A New Year, A New Home

Hello Room 2 followers! This is the final post for http://www.mrsmalkoskesclassroom.blogspot.com/ Don't worry though, we'll still be blogging our adventures this year! Our new blog address is http://www.200awesomedays.blogspot.com/ Follow us, leave us a comment, and see what we're up to!

Bye Bye Butterflies - Part 2

On Tuesday afternoon we let our butterflies go. Two of our butterflies didn't make it, their wings were broken. We had to dip our fingers in sugar water and then reach into the net and put our fingers by their legs. Then they crawled on our fingers and you had to take them out of the net. If you wanted to you could put some sugar water on your nose and they would crawl on your nose! Some of them started drinking the sugar water with their proboscis! It took a long time to let them go... we had more than 80 of them! A few kids stayed after school to help set the rest of our butterflies free. A couple escaped in our classroom today so we set them free too. We still have a few chysalids in our net in our classroom. Lots of the butterflies flew in the same direction when they left. One butterfly stayed on the brick wall until after we left school. It was perched right on the D in the "Dr. Hamilton School" sign. We put some of them on flowers in the garden and we saw them sucking nectar. Most of the butterflies liked the purple plant the best. Some of them even let us take pictures of them. Some stayed on our fingers for a long time. Before we let them go, we learned a poem called Flutter By. Here it is:

I chased it round the garden

I chased it down the street

I chased it to the river

That's where I wet my feet.

I chased it over cornfields

I chased it low and high

I don't think I'll ever catch

That funny butterfly!

The cool part of Flutter By is that if you put the B where the Fl is and the Fl where the B is, it spells butterfly!

It was an awesome experience! Bye, bye butterflies!
-Mrs. Malkoske's Class

Bye Bye Butterflies!

Today we are letting our butterflies go! It is a sad day because we took care of them and now we have to let them go... just like how our parents take care of us. We have soooo many butterflies, over 75 right now! One of them escaped 2 times this morning. We think he was looking for flowers for food or maybe a place to lay eggs or something. They were tiny as a crumb when we got them and now they are beautiful butterflies! We'll post more about our release party later today!

Our Newest Job: Flash Game Testers!

This week our class is testing some Flash Games created by the Grade 10 students at River East Collegiate. The games the Grade 10s created are learning games that address many Grade 1 curricular outcomes. Today we had an opportunity to try them out and write down some of our feedback. We are using "Kind Compliments" and "Helpful Hints" to organize our thoughts. The children in our class had lots of kind compliments for the Grade 10s. Some of them even found some "glitches" and "cheats" for a couple of the game.

This video is a screen capture of Evan & Heidi's first run through the game "Rawrii Saves His Friends". Take a peek!

On Thursday we have a Skype date with the Grade 10s and their teacher so that we can tell them what we thought!

Our Caterpillar Voice Thread!

The children in our classroom have been making observations of our caterpillars almost every day. Here are some of the things they've noticed and wondered about them.

Our 100th Post!

It is awesome! This is our 100th blog post! Today we took some time to look back at some of our posts from the year. Here are some things we've noticed about how we've grown as bloggers:
- Our spelling has grown a lot!
- Some of us used to put periods after ever word instead of spaces... we don't do that anymore!
- We weren't quite sure how to use periods and spaces on the computer but now we know.
- Now we type a little faster because our hands are a little bit bigger.
- We even correct Mrs. Malkoske when she's typing too fast.
- We write more and our writing is more interesting. We add lots more detail and expression!
- Some people use their feelings when they write.
-We know how to make our writing BOLD and Italics.
- Some people know how to add a picture.

Here is what we know about blogging:
-Our blog lets everybody know what we're doing!
-It helps us remember stuff.
-It helps us remember good times together.
-We like our blog because next year we can look back and see what we did.
-It reminds us of memories from when we started school.
-We are talking to other people... we post and people write us comments.
-Some people give us feedback about what we're doing.
-We get to look at new things when we post.
-If your parents want to know what you're doing, they can just look on the blog.
-We can put cool stuff on our blog like our art and videos so we can tell people what we are doing over the week.
-If your parents ask you what you did at school and you say "Nothing." they can check the blog.
-We get to see new news on other blogs.
-Our family in other places in the world can see what we do at school.
-If someone has an adventure we can blog about it.

A note from Mrs. Malkoske...
Today was awesome! It was so wonderful to spend some time with the kids looking back on our adventures and remembering all of the things we've done together this year. While we were looking at and talking about all of our old posts on the blog, the excitement and laughter was contagious. Exclamations of "I remember that!" and "That was so fun!" filled our room. The kids noticed how they've grown as readers, writers, mathematicians, artists, and inquirers. They were able to recall even the smallest details of each of our adventures and wanted to look at every picture, watch every video, and listen to every sound clip. What a rewarding experience! I hope these memories stay with them for a long time to come. :)

An Interesting Observation

 Over the last few days the children in our classroom have noticed that our caterpillars do only 2 things: Eat and poop. Of course this is fascinating (and funny) to most of the kids in our class. We have had many conversations about it in our classroom and today Maddox made an interesting observation in his Painted Lady Journal. Here is a picture of his observations:

(The caterpillars are huge. Some are yellow too and they are eating a lot I tell you. And there is a difference in their poop. I know it's gross but the ones who are eating plants their poop is black and the ones who are eating the mushed food their poop is brown.)

Very interesting :)

Hungry, Hungry Caterpillars!

Our caterpillars are eating and growing like crazy! We've started feeding them twice a day just to keep up with their gigantic appetites. Some of our caterpillars are eating the premixed food that came with them and others are munching on pearly everlasting and pussy toes plants. When they arrived in our classroom on June 1, we were surprised to find out that we recieved over 120 tiny caterpillars (we only ordered 30)! There wasn't enough of the premixed food to feed them all, so we used Google to find out what types of plants Painted Lady Caterpillars like to eat. Mrs. Malkoske has taken 2 trips to Prairie Originals Greenhouse to buy food for our caterpillars. So far they've devoured 2 pearly everlasting plants and 1 pussy toes plant (see below for photos).

 



Slime, Race Cars, the Matrix and a Movie Theatre!

Today we went to the Manitoba Museum and Science Gallery. We made slime in the science gallery and filled a diaper with water and held it over Lindsay's head! Only a couple of drops came out. We made a big BURP! too. Then we raced cars in the science gallery and sat in cool chairs that we could pull on ropes to make us go up. The red chair was hardest, yellow was medium and blue was easy. We went in the Matrix too. There was scary music and lots of mirrors! We built a dam in water world. It was so thick that only a little bit of water got through. There was a lazer harp too. Then we ate lunch upstairs.

We toured the Manitoba Museum too. We had to look for all of the different animals in the museum... there were lots of them! We wrote them down in the right groups on our recording sheet. We found a whole drawer full of animal poop. The bison poop was the biggest and the squirrel poop was the smallest. We went in the urban gallery that shows Winnipeg in 1920. We watched a funny movie in the old movie theatre. It was black and white and there wasn't any talking and, there was a lot of punching. We saw Amy's name on a sign in old Winnipeg. We didn't get to go on the boat but we went down and looked at it from the ground and we went in the jail! It was an awesome field trip!

The awesome minithon.

The minithon was awesome.And at the end we got a jombo frezze.We vs sunvaly and brids hill school.Thir was a water table sreving water.Dylan came in 59th.

The Creepy Crawly Classroom on USTREAM!

We have our own USTREAM channel called The Creepy Crawly Classroom! We will be streaming video of our caterpillars, chrysalids, and butterflies throughout the month of June. You can watch it right here on our blog, or at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-creepy-crawly-classroom .



Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

We Love Live Streaming!

Recently we have been watching some live streaming video on our classroom computer as part of our growth and changes unit. Here are some links to our favourites:

The Hornby Island Eagles:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hornby-island-eagles

Ducklings!
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mrs.-poulin%27s-kindergarten-class

The Decorah Eagles
http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

The Peregrine Falcons in Winnipeg and Brandon
http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/features/falcon/

When our caterpillars arrive later this week, we will be live streaming some video them on our own USTREAM channel, "The Creepy, Crawly Classroom"! As soon as our camera is up and running, we'll embed it in our blog so you can watch right here!

super heroe traeding cards

At school we made super heroes traeding cards Ice seffer and Ice Man. Dante  was Ice man Peyton was ice seffer. we had to pick a back grund. It toke a long time to get them ready. lots of kids in are class are finished thir super heroes.We had to makeup a name and caricter. Here are our cards:

By Peyton, Tristan and Dante

SKYPE!

This week we skypet mrs. Dents class. They got butterflys and let them go.They told us loots of infirmashon about there butterflys and we are going to get the same butterflys. Here is criteria for skype-no silly ness-one person talks at

 a time-wait your turn to talk-one question at a time-raise your hand toask a questtion-lisin to each  other-be polite-dot interupt-dont move around to much.

we also skypet mrs. Malkoskes Dad he said we could skype him eny time.by Ariella and peyton

Vermiworms!

Our vermiworms have finally arrived and they've been busy!

  

Here is how we made their home:
We first put soil in the bucket.
Then we put crushed up seashells/eggshells.
We had to put shredded Newspaper and shredded office paper.
We had to move the newspaper and put the worms.
Amy and Tristan moved the worms around.
We had a few escapes.
Some people thought it was gross.
They don't like onions or citrus fruit.
They like cut up Apples.
They also like vegetable and fruit scraps.
They don't like Meat or Dairy products.
They are vegetarians.
There like picky eaters.

By Amy and Jadyn.

Dancing in the Park!

Here's an Animoto of our day @ McIvor Park... it was awesome!

Animal Groups

Today we were sharing some information about Animal Groups and experimenting with Google Docs. We created a document with our information and would like to invite all of our followers to contribute. Here is the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eZ46_mv7qNGptIvOwCE4NMcUrA95OddsRQrhuF1ovco/edit?hl=en&authkey=CPDV08QF#

If you have some information to add, please do it in another colour and sign your name at the end in your colour. We can't wait to learn from you!

2 Days in Gimli

This week I was able to spend 2 days in Gimli, MB at the Riding the Wave of Change Education and Technology Conference. It was an interesting and inspiring two days! I can't wait to share what I've learned with you through the work of the children in our classroom. For now, here are a couple of pics from Gimli (there are only a couple... it was really cold!)

Butterflies, Birdhouses & Beans!

Hello Room 2 Followers! Are classroom has changed this week! We are all ready for our butterflies to arrive. We have nets and cages for caterpillars and butterflies. We made some butterflies with tissue paper, plastic bags and pipe cleaners and they are flying in our windows, waiting for their friends to arrive! We also made beautiful spring skies using liquid water color and created some butterflies to go with them. Check out our Artsonia site later this week to see them!
Yesterday we built a greenhouse and we're planting some beans and flowers to go inside. (We got the greenhouse from Mrs. Malkoske's mother-in-law... Thank You!)
On Monday we are hanging our birdhouse outside our classroom window. Mr. Miles helped us get them all ready by putting some hooks into the tops of them. We hope that we see some Robins, Blue Jays, Eagles, and Falcons!
We finally ordered our Vermiworms too! They will be here on Monday. We'll blog about them once they are here. Keep watching!
-Room 2

Peregrin Falcon Live Stream!

The CBC has once again set up a live camera at the top of the Radisson Hotel on Portage Ave to capture the pair of peregrin falcons that build their nest there each year. Ivy (male) and Princess (female) have a nest with 4 eggs this year. We'll be watching the live stream over the next few weeks to see what happens! Here's the link:
http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/features/falcon/

We Love Our Moms!

Happy Mother's Day to all of our Moms! We couldn't post this before Mother's Day because we didn't want to spoil the surprise! We think Moms are great. Here's a top 10 list about why we love our Moms:

10. They cheer you up when you're feeling sad.

9. They take care of you.

8. They take care of you when you are sick.

7. They make us wonderful food!

6. They make your bed and clean up your room.

5. They tuck you in at bed time.

4. They pack us great lunches.

3. They read to us at night.

2. They look pretty even without make up on.

1. You love us!

Can you guess what our message is?

A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Lately we have been taking a closer look at spelling... the patterns in words, word parts, and ways to remember how to spell tricky words. One of our favourite words to use in our writing is AWESOME and it's a tricky one! Mrs. Malkoske found a cheerleading cheer that helped us to learn how to spell it... listen to it here:



See more Audio at TeacherTube.com.

Easter Week

We working with the Grade 5 & 6 this week we are makeing a movei to gather we are working on food groups & the grade 5&6 they are working on body systems.It was crazy this week. We had Mr.Chan was in the morning then we had visitors & then Mrs.Koehn was hear for the day.We finished Stuart's Cape itis a good book.We made Dream Catchers, it was fun.We have Computer Lab to day itis fun.
by Dante & Ashley

The Day We Had Lots of Visators

In the morning Mr.Chan came to be are teacher.We went to choir with the grade ones.Then we had recess. We had 3 visators.There names are Mrs. Loewen, Mrs. MacKenzie, and Mrs. Sigurdson. They wanted to see what we do in our classroom with technonlogy. After lunch Ms. Koehn came because Mrs. Malkoske is going to teach some library people (and Mrs. DeBruyn) about computer stuff.
-by Jadyn, Kaelan

the carzey week

we finisht the van gogh cafe. And we stortid  stuarts cape its a silly funny book about magic. We also did helthy hamelton videose. We went to the 5/6 class room  and we stortid to film a movei  about being helthy and fit. We also have  to do  eirth day  art .We have to get i dropers and yous them for paneting  cofe filters.We are makeing little erth panteing with lots of  very cool tekneecs.Are day is twistid around  because we have so much intristing stuff to do that we have to swich  are morning meeting at the end of the day. We also made are own math problums and to day we have to do other peoples math problums that they disined.It is going to be asom . We also hade librerary. Library was fun. our week was asom
writin by Ariella + Dylan

Stuart's Cape

Today we started reading the book "Stuart's Cape" by Sara Pennypacker. We know that great readers make predictions while they read.... Here are Evan's predictions about what might happen in this book:

1. He is a superhero.

2. He can fly.

3. He can save people.

Cacoo!

Today we tried out a site called "Cacoo" (we think the name is pretty funny by the way). Cacoo is a site where you can collaborate in real time with other users to create all sorts of different kinds of diagrams. If you are interested in joining us, we would love to Cacoo with you!

Today we worked with the grade 5/6 class to share our learning about growing up healthy. They are learning about body systems in science and they shared their information with us. Here is a picture of what we created:

*NOTE: The 5/6 Class added their information using speech bubbles. Our information is in the squares.

It was very cool to work with them on-line. (They were in their classroom and we were in ours.) Keep watching to see the "Healthy Hamilton" videos we will be creating in the very near future!

This week at school

We have been keeping track how much mrs.malkoske runed.She ran 123 miles.We had family groups.Hayden is in Mr.Chan's family group.Kaelan is in Mrs.Abrahams' family group.We lernd about safty.There were hall way safty,class room safty,play grond safty,road safty,bus safty,lunch time safty.

-by Hayden Kaelan

Reading Partner Reflections

This month the children in our classroom have been working with new reading partners during our Reading Workshop time. Today we took some time to talk, think, and write about the things that are going well and the things that partners need to work on. Here are some samples from Jessica, Jolene, Evan, Ariella, and Dante.

 

 

A Really Good Book...

This week I started reading a new chapter book to our class. It's called "The Van Gogh Cafe"  and it was written by Cynthia Rylant. This is what it says on the back:

Miracles are made-to-order at the Van Gogh Cafe in Flowers, Kansas. At least that is what Clara and her father Marc, the cafe's owner, believe. Everyday they fill coffee cups, serve meals, and wait for the magic to happen.

Which it always does... maybe because the cafe was once a theater, and some of the old theater magic is left in the walls. Whatever the reason, word is spreading of a place where broken hearts mend and dreams come true.

The children and I are really enjoying this one so I thought I'd share it with you... because everyone can use a little magic once in a while!

Happy Reading
-Mrs. Malkoske

Artsonia Update!

Today I added 3 new art projects to our Artsonia site! It takes about 24 hours for them to become available on the site. Check it out tomorrow to see what the Room 2 artists have been up to!
Our Artsonia Gallery

Growing Up Healthy!

This month our inquiry study is all about growing up healthy! We have been learning about the Canada Food Guide and the importance of eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough rest. Here are some webs abotu keeping healthy created by Kaelan, Amy, Peyton C, Cole, and Aaron using Kidspiration. Send us a comment if you can think of other ways to keep healthy!

Winnipeg Free Press - Flood Cam 4 at Morris

Another sign of spring in Manitoba?

winnipegfreepress4 on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

this week at school

We did body parts and  we had to trace cole and we had to cut and we had to put on layblse of  coles body. We worked together to label Amy on the computer. We did a art prageck about froot and vechtbols we to do all the detayls of the froots and vetchles. We are going to finish it today. We wotcht curling yesterday at lunch. Canada won.

Signs of Spring

1.our play grod is cover in  mud.  wen you put your  boots tere  go splat.and the mud  gos up.
2.animais aer bon
3.Brid   fly back
4.grass is  groing
-Jadyn

Travel Journals

Thank you to all of the children and families that have completed a Travel Journal on their adventures. The children in our class love to hear about new places and experiences, and of course to see your pictures! So far this year we have collected over 10 travel journals for our classroom library!

During sharing time in our classroom we have been looking at "Manifest Your Magnificence" cards to help us talk about our experiences. Yesterday we came across this one:

Perfect timing!