Pancake Day!

Happy Pancake Day!!

Today, we were so lucky to have Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Elgie, Mrs. Parkinson and Ms. DeYoung work with our Busy Bees to make pancakes for Pancake Day! We worked on following a recipe, measuring, safety around cooking devices and of course, eating pancakes!! Thank you to these wonderful ladies for your time to make this work for these special events for our little ones!  

Following our pancake making, we did a cut and paste procedural task after we made our pancakes to really learn that order is important on the way we do things! This is leading into more procedural writing tasks we will be doing. 

We also did some non-fiction reading about Pancake Day! Why do we celebrate it? Where did it come from? Do people all over the world celebrate this? Remember to ask our little ones all about it what we learned with our non fiction reading and reading response today. 

For our word work today, students had a word search with the challenge to find the word pancake as many times as possible! Some of us learned there were some tricky ways to spell pancake so we really had to look at the whole word to make sure we found one! We have accepted the challenge to see how many times we can find the word on our activity page! Our current record to beat is 28 times! 

Valentine's Day with the Busy Bees!

We have enjoyed some good fiction stories about Valentine's Day this week. We have also read a non-fiction book about Valentine's Day. We certainly have learned some facts about Valentine's Day too! Ask us what we have learned! 

We have had lots of Valentine activities the past week and topped it off today with even more! We have had a day full of smiles and our hearts are full! Thank you to all the special valentines shared today. It made the day full of excitement as students were able to give and receive some kind messages.

We also received a special package today! We had written a letter to another class in a different school in St. Marys asking us to be our penpals! And today, they sent a package back with a big letter to our class AND a Valentine's Day card and letter to each of us! We are excited to write back and make a new friend!

What a way to top off this exciting week full of special events! Happy Valentine's Day to you all and enjoy the long weekend with your family! See you on Tuesday for more learning excitement for Pancake Day! 

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!! 

This week, we had been exploring some learning about fiction and non fiction books with our Thanksgiving theme. Ask our little friends about some of the differences as we read our own books. With our non-fiction reading, we wanted to share some of facts we have learned about Canadian Thanksgiving:

• He sailed to Canada from England and he was thankful for a safe journey. (Tom D)

• We gather with our family for Thanksgiving. (Claire)

• We get food on Thanksgiving. (Madelyn)

• We have foods like turkey, pumpkins, squash and apples. (Raiden)

• We are thankful for all the food we have. (Rowan)

• We are thankful for the toys we get. (Ethan)

• Thanksgiving is you eat food and pumpkin pie.(Jack)

• We celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October. (Mrs. Herbert)

• We celebrated the first Thanksgiving over 500 years ago. (Mrs. Herbert)

We did some art this week of fall trees with a focus on perspective and warm colours. They have also been posted to our Seesaw Portfolios as well. 

Also this week, our Shared Reading was a poem for Thanksgiving called Thankful. We are becoming fluent and expressive readers. 

We have had lots of Thanksgiving themed activities this week and more to come next week after we have celebrated this weekend! 

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! Enjoy your weekend! 

Orange Shirt Day

  

This past Tuesday, we came together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools for younger students. 

We learned about the history behind Orange Shirt Day to honour just some of these stories of residential schools and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

The following day, we read this story to refresh our memories before we created our own Orange Shirts with our own message:

Afterwards, we wrote a message on our orange shirt posters about how we show empathy for their experiences. 

We are listening, honouring and respecting.

Pancake Day!

Happy Pancake Day!!

Today, we were so lucky to have Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Vandenbrink and Ms. Jongerden work with our Busy Bees to make pancakes for Pancake Day! We worked on following a recipe, measuring, safety around cooking devices and of course, eating pancakes!! Thank you to these wonderful ladies for your time to make this work for these special events for our little ones!  

Following our pancake making, we did a cut and paste procedural task after we made our pancakes to really learn that order is important on the way we do things! This is leading into more procedural writing tasks we will be doing. 

We also did some non-fiction reading about Pancake Day! Why do we celebrate it? Where did it come from? Do people all over the world celebrate this? Remember to ask our little ones all about it what we learned with our non fiction reading and reading response today. 

For our word work today, students had a word search with the challenge to find the word pancake as many times as possible! Some of us learned there were some tricky ways to spell pancake so we really had to look at the whole word to make sure we found one! We have accepted the challenge to see how many times we can find the word on our activity page! Our current record to beat is 26 times! 

Valentine's Day with the Busy Bees!

We have enjoyed some good fiction stories about Valentine's Day this week. We have also read a non-fiction book about Valentine's Day. We certainly have learned some facts about Valentine's Day too! Ask us what we have learned! 

We have had lots of Valentine activities the past week and topped it off today with even more! We have had a day full of smiles and our hearts are full! Thank you to all the special valentines shared today. It made the day full of excitement as students were able to give and receive some kind messages. For those not able to come today because of the bus cancellation, we will be able to share your things next week to extend the acts of kindness! 

What a way to top off Valentine's Day with a long weekend with your family! Enjoy and see you on Tuesday! 

Grade 1/2 Advent Calendar

Orange Shirt Day

 

This past Monday, we came together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools. 

We learned about the history behind Orange Shirt Day to honour just some of these stories of residential schools and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

Afterwards, we wrote a message on our orange shirt posters about how we show empathy for their experiences. 

We are listening, honouring and respecting.

Mrs. Pregent Visit!!

The Grade 1 Busy Bee class was fortunate to have Mrs. Pregent and do some wonderful teaching with us this week! She brought along a very large floor map that took up a lot of the gym showing the locations of Indigenous communities across Canada. This was a great introduction to the treaty/territory that we live, work and play one. We learned some new words, such as baamaapii and Miigwech! We also learned more about Mother Earth and how we need to take care of her. There were some amazing cultural traditions of song and dance that Mrs. Pregent shared that we were gave a try. Miigwech Mrs. Pregent!! We look forward to you visiting again for more cultural teachings!

Valentine's Day with the Busy Bees!

We have enjoyed some good fiction stories about Valentine's Day this week. We have also read a non-fiction book about Valentine's Day. We certainly have learned some facts about Valentine's Day too! Ask us what we have learned! 

We have had lots of Valentine activities the past week and topped it off today with even more! We have had a day full of smiles and our hearts are full! Thank you to all the special valentines shared today. It made the day full of excitment as students were able to give and receive some kind messages. 

Pancake Day!!

Happy Pancake Day!!

Today, we were so lucky to have Mrs. Paxton, Ms. Riddell and Ms. Carr come in and work with our Busy Bees to make pancakes for Pancake Day! We worked on following a recipe, measuring, safety around cooking devices and of course, eating pancakes!! Thank you to these wonderful ladies for your time to make this work for these special events for our little ones!  

Following our pancake making, we did a cut and paste procedural task after we made our pancakes to really learn that order is important on the way we do things! This is leading into more procedural writing tasks we will be doing. 

We also did some non-fiction reading about Pancake Day! Why do we celebrate it? Where did it come from? Do people all over the world celebrate this? Remember to ask our little ones all about it what we learned with our non fiction reading and reading response today. 

For our word work today, students had a word search with the challenge to find the word pancake as many times as possible! Some of us learned there were some tricky ways to spell pancake so we really had to look at the whole word to make sure we found one! We have accepted the challenge to see how many times we can find the word on our activity page! Our current record to beat is 24 times! 

Orange Shirt Day

This past Friday, we came together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools. 

We learned about the history behind Orange Shirt Day to honour just some of these stories of residential schools and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

Afterwards, we wrote a message on our orange shirt posters about how we show empathy for their experiences. 

We are listening, honouring and respecting.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

This week we have been learning about fiction and non fiction books. We were looking at different Thanksgiving books to help us with our learning. 

We read several Thanksgiving non-fiction books and we were learning lots of true facts about Thanksgiving. Here are some of the facts we learned:

* That is happens on the second Monday of October. (Emerson)

* You show love and care on the second Monday. (Audrey)

* I learned on the second Monday there is Thanksgiving days. (Bryson)

* That we spend time with family. (Blane)

* On the second Monday you have to be kind because its a special day. (Reiner)

* It is a time to celebrate for all the food that's harvest. (Madelyn)

* You celebrate with your family. (Sophia)

* I never knew that Thanksgiving wasn't always a holiday in October. (Tanner)

* Thanksgiving was started 500 years and I didn't know that. (Jacob)

* We eat pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. (Evelynn)

* You use a cornucopia for foods that been harvested. (Ryker)

* I am thankful for the watermelon. (Victoria)

We also read many Thanksgiving fiction stories this week and are learning the parts of the story, called the story elements. One story, we read was The Great Turkey Race. 

After we read this silly story, we talked about the story elements and recorded them together on our Thanksgiving reading response paper.

We did some art this week of a turkey after we read our story! We were focusing on following orally instructions as we listened to 'How to Draw a Thanksgiving Turkey'. Here are some of our finished art pieces. They have also been posted to our All About Me Digital Portfolios. 

Also this week, our Shared Reading was a poem for Thanksgiving. We are becoming fluent and expressive readers. This weekend, for their Home Activity, students will be filling in what they are thankful for to make their own little Thanksgiving poem.

Lots of Thanksgiving themed activities this week and more to come next week after we have celebrated this weekend! 

 

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! 

Orange Shirt Day

Today, we come together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools. 

We learned about the story behind Orange Shirt Day to honour these stories and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

Afterwards, we wrote a message on our orange shirt posters about how we show empathy for their experiences. 

We are listening, honouring and respecting.

Social Studies - Our Community!

The Grade 1/2s have been exploring our community in preparation for getting to know more about our country, Canada, and more countries around the world!

To get to learn more about St. Marys and area, we have been using the website Picture St. Marys, which houses digitized copies of the St. Marys Museum's photo and postcard collections. We wanted to see what things looked like, and how people may have done things 100 or more years ago, and these photos helped tell us a lot!

Do you recognize where this was taken? Click the photo for the answer!

Mrs. Stemmler showed various obvious buildings around town (the town hall, Anstett/Andrew's Jeweler building, Opera House), and even showed off buildings that no longer exist (a hotel where Circle K is now, the flour mill attached to the Opera House with train tracks behind). 

This building no longer exists. Can you guess what it once was? Click the picture to find out!

We even looked for old one room school houses, as we learned that a lot of children in rural areas, would attend a one-room school with every grade in one room! None of us could imagine how strange that would be, being in a room with Grade 8 students! Here were some we saw: Rannoch, Brown's School, Blanshard, Downie & East Nissouri Union School, Stone School.

Anyone recognize this building? Click the photo for the answer!

Some of the students wanted to explore more pictures of area buildings and people, so be sure to take a look at Picture St. Marys. If you're able to answer any of the Mysteries (where something was taken, or who the people in the photo are), be sure to let the St. Marys Museum know!

Now, the students didn't believe Mrs. Stemmler when she said that she used to work for the St. Marys Museum, and they wanted some photo evidence! So here are a couple pieces of evidence!

One of the many summers Mrs. Stemmler (far right, back row) was a student employee and ran children's programs.

Inside the Woodshed, the year Mrs. Stemmler (right) made the Picture St. Marys website :)

Have fun exploring the Picture St. Marys website! Let me know if you find anything exciting!

Orange Shirt Day

 

Today, we come together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools. 

We learned about the story behind Orange Shirt Day to honour these stories and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

Afterwards, we wrote a message on our orange shirt posters about how we show empathy for their experiences. 

We are listening, honouring and respecting. 

Thanksgiving Facts

This week we have been learning about fiction and non fiction books. We were looking at different Thanksgiving books to help us with our learning. 

We read a Thanksgiving non-fiction book and we were learning lots of true facts about Thanksgiving. There are some of the facts we learned:

* I didn't know there was baskets that looked like horns that are called cornucopia. (Saskia)

* I didn't know that there was a huge turkey that weighed 86lbs. (Harper)

* I didn't know there were big parades in New York. (Scarlett)

* I didn't know that explorers made Thanksgiving. (Edwin)

* I didn't know that some people called Thanksgiving Turkey Day. (Logan)

* I didn't know that people went on ships to go to Canada. (Landon)

* I didn't know that Thanksgiving is a different day in the United States. (Sylvie & Ms. King)

* I didn't know that Thanksgiving was for sharing things that you are thankful for. (Hannah)

* I didn't know they didn't name Canada, Canada for a long time. (Ryan)

* People have pumpkin pies on Thanksgiving. (Edwin)

* I didn't know that there was colourful corned called maize. (Landon)

* I didn't know that England people moved around because they didn't like what the King said. (Leia)

* I didn't know that people watch football games on Thanksgiving. (Ryan)

We also read many Thanksgiving fiction stories this week and are learning the parts of the story, called the story elements. Today, we read The Great Thanksgiving Escape. 

After we read this silly story, we talked about the story elements and recorded them on our Thanksgiving reading response paper.

Also this week, our Shared Reading was a poem for Thanksgiving. Here we are after many days of learning it and focusing on different topics each day. We are becoming fluent and expressive readers. 

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! 

Orange Shirt Day - Every Child Matters

Today, we come together to participate in Orange Shirt Day. This day is an annual event held on each September 30th in remembrance of the Canadian Residential School system and the impact of this government policy on First Nations. 

To learn a little bit about Orange Shirt Day, the students in the Busy Bee class read this story as an introduction.

Based on a true story, it provides an introduction to the stories of the negative experiences of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit attending residential schools. 

We learned about the story behind Orange Shirt Day to honour these stories and watched this short clip about why we wear an orange shirt today. 

Afterwards, we wrote a message to the main character, Olemaun, a girl from the Arctic to send her a message about how we show empathy for her experience. These will be posted up at the school this week.