From Us to You!

It has been an incredible first term for our wonderful class!  We have worked so hard to accomplish so much!  The Cheetahs are an incredible group of children who amaze us every day with their knowledge, kindness, caring and unique personalities!!

As we move into the Christmas break and the holiday season, we would like to wish everyone Season's Greetings, Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, and a very special New Year!!  Whatever way you and your families celebrate, may it be merry and bright!  Enjoy every minute of your time with family and friends, relax and rejuvinate!

Love Mrs. Betts and Mrs. Heinrichs and all the Cheetahs

Holiday time!

 These ornaments were made by us!  Mrs. Betts' father-in-law cut them out of wood and sanded them for us.  We painted them and then added glitter to them to give them that sparkle!  We can't wait to hang them on our tree.

Thank you so much ~ we LOVED making them and are so proud of how they turned out. 















 

HO HO HO !

Here's what we think Santa looks like!  If you met him what do YOU think he would look like?

We've Been Busy Little Elves!

We have been so busy decking the halls!  This week we made reindeer for our front foyer. . .

Can you find Dasher and Dancer, Donner and Vixen, Prancer, Comet, Cupid, Blitzen?  What about Rudolph?

Then we had Buddies!  Can you guess what we made?

 We used a sock and some rice. . . .

 some scissors and elastics. . . .

some buttons, ribbon and scraps of material. . . . .

and Voila!  Snowmen and Snowladies!!!! 

Thank you Big Buddies. You're the BEST!!!  We LOVED making them and can't wait to take them home.  Do you like making crafts?

Calling All Actors!

Over the past 2 weeks we were lucky to have Robert Randall come and do some drama with us.  He spent 3 periods with us and each  day we did something different.  It was the perfect ending to our Global Read Aloud since the story was about acting and improvising.  We tried many new,  fun and interesting activities.  We had to use our imaginations the whole time!  It was hard at first but each day we got better and better at doing things.  We used our faces to express different feelings.  Here we are warming up!

 Then on went the masks and we had to use just our bodies to express feelings - that was HARD!

Another activity we did was to improvise ~ we had to make people believe that an object was something totally different

 Can you guess what the banana is?  what about the brush?  the fly swatter?

Another day we made a statue garden!  Just like Marty McGuire and her class.  The first person had to start by saying "I am a____" and stand still.  The next person to join the group had to decide what they were going to be and how it connected to the first person.  Each person got to add an idea to the scene and then the actors cam alive and described the scene for us! 

 In this scene there is a dirt bike and a dirt bike rider, a jump, a car for the dirt bike rider to jump over, a raccoon, and a raccoon catcher carrying a net, a butterfly and a bush, oh and a pile of dirt for the dirt bike!  Gotta love kids and their imaginations!

The next day we tried creating some winter scenes in our class. We had lots of fun using our new skills.  Have you ever acted in a play or played acting games?

Thank you Robert Randall!

Creativity and Collaboration in the Classroom

My students never cease to amaze me with their critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. After we finished our Global Read Aloud we just weren't ready to leave it alone so we decided to do a group project based on the book.  We wanted to retell Marty McGuire in our own words.  After much thinking and organizing, we were put into small groups.  Our first job was to read the chapter we were given and to summarize the MAIN ideas.  This was HARD work- lots of discussion took place! Deciding what to include was very difficult for us! We wanted to include EVERYTHING!

Once that job was done we were ready to retell our chapter.  We brainstormed for all the different ways we could show what happened in our chapter. The best part was each group had the CHOICE  of how they wanted to share their "story."    The class was abuzz with ideas.  The conversations were incredible; the problem solving fantastic; the collaboration exciting and the acceptance of everyone's ideas was heartwarming.  We had groups making stick puppets, some acting out their chapter and filming it, some groups drawing their pictures using one of the drawing apps, then importing the pictures into Pic collage and then writing or talking about it.  They had SO much FUN and the learning was fabulous.  This project took several periods to do and many times we thought we had taken on too much but we stuck with it and the end results and learning were well worth the effort.

Here is a small sample of some of our work.

This image was done using Draw and Tell.  Once they had chosen their characters they practiced their script and then recorded their voices. 

Puppets that were made for a puppet show.  Can you tell who is Veronica Grace and who is Marty McGuire?

Look at the frog in the pond!

We LOVED reading Marty McGuire.  What is your favourite book?

Brrrr . . . . the Snow is Coming!

 Brrrr. . .  with the cold weather coming we decided to make snowmen.  After reading the book, Snowmen At Night, we drew a big snowman on blue paper and then sponge painted it with white so that it looked like snow.  While they dried we started to think about how we wanted our snowman to look.  We LOVED being creative and making our snowmen personal.  Here they are decorating our hallway.


































 I wonder what snowmen really do at night.What do YOU think they do?