Today we celebrated Literacy Day with the whole school. We were divided into four different groups and each group focused on a different country. Students in kindergarten to grade seven worked together to learn more about India, Egypt, Kenya, and Vietnam.

In our groups we used books from the library and information from the internet to research ideas for the books we would create about our countries. Our books were modeled after the example Mrs. Walker, our librarian, read us. It was titled, We’re Sailing to Galapagos written by Laurie Krebs. We brainstormed ideas and worked together to create the cut paper illustrations and the text for each page.

After lunch we all got together and each group shared their book with the rest of the students. All of the students did an amazing job!

The students in Mrs. Watson’s group also added their pages to a VoiceThread so that they could embed their book on their blogs.

To finish the day everyone buddied up and found a spot to read the great books Mrs. Walker had for us to take home. It was the perfect ending to a great day.

A huge thank you to Mrs. Walker for organizing such a wonderful day for all of us!

The students did a wonderful job blogging about our visit from Tracey and the delivery of the salmon eggs we raise each year, and so it seemed only fitting that one of them had their post published on our class blog. You can read all the other wonderful posts about the salmon by following the links to our students blogs in the right sidebar.

Today my school made 100 new fish friends. Here are some facts I want you to know:

1. They first start in an Egg but they start to grow and turn into an Eyed Egg, then an Alevin, then Fry, and then finally an adult and the last thing they turn into is a Spawner and that is when they head back to where they started, lay eggs, and die

2. Their eggs are pinkish orange not red

3. A lot of things like salmon like birds, bears, and bigger fish

4. The mom fish likes to find a safe place to lay her eggs

5. The fish have something in their head that tells them where to go to find home

6. The Alevin have a lunch box called an yolk sack

7. The place we let the salmon go is in a creek

8. When the ocean and the creek meet it is called a estuary

9. When a bear eats a salmon it rips it apart and the left over salmon feeds trees

10. When the fish are fry they start to look like a proper fish

A few minutes ago I put my 2 eggs in and named them Mage and Japana.

I love salmon!


Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

We started this art project last Friday and finished this week. The funny thing was, that the very next day the snow started and it actually stayed around for a whole week. We may need to do winter themed art more often!

The first week we painted the sky and the ice. We added salt to the sky to make it look like snow and we used Saran Wrap to make the blue look like ice. The students were all amazed when they lifted up the plastic wrap and saw the interesting texture it left behind.

This Friday, we made our polar bears. We used recycled meat trays to create our polar bears for printing. We didn’t have any brayers and so we had to brush the paint on with brushes. We think they turned out great and we hope you like them too!

You can find the directions for this art lesson at another great art blog Mrs. Watson follows, that artist woman.

After dreaming about snow for weeks and weeks, we finally got some this weekend!

Monday was an In-Service day and so the students had an extra day to enjoy the snow.  Here’s what they did:

Gwen-Trista and I were playing out in the snow with our sleds. We went down a big hill and crashed into the bush.
Trista-I liked it when Silkence, Gwen, Spencer, and I went down the little hill and we kept crashing into each other.
Ana-At Mt. Cain we went for a big snowshoe. It was only my family and my dog. We walked for about 3 hours!
Quang-I liked when Micheal gave me a turn on the sled. I slid down the hill very fast into the bushes!
Brooklynn-Sierra and I built a snowman and we put a real carrot on for the nose. The nose is frozen into his head.
Sharon-Bessy, Molly, and I built a little snowman and then we made it bigger and bigger and bigger!
Karin-Sahara and I went sledding on the back roads with my GT Racer (a type of sled) and her garbage can lid sled. We crashed on the GT Racer and we thought that it was awesome.
Mia-At my house there was 3 inches of snow!
Sophie-I jumped off my tree fort into the snow.
Solomon-I went up to Mt. Cain and I went skiing. There was a lot of snow and I had to dig my sleds out.
Kennedy-My favourite part was when my little sister and I were hiding. When our Auntie Aleasha pulled in the driveway and got out of the car we attacked her with snowballs.
Bradley-I made a big snowball. It was too heavy for me!
Jacob-I made a snow boy. I couldn’t make his head because it was too hard. So I broke him down and stopped.
Lily-I enjoyed the snow through the window.

We also got to enjoy the snow at recess today.  It is snowing right now, but very lightly.  It is also MUCH colder than usual for Sointula.  It is currently -8° C and we are expecting lows down to -19°C with the windchill.

Our latest art project was inspired by the book Dream Snow, written by Eric Carle.  The book has beautiful illustrations and uses plastic overlays to add snow to many of the pictures.

We started by creating our backgrounds with shades of blue and purple and then painted our snowmen.  We added details to our snowmen using the painted paper we created at the beginning of the year.  Finally, we painted snow on overhead transparencies that we attached on top of our paintings.

We love how they turned out and we hope that we will get some real snow soon!

We had a wonderful break and are happy to be back at school. During our two week holidays we did a lot of exciting stuff.

Here are some of our favourite things about our Christmas holidays:
Karin-My favourite part of the holiday was when we went down island to see our friends.
Sophie-My favourite part of the holidays was when my uncle bit me.
Sharon-My favourite part of the holidays was getting my fish. It is a Siamese Fighting fish.
Jacob-My favourite thing was getting my big giant Nerf gun.
Bradley-I liked when I got the Lego. It is a ship.
Kennedy-My favourite part of the holidays was seeing my little sister’s face when she got a jack-in-the-box. It was terrifying, but it was nice to see that she was happy.
Gwen-My favourite part was when I went to my Daddy’s and got to sit in the hot tub.
Trista-My favourite part was when I got an iPod from my mom.
Solomon-My favourite part was when I went skiing.
Ana-I went to Mt. Cain. Krystyna got to babysit me and we had a party.

We’re looking forward to the new year and all the exciting things we will learn!

What was your favourite part of the holidays?

On Thursday we Skyped with our friends in B4. It was the last day of the school year in New Zealand and we were so glad that Mrs. McKenzie and her class could squeeze in a Skype call.

Mrs. McKenzie and B4 were a part of the Our World, Our Stories project. We also have connections with B4 going back to when we first started blogging. Last year the grade threes even wrote partner Storybirds with B4. Chatting today was like talking to good friends.

During our call we had a chance to talk about Our World, Our Stories, sing our traditional songs for each other (and a Christmas carol or two), compare wildlife, and share how we spend Christmas.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and holiday break! We can’t wait to blog with you again in the new year!

In November we were treated to a special visit from Bardo the Barred Owl and Ross and Rosemarie from the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre. Ross and Rosemarie taught us all about owls and then we got to do a pellet dissection! Somehow Mrs. Watson forgot all about posting the video …better late than never! We would like to thank Rosemarie, Ross, and Bardo for traveling all the way to Sointula and for teaching us so many fascinating things about owls!

The students all wrote wonderful posts about the visit on their own blogs as well. You can click on the links to the right to read their posts and leave them comments.

Did you learn anything new about owls?

What was your favourite cool fact?

We love science, and so you can imagine how excited we were to go to the gym this morning for a special presentation. Glen put on a fantastic bubble show and then added in a few surprises at the end. One of our favourite things was that everyone got a chance to be put inside a bubble. Not only was the show a lot of fun, but we learned a lot of cool science too!

Have you ever made any of the bubbles you can see in the video?

Which bubble was your favourite?

This afternoon (tomorrow morning in Australia) we had a chance to Skype with our blogging buddies from 2KJ and 2KM. This was our first Skype call of this school year and a first ever for the grade twos.

We have spent the last 6 weeks learning more about 2KJ and 2KM through the Our World, Our Stories project that we are both a part of. We have blogged about our school days, favourite activities, the foods we eat, what it is like where we live and we have even shared stories and songs with each other. It was so much fun to actually get to see and talk to their classes today.

Here are a few of the highlights from our Skype call:

• The number of students in 2KJ and 2KM is just a little less than the number of students in our whole school.
• Our town has a population of about 800, which is about the population of their school.
• There are 32 classes in their school and we only have 3.
• We thought that it was very cool that they have seen kangaroos.  Some students have even seen them boxing!  They also have two zoos that they can visit nearby.  At one of the zoos the animals aren’t in pens or cages and you can drive around and see them like a safari.  We shared about all the deer that live on our island.  We found out that they don’t have deer where they live.
• It was also really amazing that two students from 2KJ and 2KM have been to Canada.  No one in our class has ever been to Australia, but we would all love to go for  a visit one day!
• We loved hearing 2KJ and 2KM sing part of their traditional song for us.  We’ll all be humming G’day, G’day all evening.  We sang Land of the Silver BIrch for them. 
• We found out that they like the Christmas song Jingle Bells.  They sang a bit and we couldn’t help but join in   Then we took a turn and sang part of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

At the end of the call we also had a chance to thank Miss Jordan, Mrs. Morris, and all the students in 2KJ and 2KM for the wonderful present they sent us.  They made the most amazing book about all their blogging buddies around the world and sent us each a copy.   We received the book yesterday and the students cheered as we followed Santa on his journey to find the true meaning of Christmas and save the Internet.  A few pages in the students realized that the book was all about classes they knew through our blog.  Someone called out, “It’s all about our friends!”  and then someone else said, “I wonder if we will be in the book!”  As Santa was given each clue on his journey the students would shout out which class he must be headed for next.  When the clue was given for our town the students were bouncing and cheering!

2KJ and 2KM, we can’t thank you enough for the wonderful story you wrote and illustrated.  It will have a special spot on our classroom shelves and will definitely be well read and cherished.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and summer break (It seems very funny to say both of those things in the same sentence)!