Chantrell Creek Grade One with Mrs. Keturakis and Mrs. Drew!: 2015

Friday 3 April 2015

Hunting for Easter Eggs

Yesterday we were lucky enough to have sunny weather for our annual Easter Egg hunt. The grade 7's hid eggs on the grassy area at the front of the school and our class had 10 minutes to run and find as many as we could. Here are the eggs we found:

During a few minutes of free time, two students used Explain Everything to write a sentence about the hunt.

The hunt provided us the opportunity to do some real world problem solving. How would we share 93 eggs evenly between 20 students? Once we had the eggs in cups of 10 the students worked together to figure out that they could each have 4 and have some left over for the two classmates who were away. Impressive work, Dolphins! You did a great job of solving this cooperatively.

Monday 30 March 2015

Jump Rope for Heart!

Friday our school took part in the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser. The entire school spent the final hour of the day SKIPPING to help raise money for cardiovascular health and research. Here are some photos of our class in action - please excuse the blurry action shots. I tried to photograph everyone but even with two devices I missed a few - my apologies to those who don't see themselves here.

Dolphins and parents, remember, if you are looking at this post, you and/or your parents can click at the bottom of the post on the word "Comment" and type a comment to add to the blog. It is a class blog for you to use. Happy Blogging!

We helped release baby Chum salmon!

On Wednesday, we were invited by the Nicomekl Enhancement Society, a volunteer organization, to help release chum salmon fry into our local Chantrell Creek!

The weather was great for the fish and the creek - it was pouring rain. So we ventured down the street in our rubber boots and raincoats with our Big Buddies. Every one of us was given a bucket of about 50 little salmon fry to pour into the creek - what an opportunity! The rest of the week our classroom conversations kept coming back to salmon and our environment - very important conversations for children to have and think about.

On Friday we opened a new app called Explain Everything. We learned how to type using the keyboard and the Grade Ones were asked to write something about their experience on Wednesday.

They worked hard - not only did they generate their own sentences, they weren't given any spellings AND had to find each letter on the ipad on-screen keyboard. GREAT JOB, Dolphins!

Here are their observations:

Sunday 22 February 2015

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Today our school celebrated Chinese New Year with an amazing assembly and homemade Chinese dumplings, thanks to a very generous and hard-working group of parents and some talented students. Thank you all!

The Kindergarten students kicked off the celebration with the dragon dance. Well done, K's!

We also enjoyed listening to a few young Chantrell Creek musicians. Kim played violin, Lucas played his cello, Colin played an authentic Chinese flute and one of our intermediates demonstrated a traditional Chinese stringed instrument called a Gu Zheng.

A very well-practiced group of grade three girls demonstrated a dance. They wore beautiful costumes and held paper lanterns.

Some of our grade 7 girls and a few Moms participated in a stunningly elegant fashion show. They were wearing authentic Chinese "dresses" provided by another of our parents. A very impressive show!

This secretive, mysterious dancer revealed several different faces using changing masks. Quite an entertaining performance!

Toward the end a group of grade 6 boys treated the school to an entertaining and well-executed lion dance. We saw the lion's eyelashes bat at us and it's tail wag as it carefully sat on a bench - and what a beautiful lion it was!

We were even able to listen to one of our parents who is an accomplished Chinese opera singer. This was a new experience for many of us - what a spectacular performance!