February 28

Good afternoon,

This morning in gym, students practiced their jump rope skills. It was great that some tried jumping in different ways: alternating feet, both feet at the same time, or one foot at a time. In your son or daughter's home folder (or backpack) you will find a fundraising envelope for the Heart & Stroke Foundation. It is Jump Rope for Heart's 35th anniversary so they are hoping for each class to raise at least $1 per student. We can do this! A large heart sticker will be given to students to write names on of people who they might jump rope for so they could have a healthy heart. I shared with them how my father had a heart attack (twice!) because he did not have a healthy heart. Now that he is 75, he eats his fruits and vegetables, exercises daily, sleeps a lot, and drinks a lot of water.

In Math, students were given a couple of "helping hands". Each finger had numbers 1 - 10 written on them. Students were given instructions to follow, which were given verbally and also written on the flip chart with my amazing illustrations:
1. Write your name on the hands.
2. Trace the numbers in dark pencil, crayon, marker.
3. Colour in the hand...feel free to make a pattern.
4. Cut out the hands.
5. Glue it into the last page of your math journals.
These hands and fingers will be there to help students count on!

We talked about seasons and what season we are currently in, and how seasons are a pattern; they repeat. A side note is that when the students were chanting "winter, spring, summer..." they almost all said "autumn". This is great as most people tend to say fall. On chart paper, I wrote the word "Winter" in the middle, and divided the sheet into four sections:
1. What do people wear and do in this season?
2. What do animals do?
3. What is happening to the trees and plants?
4. What is the weather like?
I also shared with them that when I worked overseas, my students did not know all the seasons as it was spring or summer the entire year! Wouldn't that be interesting? Calgary with no winter?

Ethan shared a story he wrote about dogs, and everyone really enjoyed hearing his chapters read aloud. We talked about our own creative writing club in our classroom and many students were excited about this idea. After this reading, we talked about characters. What are they? What do they do? How do we know someone or something is a character? What is an example of something that is not a character? We all found a book, sat in a reading circle and silently tapped a friend's shoulder and gave them a thumb up or nod as we pointed to a character, and a thumb down or head shake for something that was not a character found in our books.

Tomorrow is library day!

Have a great evening.

Ms. Cokar