Colour Wall

In an effort to create a learning environment the children feel is a reflection of them, their learning will continually fill the walls of our classroom this year.  Instead of hanging my usual 'colour word posters' we embarked on a colour challenge to make our very own.  This involved collecting, gathering, sorting and representing a large collection of colourful stuff.  We completed our colour boards and hung them on the wall.  It's beautiful!  Best I've ever seen, why?  Hand made with love. Thank you for helping make this project a success.  The colourful treasures from home were perfect!

Here are our sorted treasures before we assembled the colour boards.  These photos could make for a great eye spy game!

Let the gluing begin....

Introducing....the colour wall!  Pop by to have a peek.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Inspired by the sunflowers growing in our gardens this fall and Van Gogh's famous sunflowers painting we created our own collaborative rendition.   We spent time reading about Van Gogh and looked closely at his most popular pieces.  In his sunflowers, we saw short brushstrokes and a lot of yellow.   We think yellow might have been his favourite colour.

Thankful

The children were very excited to invite their families to join us for friendship fruit salad on the Friday before the Thanksgiving weekend.  In preparation we read some beautiful books on thankfulness and gratitude.  We spent time sharing and talking about the things in our lives that we are most thankful for.  Students recorded one of their ideas on a blank square piece of paper and drew a picture.  Then, they added their finished squares to a bigger piece of paper creating a thankful quilt.

The boys and girls each brought in a piece of fruit to share and contribute to the friendship fruit salad.  We created a poem about the fruit and the class made fruit salad books to take home.  There was a colourful variety of fruit!  The salad was delicious.  Thanks to everyone for sending fruit and for joining us that afternoon.  

They also made these adorable turkey cards by tracing their hands.  Gobble gobble.

Terry Fox Run

It was a gorgeous Friday morning for the 34th Annual Terry Fox Run at CHA.  This children brought their coins in all week long to add to our jar.  Everyone wore a tattoo of Terry which said courage on it.  We talked about what courage means and why Terry was courageous.  This was a reminder during our run to do our best!  We watched a short clip about Terry Fox in the gym before a lively warm up to "Roar" led by some of our active Grade 3's.  Then it was go time!  I don't think I've ever seen a stronger group of first grade runners.  They ran their hearts out.  I was so proud.  Well done CHA!

Friday donations

CHA School Motto

We love David Shannon's self inspired character David, in David Goes to School! This is one of those books kids never tire of.  We giggled our way through all of the silly things David does in a school day and then talked about what makes a school and classroom great.  We discussed the importance of our CHA school motto and made these adorable recycled bumble bees to remind us how we want to 'bee' at school. They'll be heading home soon and will hopefully kind their way to your fridge!

The children also thought of ways they could demonstrate being kind, safe and great at school.  They illustrated and wrote about them.

We like the idea of the school motto so much we decided to have our own classroom motto or promise as well.  Instead of focusing on a list of things 'not to do' we brainstormed things 'to do'.  The children recorded their ideas on post it notes.  I asked them what a great class would look like, sound like and feel like.  It's their space as much as mine and how we get along and work together belongs to each and every one of us.

work hard

be friends with everybody

listen

I compiled a list of all of their thoughtful ideas and this is our classroom promise!

Self Portraits

It was wonderful to meet so many parents on Thursday evening at our Meet the Teacher night!  The kids were so proud to show you around their new classroom.  These might just be the cutest self portraits EVER.  Can you tell who is who?  Many of the portraits share a striking resemblance with the artist, well done.  Click on the photos to view them larger!