Eggshell Ornaments

On Friday, we had a special guest in our classroom, retired teacher, Mrs. Schaefer.  Mrs. Schaefer used to teach at our school and she now volunteers several days a week, tutoring students and teaching her passion, art.  We are so lucky to have her!  On this visit, she came to teach us how to make eggshell ornaments.

Before we got started, Mrs. Schaefer showed us all the steps that we would do.

First, we needed to paint the eggs and apply glitter to the outside to make them sparkle.

Then, it was time to add glitter glue to the inside of the hollowed-out egg to make it shiny on the inside too.

Next, we put cotton inside the egg to look like snow, and chose a figurine to go rest on the cotton.

With the inside complete, it was time to visit one of our great parent volunteers who used the glue gun to put our choice of ribbon and beads around the opening of the egg.

After that, we headed over to another one of our wonderful helpers to choose our wire colour and attach it to the top of the egg so that the ornament can hang.

 Finally, we packed up our delicate creations so that they would survive the trip home.

Here are some of our finished ornaments.  They turned out beautifully, each one unique!

A huge thank you to Mrs. Schaefer and our parent volunteers for helping us create such wonderful ornaments!

Candy Trees

On Thursday, we did a special activity with our Kindergarten buddies to celebrate the holidays.  We made candy trees!  We used an upside down ice cream cone to form the tree, then covered it in green icing.  The icing was crucial because it acted as the glue for the most important part - the candy!  Here are some photos of our delicious creations.  (There are not any photos of our buddies because they have not signed blog permission notices).

What is your favourite holiday treat?

Organizing the Food Drive

Our class is in charge of a very important project at our school this month - organizing the annual holiday food drive in support of the Surrey Food Bank.  Did you know that over 15 000 people a month are helped by the Food Bank, and that 42% of those people are children and babies?  When we heard these statistics, we knew that it was very important to do something to help.  We spent all of last week in committees organizing various aspects of the food drive.

Creating a graph to keep track of  the food we collect.

Assigning which students will collect from which classes.

Writing announcements to read over the  P.A.

More announcers.

Creating a bulletin board display.

Folding and taping the boxes  for food collection.

Delivering the boxes (that's using your head!)

Writing a notice to go home with all students in the school.

Designing posters.

The food drive officially kicks of tomorrow, December 10, and runs until December 20.  Our goal is to collect 1 000 cans of food.  I know we can do it!

Deck The Halls

This past week, we had a special celebration called Deck the Halls.  Every class worked on a craft that would be used to decorate the halls of our school. There were Christmas carols playing throughout the school and  everyone was encouraged to wear festive hats!  Our class made themselves into little elves using photos of their faces and designing bodies to match.  Here are a few photos of us hard at work, and the finished product!

  

The Surrey Nature Centre

Last week we went on a field trip to the Surrey Nature Centre in Green Timbers Park.  We have been learning about plant and animal adaptations and food chains in Science, so this program fit right in.  It was POURING rain the entire day, but luckily Division 9 students are real troopers and we still had fun and learned a lot!  

First we went out into the forest to play a game called "Surviving the Food Chain."  Each person in the class was given a role:  squirrel, raccoon or coyote, and a number of "life cards".  All animals had to collect hidden symbols in the forest that represented food, water and shelter (the basic needs of all animals).  At the same time, the squirrels also had to watch out for their predators: the raccoons and the coyotes.  The raccoons needed to be on the look out for coyotes too because the  coyotes are also their predators.  If you were tagged by one of your predators, you had to give them one of your "life cards".  The coyotes could have one of their lives taken away by destruction or humans (played by a parent and Ms. Birdsall).  In order to survive the game, you needed to keep at least one life, and collect enough food, water and shelter symbols.  It was such a fun, fast-paced game, we didn't even mind getting soggy! 

Our leader, Sue, explaining the  forest boundaries.

The coyotes are coming to get you; watch out squirrels and raccoons! 

What a friendly looking raccoon!

We still have our lives!

Hiding in the bushes is a good survival strategy!

So is sticking to the outside boundaries.

 After warming up a bit inside, and having some lunch, it was time for our second activity, "Making a Dream Habitat." For this activity students were divided into groups of four.  Each group was assigned a different forest animal and given a fact card about that animal's habitat, food, shelter and adaptations.  Our task was to represent this information using things found in nature.  Here are some pictures of us reading about our animals.

When we had read the information and brainstormed some ideas we headed back out into the forest (and the rain!) to create our representations.

 

At the end, each group presented the imaginative ways they had represented the animal's needs using natural objects.

Overall, it was a wet, but wonderful day out in nature!