Pumpkins!!

Hi, I am excited to be back at school today.  I spent part of last week at the Department of Education working with the English Language Arts curriculum guide.  I love doing this kind of work!!  It really gives me a better understanding of the English Language Arts curriculum.  I love working with other teachers and hearing about some of the wonderful things they are doing in their classrooms!!

Today we read the story "Spookley, The Square Pumpkin".  We did a response to this story and everyone had the opportunity to write about their favorite part of the story.  After recess we carved our class pumpkin we got from our visit to Lester's Farm.  We estimated the number of pumpkin seeds. There were actually 587 seeds in our pumpkin. We wrote the steps to carve our pumpkin. We talked about what we needed to do first, second, third, etc. We voted on the type of eyes, nose and mouth.  We even voted on our pumpkin's name.  He is called Boo Spookley!  Here are some pictures from today.

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!!

Tomorrow we are going to try our roasted pumpkin seeds to see what they taste like. 

Sorry no posting in a while, between the stomach flu hitting my house and watching the Blue Jays it's been a bit crazy!! I wanted to let everyone know that our school raised $676.00 for the Janeway Children's hospital!!!! Awesome!! A big thank you to everyone who brought a donation and wore their pyjamas!!

Don't forget that tomorrow is picture day.

We are working our way though the short a word families. We will begin the am and ack word families this week.  I will try to post videos for that soon.

That's all for now. Go Blue Jays Go!!!!

Apple hand experiment and an words family

Last week we conducted an experiment to see how dirty hands really are.  We took three apple slices and one we put in a mason jar without anyone touching it.  The next one we passed around so everyone in the class had a turn touching the apple.  The third slice we cleaned our hands with a baby wipe and then touched the apple slice.  We put each apple slice in a clean mason jar, screwed on the lid and waited.  here are our results.

The apple no one touched

The apple everyone touched before we cleaned our hands.

The apple we all touched after using a baby wipe.

 

 

The apple no one touched had the least amount of mold.  But we were surprised to notice that the apple slices with the baby wipe and the dirty hands both had about the same amount of mold on them!!!!

 

We all decided that washing our hands with soap and water is very, very important!!!

 

Our an family spiders!!  Aren't they creepy!!!



What a busy day today!!  We began learning about fire safety at school and at home.  Please review your escape plan for your house and complete the homework page and return it.  We are learning about the an word family.  Please view the videos in the flipped classroom section for tomorrow.  The at word family videos are still available, they have their own page now. 

Today the students used their writing journals for the first time.  they did a wonderful job beginning each sentence with an uppercase, using finger spaces and stopping their sentence when they were done!!  We are practicing printing our first and last names on our work and using only lowercase letters in our printing.

I have an I wonder question for my students....

I wonder does the weather stay the same all day or does it change?  How do you know?

Please answer me using our class blog.  I am looking forward to your answers!!!

Mrs. Murphy

This has been quite a busy week here at Mary Queen of the World!!  On Wednesday morning the students were treated to smoothies by The kids Eat Smart program and Nalcor. They really enjoyed this!!

 

Later that day I gave the students a STEM challenge.  (Science Technology Engineering and Math)  They were arranged in small groups of three or four and they had to build the highest tower they could in ten minutes.  We agreed to measure the height using a metre stick.  I gave them objects to use that were not good joiners.  They were told they could build any type of structure.  We discussed teamwork and being a good winner and loser.  It was a lot of fun and they really enjoyed it.  I was excited to hear all of the positive problem solving conversations that were happening!! 

 

 

 

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!  Please take time to remember everything you are thankful for!!  I am very thankful for my family, friends and the wonderful students and their families this year!!  Enjoy your Holiday!!

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Today we began learning about Thanksgiving. We made a special surprise to bring home to our families on Thursday. We are learning about the symbols of Thanksgiving and what we are thankful for. We do have a lot to be thankful for!!  Tomorrow we will be served smoothies by the Kids Eat Smart foundation, what a nice treat. We are practicing our sight words, at word family and decoding strategies daily.  We have built our independent reading stamina to 4 minutes and 50 seconds. That's pretty awesome!! In Math we are working on numbers to ten. Tomorrow we are continuing our Thanksgiving activities!!

I told the students today that they are encouraged to respond to any of the blog posts if they would like to with an adults help of course.  I would love to hear from them!!!

What a great day we had on Friday!!  We have spent the last couple of days investigating apples.  We taste tested six different kinds; Gravenstein, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Gala, Granny Smith and McIntosh.  We learned that they all have different tastes.  We discovered that apples float and we even made an apple erupt!!!  That was cool!!

This week we are going to explore Thanksgiving and discover all the things in our lives we are thankful for.  We are also working on the at word family.  Please remember to read each night and practice your sight words. 

There is a book order going home tomorrow and I have subscribed to Scholastic pay so parents can pay on line to make things a bit easier.  I will be beginning the flipped classroom videos tomorrow.  they are posted on the link to the right.  Please have your child watch them Monday night as part of their home work. Then have them make a list of as many at family words as they can remember from the videos and bring them to school the next day. 

Friday is a Professional Development Day and Monday is Thanksgiving so their will be no school for students on either Friday or Monday of next week.