blood? We got to make a paper that says everything you need to know. Our heart does not look like a Valentine's Day heart." M.L.
2. "In Math we learned that = can mean balanced, the same or equals." R.L.
3. "In Music we watched a video of a domino chain reaction. It taught us that if one domino knocked another domino, it would keep repeating until the last domino knocked. We saw cool stuff like Super Mario and Minecraft and Sonic." O.C.

Reminders:
1. Fun lunch tomorrow. It is Little Caesars.
2. Valentine exchange tomorrow.

Catching You with Kindness!

We have begun focusing on what the = sign means in Math. Many of us believe that it means 'total' or 'answer'. Today we did an activity using a balance scale to help us understand that = means 'the same' or 'equals'. We were also introduced to the ≠ sign as well. We will use these understandings as we move forwards with addition and subtraction using higher numbers.

During Science we tested 4 different materials to find out if they were absorbent or not. Wax paper, cotton ball, paper plate and styrofoam. We found that wax paper was the only material not absorbent. Tomorrow we will look at why.

We ended our day making Kindness bags. These bags will stay in our classroom to be filled with 'caught with kindness' slips. Every time someone catches us doing something 'kind' we will receive a kindness slip!


Reminders:
1. We are still needing 1L and 500ml plastic bottles. If you have some you could donate, we'd appreciate it!
2. We are doing our Valentine exchange on Wednesday, February 12th. Please ensure you have a Valentine for every student in Room 2.

Designing our Water Filters

3 Things We Learned in Room 2 Today:
1. "In Inquiry we were drawing what materials we needed to build a water filter." S.O.
2. In our Science Home Journals the question was  Our of these 4 materials which of these do you think absorbs the best: sock, paper towel, bath towel and wax paper?' I said bath towel because it was made to absorb stuff." D.T.
3. "In Read Aloud we started a new book called Ralph S. Mouse. Ralph with his relatives and they always want a turn on his motorcycle." A.H.

We need your help! If you have some water bottles or pop bottles to use to build our water filters. If you have extras at home that you would be willing to donate, Room 2 would greatly appreciate it!

Reminders:
1. Please bring your Valentine's to school on Wednesday, February 12th. A list of names went home this week.

Is Snow Clean?

3 Things We Learned Today:
"In Inquiry we learned that tomorrow we are going to make a water filter out of items in the iLab. We learned that in some places in the world, like Bali, the water is dirty and not safe to drink."  H.B.
"In Gym our new game was called Hoarding Squirrels. We used a hockey stick to get a puck or beanbag out of the middle to our hula hoop." A.C.
"In our Kindness lesson we read a book called 'How to Loose Your Friends' and one of the ways is be a bully. We also had a goal by doing something kind for someone at Maple Ridge school or at home." K.O.

We were quite surprised to find out that the snow we collected that we thought was clean, actually had tiny pieces of dirt particles in it! Now we know why it's so important not to eat snow!
We also had a discussion around the fact that some people don't have access to clean water like we do in Canada. We now have the challenge of designing a water filter to hopefully create clean water that would be safe to drink and use!

Homework: I need to think about the materials I will use to build our water filter. The materials need to come from the iLab.

Reminders:
1. Fun snack tomorrow. It is Cobbs.
2. Thank you everyone for your willingness to volunteer. We are now full for our trips to the Glenbow Museum (February 27th) and Hull's Woods (March 10th).
3. Nose Hill/CPAWS field study on April 21st. Volunteers needed.

The Kindness Challenge

Over the next week students will be participating in a 'Kindness Challenge' at school and at home. We introduced this challenge through the book: More Yarn. It was a great book and demonstrated the power of kindness. Each student has chosen something around kindness to work on this week.

 Today we also focused on strengthening on reasoning in Math through using our observations and what we know to explain our thinking.
We also answered a new question: Is snow clean? We will be doing this experiment tomorrow to find out!

Reminders:
1. Fun snack this Friday. It is Cobbs.
2. Teacher's Convention next Thursday and Friday. No school
3. We need volunteers for our trip to the Glenbow Museum on February 27th. It is a full day field study.
4. Morning field study to Hull's Wood on March 10th. We need volunteers please!

Why the paperclip floated-we know!

3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "In Science we made another thing out of paper towel, except this time we had 4 choices to choose from; A big flat square, a small piece of paper towel, a paper boat and a wrap. We learned that the reason those floated was because of their density and surface tension." A.C.
2. "In Math we did a dot problem. The problem was 'how many dots there will be after the last ding? Today we also got a clue. The clue was there were were four more dings after the screen went black." P.D.
3. "In Music learned how to split a whole note into half notes and then we split the half notes into quarter notes and then we split the quarter notes into ti-ti's, and then the 'ti-ti's and then we split the 'ti-ti's into tikka tikkas. Then we split the tikka tikkas into 32nd notes. Then we played a game called Poison Rythym." M.C.

Reminders:
1. No school next Thursday or Friday.

How do you get a paperclip to float?

3 Things We Learned Today:
1. "In Science we were trying to figure out how to make a paper towel get a paper clip to float. Some of us folded it, and some of us cut it. Some of the paper towels worked. Tomorrow we are going to try and figure out why only certain ones worked. Some of our predictions were the shape, how flat they were and how light were." A.C.
2."In  Gym we started playing hockey. We learned how to hold the hockey stick and how to stick handle." K.O.
3. "In Social Studies we learned how other communities take care of their communities. In Meteghan they clean up garbage on the beach." V.C.

Reminders:

We have several field studies we need volunteers for:
1. Glenbow Museum: February 27th all day
2. Hull's Wood: March 10th morning only
Please email Miss. Moore if you can help us out.
3. We will be doing a Valentine exchange on Wednesday, February 12th in the afternoon.