Jeans Day!

Lots of support for Children's Hospital Foundation at Katzie! Today is Jeans Day!

Creative Learning with Book Creator

Grade 4 students have been working on a book about a sea animal and today they were delighted to share their creations with Grade 1 students! We used the Book Creator app and the students were very proud of their finished books! They learned how to search for and save an image, add text and resize it, add their own drawings, take a selfie, record their book and upload it to the iBook shelf on the iPad.  Primary students were very interested in learning about the animals the Grade 4 students had researched.  We all learned a lot!

Inspired by Surrey Picture Book Nominee, The Hermit Crab, by Carter Goodrich, Grade 4's created their own nonfiction book about an animal that lives in the sea.

Monkey Traps and More!

This week the Kindergarten and Grade 1 classes are enjoying the book, Warning: Do Not Open This Book!, written by Adam Lehrhaupt and illustrated by Matthew Forsythe.  How would you catch a monkey? Well, with a trap, of course! Students created monkey traps out of Lego, Tinkertoys or Jenga blocks and then explained how their trap worked while I projected it on the Apple TV with my iPad. Take a look at some of the traps! And then check out the author's website.  There's a great book trailer for you to watch!

The Grade 2 and 3 students are loving Marsupial Sue and the Runaway Pancake, written and read by John Lithgow and illustrated by Jack E. Davis.  After listening to the cd of John Lithgow reading the story (very funny!), we talked about what kind of animal Marsupial Sue is and where we would find books on mammals in our library. We looked at a nonfiction book on kangaroos and discovered that mammals are found in 599. This led to our activity of sorting the animal pictures onto the "shelf" they would be found on. I had 4 students hold up the Dewey number cards (see the photo), and then each student was given a card with an animal on it. They had to decide which shelf they would be found on and stand behind that Dewey number.  Many students chose animal books to sign out! 

A fun way to learn about Dewey!

Making connections with littlebits!

This week we have been working with our new littlebits kits which we received through a grant from My Class Needs. I don't think I've ever seen students more engaged in their learning! After learning about the need for a power source, (a 9 volt battery), students worked together in table teams to "make something that does something", the littlebits slogan. Check out this video on youtube to learn more about littlebits or ask one of the students who have worked with them!  

Spring into Reading!

Come to the Book Fair in Room 139!  

Spring is upon us, here on the west coast of Canada, and our PAC is hosting a book fair next week! This is a fundraiser for the library so every book purchased helps our library to buy new books.  Why not hop on down to the book fair and spring into reading?!

Beautiful colour wheel flowers have sprouted in the library learning commons!

Like mice?  Look for the mice stories on display this week.

Be Kind!

Today is anti bullying day! We had a wonderful assembly where many classes presented songs, poems and stories to teach us all to be kind to others. The choir sang beautifully and I was so proud of them!  (Our music teacher, Mrs. McReavy and I practice with the choir every Wednesday at lunch.)   I was amazed at the variety of pink shirts today so I've made a pic collage of some of them.
Here's a link to the video we watched: http://safeshare.tv/w/mevNbNFYmC
Did you participate in Pink Shirt Day?  Tell us what you did in the comments below!

Learning through Play

This week we have been exploring symmetry and being creative with the iPad app,  Geoboard by The Math Learning Center.  Students were challenged to make their name, an object, or a design and just play with the app. There were many "aha" moments as students figured out how to use the many features of the app. You can try out Geoboard on your computer or download the app.  It's free!

Here are some of their creations:

Have you tried Geoboard?