The dairy farm we will go

Moo hoo!! Here we are at the dairy farm!

And we started off with lots of questions as soon as we got off the bus!

Unfortunately the cows weren't being milked when we arrived, but those lucky Grade 3s and 4s got to see the cows in action.

Wow, what a sight to see the rows of cows, heads poked out all watching us as we made our way down the barn.

The highlight was seeing all the calves. I think we terrified many a calf. Ok, I know we terrified many a calf by not approaching them slowly and generally yelling way too much. One jumped right out of those pens...and still wasn't caught by the end of the day!

It took a while, but they eventually learned that slow and steady won the calves' affections.

Aren't they just too cute?

A calf trying rather fruitlessly to get some sustenance from my fingers. I had calf slime all over them after that! (Yes, the first thing we did when we returned to school was to wash our hands!)

It was neat to watch the calves getting their morning milk. They sucked back those bowls in now time flat!

in the mooooood for a video?

Another post?!

I have a funny feeling that I just posted things on here...Ah, but I promised to tell you what the hat was for. The hat is our sheriff's hat. We have those dastardly outlaw words flying all about the classroom after we thought we had stashed them safely in jail. Outlaw words are words that don't follow the phonics rules as we've learned them. Since we can't sound them out, we need to be able to recognize and read them.


Each sheriff is in charge of finding the outlaws on the blackboard (they have boxes around them)....

...getting the key for the jail....

...unlocking our jail...

...and throwing those words back in jail, slamming the (imaginary) door shut again and locking it up tight so those outlaws stay in jail.


Other students find words that answer or finish sentences. I think this word was something that we find on the beach. Students have to find the correct word on the board and then erase it. Sometimes they know the answer but can't find it on the blackboard!

*sniff* memories of students moved away...

This has become the standard pose when I whip out the camera. Hammy hamerton :)



Oh yeah! I love this, it's a return to partner reading. Isn't it amazing? It's only the beginning of October and they're already reading little "books" with their partners.





I had to get a picture of this, my "boys being boys". Those fellows outnumber the girls 17-6. It's not terribly surprising to me to see them gang tackling each other at recess.


More recess shots.

We saw this guy on our window screen early one morning. The kids were appalled that I flicked it off the screen, so these pictures will have to serve as reparation :)

workin'...'n stuff

I laughed.

When I'm handing out stickers I'll sometimes sneak up on a kid and stick the leftover sticky part on a student's back. It's never a secret for long as someone else is bound to tell the student what I've done. I've never had anyone fashion it into goggle/glasses before. He's so funny :)

In math we were working on graphing. Actually it seems like the whole school was graphing. I saw many a graph in the hallway that the Grade Twos were working on as well.

Here they had to make a question and have some choices that their classmates could pick, ask their classmates the question, tally up the responses and then graph them.

Drawing the animals in his favourite animal question.

It was very cute to listen to them asking and answering questions. I don't know how clearly this actually turned out, but that's what they're doing here.

Then we move on to Language Arts class. Each day we learn a new letter, the sound to that letter and its action (to help us if we forget what sound it makes. Somehow they always remember when we do the action) Here we had letter cards and they had to use them to spell out words that I was saying. (Yes another little ham in the background :D )

This is actually kind of funny to see. We're working on how to properly pass the ball and how to receive it. No toe kicks allowed! Planting our foot beside the ball and then passing isn't too easy as some pictures demonstrate.

Woo! Nice form :)