Living those beach dreams as we look outside at the dreary winter weather. We took the solar system to the sky in our classroom this week, creating planet mobiles to hang from the ceiling. The results may not be 100% to scale, but we are quite pleased with the results. A big “merci” goes out to our big buddies for helping us tie a lot of string! Next time Madame will need to remember to make it shorter. Tuesday was our walking field trip to the Pitt Meadows Library! We thoroughly enjoyed this experience, from the crazy interactive story that we did with the librarian, to checking out all the many different styles of Rubik’s cubes, all of the activities available, picking out the perfect book… The trip was given a resounding “thumbs up”! And did you know you can borrow Rubik’s cubes, telescopes, binoculars, and music-making tech from the library?? Madame definitely learned some things, too, on this trip! And happy February! How are we here already? It wouldn’t be the beginning of February without checking in on our groundhog friends. We read a French book to review this silly North American tradition and then, with the help of a flashlight, learned about what makes shadows appear or not appear. Thanks to YouTube, we were able to check in on our furry friends across Canada and it seems that the overall consensus is that we are in for 6 more weeks of winter. Boo!... let’s bring out the beach day wear for longer and continue to live in our dream world. The "Castors" team in our class was awarded with medals today for bringing in the top points for our group challenges so far this year. Bravo! We sang their team chant and applauded all their hard work. Next week we will restart at "0" for another set of challenges. In Math, we have learning about what it actually means when 9 + 1 “equals” 10, for example. …both sides of the equation are balanced, just like on a scale. We had fun playing with Madame’s monkey scale to see what kinds of equations and other random things we could manage to balance. In Art, we are going to start spotlighting some famous artists and their best known pieces. We started today with Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night". We learned a bit about Van Gogh's life and history and then made some observations about the brushstrokes in his art. We noticed that he used short brushstrokes that all go in the same direction and that he blended colours. We had fun using oil pastels to try to create a similar effect. It was especially fun to blend the colours and some of us even tried some different techniques like scratching the pastels with our fingernails or a paperclip to reveal bits of colour that we had layered. We didn't all attempt to stay true to Van Gogh's colour scheme, but that's okay! It's our own interpretation of an artistic idea. In French, Madame continues to push us to write more, more, more! Some of us are really getting good at filling a page, and not just with randomly placed words, but actual thought-out sentences. Is the spelling perfect? NO!... but we don’t care! At this stage, even in Grade 2, Madame is more concerned with “inventive spelling” which shows that we actually understand how letter sounds and combinations work to be able to piece together words and make meaning. Proper spelling rules will be taught in later years, once we have grasped the preliminary mechanics. You can't build an engine properly and reliably if you don't first understand how/why the parts fit together. Extra photos...
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