Hip Hoppin' Through the Week

Happy weekend Dickens families!

Once again, our week was filled with many eventful activities and experiences.

On Monday, Divisions 1 and 2 celebrated our 100th day at school.  Thanks to all for bringing in 100 items for counting.

100 day activities included:
 1) Drawing their items,

2) Sorting 100 items into different sized groups such as 50, 25 and 10,

3) Predicting how they will look at the age of 100 (this one's a keepsake!).

During the afternoon, we had the pleasure of meeting some nursing students and a strange creature named Bugsby.  They talked to us about the importance of washing our hands properly and thoroughly.

Here's Bugsby!

We practiced washing our hands then examined them under a magical, germ detecting light!  Yick!

On thursday, we listened to Beethoven's Symphony Number 5.  The children discussed the types of instruments they heard in the piece.They also talked about how the first movement of this symphony made them feel. Words such as happy, sad, worried, panicked, and startled came up.

Then we had a great discussion about the person who composed this music.  Who do you think this person is?  What do you think this person looks like?  What type of person do you think he or she is? 

Next, the children set off to create a portrait of this unknown person.

Finally Ludwig Van Beethoven was revealed and the students talked about how their impression of the unknown composer matched the real Beethoven.

As you know, we will be going to the Orpheum to listen to works from Beethoven.  We are learning Ode to Joy so that we can sing along with the symphony on Thursday.  Olivia brought her violin to play for students and just happened to have Ode to Joy in her repertoire!

Finally the big day of Hip Hop arrived!  During the morning, all classes had the opportunity to enjoy a full performance by everyone as well as a professional hip hop group, their hip hop instructors and even the teachers! 

Here are a couple of clips of  Div 1 & 2's dance routine.

So much fun!!

Reminders for next week:
-Field trip to the Orpheum this Thursday morning.  Students will be travelling by bus.
-Dress for the symphony on Thursday!
-Bring a pocket snack for Thursday's field trip.

Love is in the Air!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day to all Div 1 and 2 families.  This week there was a definite buzz in the classrooms as Valentine's Day was fast approaching!

The week began with our assembly.  Due to the popularity of the Chinese Lunar New Year dance from last Thursday, our teacher candidate, Olivia, briefly excused herself from her UBC class and popped by Dickens to help the children put on an encore performance of their dance.  The dance was a hit and the children were really proud of themselves!

Focus quickly shifted to Valentine's as the children decorated special mail bags and hung them in the classrooms.

On Tuesday, the children began to create extra large Valentine's for a neighbourhood activity aimed at spreading love and happiness.  In other words, a bucket-filling project!  If you are unfamiliar with the term "bucket-filling" please ask your child and he/she can explain.

Finally on Thursday, the day had arrived!  Sage exclaimed, "This is the best day of the year!".  Soon it was time to peek into our Valentine's bags and to read the cards that were delivered by fellow classmates.  The students were allowed to eat one treat from their bag and then take the rest home.  Sorry parents!  hee hee

Actually, the "hee hee" was on us because we had a big celebration with lots and lots of Valentine's food!  Thanks to parents who brought these delectable morsels. Wow.

Towards the end of the day, we teamed up with Sheila and Cathy's class and set out to deliver our extra large Valentines to the doors of neighbouring homes.  We feel so fortunate to be in this neighbourhood and community so we thought we would let people know how we felt.

Here are Cathy and Sheila's classes.

Here we are on the other side of Dickens.

A neighbour emerged to say thank you after hearing the pitter pattering of feet coming up her stairs.

Way to go Divisions 1,2,3 and 4.  You warmed people's hearts today.

Another exciting event took place this week - Hip Hop!  For the past few years, Mike has come into Dickens for two weeks.  He works with each team and somehow pulls us all together for a performance at the end of the second week.  It's astounding!

"Raising the Roof" move.

 Our performance will take place this Friday right after lunch.  All families are welcome to come!

Upcoming events and reminders:
-Do Bugs Need Drugs?  Visits from nursing students to all primary classes on Monday afternoon.
-Hip Hop Performance at 1:00 this Friday.
-VSO Field Trip on Thursday, Feb. 28th.  Please bring in $5 plus the permission form.


Thanks for visiting :)

A Week Full of Trees and Dancing

Hello again wonderful Dickens families.

The children in Divisions 1 and 2 had another busy week studying trees and learning a dance for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

On Monday, we headed back outside to identify the four life stages of trees.  Within seconds, our tree experts located the first stage - the seed.

Soon thereafter, the third stage was spied by keen observers - the sapling.

As we continued our quest for the second and fourth stage, the children located a seedling in Sunnyside Park.

The students had no trouble finding the fourth stage: the mature tree.

Tuesday was a day about apples.  Darcette, who is a farmer from the Okanagan, visited the primary students at Dickens. 

She talked about the different varieties of apples grown on her farm and also told us about growing season and harvesting season.  The pouch on the front of her body is her apple picking bag.

Next, Darcette taught the children how to make apple sauce.  She had some nifty apple peelers that the students loved!

The apple sauce was yummy.
The recipe is:
shredded apples
brown sugar
cinnamon

On Wednesday, we created beautiful tree art!

Each Thursday, our UBC teacher candidates come to Dickens as part of their practicum experience. Olivia has expertise in dance and she taught us a Chinese Lunar New Year ribbon dance.  It was a lot of fun.  Our parent volunteers had fun too!

Dance moves included water, volcano, rainbow, snake and dragon. 

Then Olivia gave us a brief dance demonstration.  Fantastic!

Later in the day, our parental tree expert Mark Boyland came to visit.  He brought with him many samples of tree branches and cones for the children to learn about.

During Mark's presentation, Divisions 1 and 2 developed a Venn diagram to illustrate the similarities and differences between deciduous and coniferous trees.

Mark was a captivating speaker and the students really enjoyed his stories and tree facts.

He passed branches and cones into the audience and told us about a type of wasp that burrows into tree cones. We pulled apart the cones to find the larva inside.  We also learned that sap can be thought of as a band aid as it protects trees from injury and insect invasion.

Suddenly, we hurtled back in time to our spiders unit as several baby spiders decided to make quick exits from the tree cones!  Chaos quickly ensued as spider rescue attempts were rapidly put into action.  We are happy to report that we think that all spiders were saved!

Here is a glance at this week's poem:

Friday afternoon Buddy Reading.  If you look closely, you'll see they are reading a book about...trees!

In Jen and Karen's Math group, the students are learning about addition and subtraction. In this activity, the children had to figure out how many cubes were hidden under the cup using Math strategies.

In Wendy and Jenny's Math group, the students were practicing "counting on and counting back" from the larger of two numbers in preparation for more complicated addition and subtraction activities.  This activity involved rolling two dice, counting on from the larger number, then moving their counter along the Race to 100 sheet.

Enjoy your long weekend everyone and we will see you on Tuesday.

Next week at a glance:

• the students will be performing the ribbon dance at the assembly on Tuesday morning.  Join us if you can!
• on Thursday, Divisions 1,2,3,and 4 will be making and delivering Valentines to neighbours.  We will also be having a Valentine's Day celebration.
• Hip Hop dance sessions start this week.  Our time slots will be on Thursday and Friday so please dress to move!

Thanks for checking in :)

Let's BRANCH out and learn about trees!

Happy Friday everyone.

This week, we started learning about trees and began by taking a very interesting walk.  On Monday, we focussed our attention towards the sky and noticed many interesting things about trees such as...

 

 It's easy to find nests during winter time,

 

trees don't have just bark on their trunks and branches - they have strange things like moss and even ferns!

 Trees also have big bumps on them.  The students decided this was a very bad sign and that the trees were not healthy.  Stay tuned for next week because our tree expert Mr. Mark Boyland (Sage's dad) will be able to add clarification to this theory!

Trees can be very tall and they are also very functional as shelter, gathering places and "free" zones in tag games.

After our tree exploration walk, we discussed uses of trees in our world and then searched for things in our classrooms that were made from trees.  Then we made collages of "Things That are Made From Trees" by cutting pictures out of magazines (also made from trees).

On Thursday, we learned about the seasonal changes that deciduous trees go through year after year. We looked at an illustration of a tree and talked about why this tree did not make sense in nature.

The students then illustrated a deciduous tree's appearance during each season.

 During that afternoon, our student teachers Olivia and Sarah taught a lesson about the parts of a tree.  They began with a story, a brainstorm, and then a tree-ish version of "Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes".  Here are a couple of photos of students drawing a tree and then labelling it's parts.

 

Today, some students who work with Jill throughout the week performed puppet shows for the rest of the students in Divs 1 & 2.  The first show was based on the story "Little Red Hen",

The second performance was entitled "The Gingerbread Girl".  Our puppeteers decided there needed to be some gender equality in the show so the traditional character was changed from a boy to a girl.

That's the week at a glance.  Thanks for checking in.  We hope you have a restful and wonderful weekend.

Homework:  Hug a tree :)

Important dates:
-Scholastic Book Club order forms went home today.  We would like them back by Tuesday to give time for Valentine's books to arrive.  Remember, there is no obligation to purchase books!
-Monday, February 11th is the new B.C. statutory holiday - Family Day.  Schools will be closed.
-Tuesday, February 12th marks the beginning of our two week Hip Hop program.  Performances will be held on Friday, February 22nd. Time TBA.