Miss J found her camera cord

I have a wonderful computer sitting on my desk at school. Each staff member received a new computer late last school year and it's got oodles and oodles of space on it. Not like my computer here at home which periodically reminds me that the disk space is running out. So I'd taken to downloading pictures on my computer at school, but in the meantime the cord from my camera to my computer had gone AWOL. And so then, had any updating to this here blog.

Today I found the cord. Update time then eh?

Wow, this was a while ago. I'm looking at how few words are in jail. This is a favourite of any class I've ever taught: Around the world. It's basically a race to see who can give the (correct!) answer to math facts. If you are fast enough and beat everyone in the classroom so that you end up back at your seat, you've gone around the world. And get to do my job :)

See how busy they are on Fridays? Not only body building, but building their own weights :)

Choir Time! Ok, group hug time first. We actually had to get lessons on this after they trampled over me (literally) in an attempt to get their hug in. We learned to walk into the hug. It's so much better that way! Actually this hug is reminiscent of my group hug when I returned from the flu. If I was still contagious you'll find out :)

One of my favourite parts of choir class is seeing how intently they keep Choir Rule #1, which if you hadn't asked your young 'un is Always Watch the Choir Director!

Grade Two grows up

This was a day eagerly awaited by Grade Two: the day they would begin handwriting. It's the day when all the rules we'd firmly established when printing got thrown completely upside down. No more would we always, always, always start at the top. We wouldn't be allowed to take our pencil off the paper until we were finished the entire word?? That's quite the change when you consider that it takes 4 different pencil strokes just to complete the printed letter 'w'.

So here they are, industriously working on writing their first letter: e

Back to the Gym!

This was kind of ironic actually. One reason we go to the gym in November is because the weather is too foul to have Phys. Ed. outdoors. This year on our first gym day we happily skipped outside in our shorts and t-shirts enjoying 20 degree weather.

Marvin with his phys. ed. shoes on was ready to join us.

Our trusty bucket of noodles. We never go without those, they're too much fun!

Practicing the overhand throw so Miss J won't throw them off the baseball team when they hit Grade 6 or 7. Ok just kidding....kinda ;)

Here come the noodles! I didn't teach this lesson, but they were playing a noodle tag where they were baby elephants. If they were caught, they had to lay their trunk on the ground and someone could free them by jumping over their trunk.

Are we allowed to do this?!?!

So sometimes the work we do can be kind of dull. It's shocking I know, but spelling a lot of words isn't always ultra thrilling for the wee ones in Grade One. What to do to make it more exciting? Miss J plots a nefarious scheme...

10 whiteboard markers, 10 dry paper towels and 10 wet paper towels later I had the kids thinking they were breaking every rule possible in a classroom. We were going to write on our desks. It certainly made practicing using those phonics rules we'd learned more exciting. Especially the thought that we could get caught should anyone enter the classroom.

Guess the cat's out of the bag now eh?

I like this one: you can actually see them sounding out the words and writing down each sound as they hear them.

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!