Countdown Photobooth

For the last 11 days of school we have been having a countdown. Each day we pop a balloon and in the balloon is a special activity for us to do the next day. Some of them have been reading outside, sidewalk chalk outside with new, special chalk and bonus computer lab time. Last week one of them was a photo booth. I brought in a backdrop and some props for the kids to use. It turns out grade 2 kids are THE BEST in a photo booth. The endless energy and creativity works quite well! As you will see, some of them LOVED being in front of the camera. It was up to the kids how many photos they wanted but everyone got in at least one shot (not everyone's photo can be posted to the blog). There are a few that are in about 60% of them! This was a blast. Enjoy!

Touring Canada

We had a lot of success with our #postcardproject and learned about a lot of different communities in Canada. Now we are using that learning along with Tellagami to create a virtual tour of Canada! Each student will create a gami with 30 seconds worth of the information they got on their postcard. The full details of each location can also be seen on our Google Map of Canada.

Here are some of our gamis!

Mystery Skype Call

We have been practicing and preparing for our first Mystery Skype call! Finally the day is here and we will have our call this afternoon. We think we are all set.

We will use Skype to connect with a class somewhere else in the world. We will have to ask them yes or no questions to figure out where they are. This ties perfectly in with our recent explorations of Manitoba and Canada. We have been receiving postcards from people we know around Canada giving us information about their communities. The community we will connect with today is one of them!

We will use paper maps that are laminated so we can write on them as we narrow down our guess. We will also have a Google map up on our projector that we can move and zoom in on as we narrow it down. We have practiced starting with general questions and then getting more specific as we hone in on a region. The questions have to be yes or no questions. Some questions we might ask are:
"Are you in the north or south part of Canada?"
"Are you in the east or west part of Canada?"
"Are you in the province/territory ...?"
"Are you in the north or south part of the province?"
"Are you in the east or west part of  the province?"
"Are you close to water?"
"Is your home urban?"

We are super excited to connect with another class this way!

Update:
The call was a huge success! We asked really smart questions and narrowed it down quickly, just like we practiced. Some kids sat at the paper maps, some took photos, some asked questions, some wrote down the answers and some focused on the Google map. Everyone was totally engaged. We will totally do this again!

Seeing and hearing the students run the call, ask smart questions and be involved in their own way was so exciting for me. I love it when all the little parts of an inquiry or project come together and the kids have a really neat way to show me what they know. They applied what they have worked through this year in so many ways. Huge win!

Field Day!

We had an amazing field day today! Huge thanks to Mrs. Rand who spends countless hours organizing it all for us. It ran so smoothly and we are very appreciative. At the end of the day we made this slide show while we enjoyed our popsicles :)

field day movie from LeslieDent on Vimeo.

Mini-athon

Today the Bird's Hill School Run Club went to the mini-athon at Dr. Hamilton school. For the first time, grade 2 students were invited to join run club this year! Katelyn, Abbey, Jaden, Evan, Chantal and Addison have been in run club this year. Katelyn, Abbey and Evan have even run the whole time with Mrs. Dent Scarcello a few times at our morning practices! This is a great accomplishment! We had a great time at the mini-athon and the runners did a great job.

Lulu and the Mysterious Mission || Book Review

We just finished reading Lulu and the mysterious Mission. It is the second Lulu book we have read. We really like Lulu and the Brontosaurus so we were excited to try this one.

Lulu's parents are going on vacation WITHOUT Lulu. So she has to have a babysitter. She doesn't want a babysitter. She tries to escape and do sneaky things to get her parents to come home on the next plane. -Kate

This is what we thought of it:

After the Lulu and the Brontosaurus one we had 2 books to choose from, this one and  Flora and Ulysses and the whole class picked Lulu and the Mysterious Mission. It was really interesting. - Gabby

I like when Lulu sang the poem. She sang it because she wanted the babysitter to go. The babysitter's name was Sonya Sofia Solinski or Triple S. -Haylee

I liked when Lulu tried to escape by climbing out her bathroom window and climbing down the tree. I also like the one where she used the top secret code message and tried to get her friend to bring her 3 cats over and SSS was allergic to cats. -Adam

I liked the story because when Ms Solinski transformed Lulu into Lou so she transformed into a lady, a mad kid and a cow. -Jaden

I really liked it because it was funny and I liked when it said "the end" it was spread across 2 different pages. -Addison

I liked the ending of the story but I am not telling what it was. -Anthony

I really liked it because she was trying to escape and it was really funny because Ms Solinski was always finding her. -Kate

We recommend this book 100%, 10/10, 5 stars. We think our siblings would like this book and maybe seniors because they like to read a lot. We also think our moms and dads would like it too. We think Mrs. Henry's class would like it because they are also in grade 2.