Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t give only your care, but give your heart as well –Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Saturday 25 January 2014

Week 18!

We celebrated Francis as our star student this week!

January is a wonderful time in grade two as the children start to use much of their learning to show what they know.  The students get excited when they know it is a "Making Words Day".  Our making words lessons are such a joy to watch and be part of.  Listening to the children use their phonics knowledge to create words and manipulate letters is amazing.  This week our mystery word was the compound word, oatmeal.   This word is a very tricky word to work with and the students did a great job!
We continued working on making number sentences up to 18 using manipulatives.
We earned our vanilla scoop on our way to our banana split.
We learned that most of our class likes to read non-fiction books.
 The students worked very hard on their dioramas of Iqaluit, Meteghan, and Saskatoon this week.  Next week, I'll post all the finished products.  I think you'll be very impressed!

We celebrated Acadian Day at the end of the week!



We know that Acadian people eat lots of seafood so we made a crab craft.
We talked about what Acadian homes were like long ago.
In the afternoon we were treated to a presentation about Acadian life long ago.
We learned about the Acadian lifestyle.
 Maggie has a tiny butter churn  to show that Acadian people churned their own butter.
 Cameron has a tiny wooden bucket because Acadian people would have used wooden buckets to collect water from a well.
 Theodore has a tiny washboard because Acadian people didn't have electric washing machines like we do.
 Victoria has a tiny watering can that Acadian people would have used to water the many vegetables they grew in their gardens to feed their families.
We learned that Acadian people made their own clothing and rugs. They started with wool.
They carded the raw wool.
This is what the carded wool looks like.
 Once the wool was carded it was dyed.  Then they used a loom to create useful items like rugs.
We got to explore what weaving was like by paper weaving.

 McKenna's Nana came to help us learn about what Acadian children did.
We played games that Acadian children played long ago.
Maggie's mom helped us make butter. 
Finally, we ended our day listening to Acadian music and playing along with wooden spoons.  It was a wonderful day of exploring Acadian culture.

 We had another busy week in grade two!