Eric Wilson

Today we were honoured to welcome a special guest to our school: Eric Wilson! Mr. Wilson is a famous writer! He writes mystery novels for children that are set in Canadian cities. He came to talk to us about his life as an author, how he got started, and how we can improve our own writing. He was a lot of fun! 

Acting out with Mr. Wilson

Holding some posters for one of his best-sellers!

We answered some trivia questions and got his autograph on a postcard if we won!

Here's a link to his website! http://www.ericwilson.com/

Learning Through the Arts!

Today we had our first of three visits with our new friend Lynne Mulvihill. Lynne is an architect and came to help us build 3D maps of Canada. She taught us how to draw Canada, free-hand, and then gave us materials to represent the different geographical regions.  Over the next two classes we will be adding homes to the map that represent traditional Indigenous homes (different homes from different regions), and weather systems as well.  We can't wait to see how they turn out!

Rocks to represent the Rockies

Adding parsley to represent short grass of the interior and raffia to represent the prairie grasslands

Placing little trees and red soil to represent the eastern woodlands

Adding small rocks and soil to represent the western subarctic

1st class completed!

Safety First!

This past week has been all about the safety! We talked about fire safety with Mr. Sarah's in gym, bullying and personal safety with our school resource officer Cst. Cain, online safety with our guidance counsellor Mrs. D. Lockhart, and even bus safety with our favourite bus driver, Bob! All very, very important stuff! 

Constable Cain talking about personal safety and bullying

On the bus...

...and off the bus!

We read these magazines with Mrs. Lockhart

Discussing in groups about what we would do

Babies & Ice!

Today was a crazy Wednesday! We got to meet our Roots of Empathy baby, Henry, for the first time...

Henry & his Mom walked around our circle to meet everyone!

Mrs. Lockhart talking about how babies develop and what they need to grow!

We measured Henry! He was 20 inches when he was born; now he's 24 inches!

Today also marked the first day of the Winnipeg Jets Hockey Academy! Half of our class attends (the other half stays at school for enrichment activities in technology!)  We had to 're-learn' how to skate, as we haven't been on the ice for a long time!

Listening to our coaches

The girls are ready to go!

Stick handling drills

It was a busy day! Before we knew it, the day was over!

Wild About Books!

Today we read a really great book! It's called...

Wild About Books by Judy Sierra

It's a rhyming book about a bookmobile (a library on wheels) that travels to the zoo to introduce the animals there to reading! It mentioned some books that we enjoy, such as Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter.  The author made some connections between reading and writing in the story that we discuss a lot in our class; as the animals read more and more, they started to write their own stories.  Mrs. Waters is always telling us that reading helps you become a better writer!  It inspires you!

In other news today, we got our homework folders sent home for the first time!  We discussed the homework as a class, and there are also instructions for parents inside the folder.  Tune into the blog tomorrow, as our class is creating a 'How To Do Homework in Room 23' video! 

You can also email Mrs. Waters if you need further instructions!

Place Value

We started a new unit in math this week!  Place value is an essential concept in math; it's the foundation  for all number operations!  

In math class, kids need to know how to say a number, how to write it in standard form, how to expand it into place value, and how to represent it in a variety of ways.  In grade 4, students are expected to work with numbers up to 10 000, and grade 5's up to 1 000 000. 

In our math class today we had a fun scavenger hunt!  Twenty-four cards with Base 10 block pictures were hidden around the room.  The students had to find all of these cards, and write the number in standard form on their sheet.  It was great to move around the class, and a bit of a challenge to find all of the cards! Here are some photos from our hunting!

Don't forget that there is no school on Monday, and an early dismissal on Tuesday!  Have a great Thanksgiving!

Trick or Treat!

We did a countdown today! There are exactly 21 days (3 weeks) until Halloween! That means we need to get our costumes organized, including Mrs. Waters. She's not sure what she's going to wear, so she asked for our opinions! We had some ideas, and so we decided to turn it into a class book! Mrs. Waters gave us a paper with her head on it, and this is what we did!

Mrs. Waters has some thinking to do!

Roots of Empathy & Other Things...

We had a great day today!

Mrs. Lockhart came to Room 23 this morning for our very first Roots of Empathy class!  She is an expert in teaching this course, and we're all very excited for it! Our baby this year is Henry, and just happens to be Mrs. Waters' nephew!  We talked about babies and what they need, and brainstormed some questions we can ask Henry's Mom when they come for the first visit next Wednesday!

We can't wait!

For more information about the Roots of Empathy program, check out their website: www.rootsofempathy.org

We had picture day today! We all looked our best and gave our biggest smiles to the camera!

We did some cartooning this afternoon!  We had to create the dialogue to match the pictures 

that Mrs. Waters gave us! There were some pretty funny ones!

We have a new board above our classroom library where we can recommend books to our classmates!

It didn't take long for some titles to pop up once Mrs. Waters told us about it!

If we're trying to find a good book to read, we'll use this board for ideas.

Art Project!

Today we had Anishinaabe artist (and friend) Elaine McIntosh back to visit! Our class got to know her last year from our work with Project Of Heart.  We were very lucky to have her back today!  We got to do a really fun art project with her!

Elaine drew a huge picture that illustrates the Anishinabe Creation story and the Tree of Life onto a big piece of plywood.  Then she cut it up into individual tiles.  We each got a tile to paint with acrylic paints.  We had no idea what part of the picture we got!  After they finish drying, Elaine will put the pieces back together in the proper order and frame it!  It will be a piece that we will hang permanently in the entrance of Heritage School!

We cannot wait until we get to see the finished product!

Thanks again Elaine!

Painting in progress...

Here are the tiles, drying in the lab!

Stay tuned for photos of the finished product!