The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Many of you know that I connect with a variety of other teachers and educators on-line via Twitter, Edmodo and a variety of other social media tools. Today I noticed a link to the video below. The teacher that posted it is a teacher librarian in our school division and thought it would be a great way to kick off I Love to Read Month. I agreed :) Today we watched it and did a little bit of writing during Daily 5 time. The kids liked it so much they asked to watch it again while they were eating their lunches, so I thought I would share it with you too. Enjoy!
-Mrs. Malkoske


The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Here are some of their comments about the video:
My favourite part was the houses flying all over the place. -Cameron
In the movie I saw a tornado. -Nick
There was a tornado and everything was flying. There was a man riding his bike to home and he was flying. -Sam
When we watched the movie, my favourite part was when the book needed surgery. -Madeline
My favourite part of the movie was when he did surgery. -Rylee
My favourite part of the movie was when all the books were sad because the man was leaving. Then the little girl came and they were happy again. -Ashley
When he came into the different world, he was black and white. Then he went into the house with all kinds of books. When he picked up a book and read it he turned colour. -Tristan
When the man was lending the books to people, and wehn he gave them a book, they turned colour. -Sydney R
In the movie my favourite part was where the books had to have surgery. It was a good movie. -Aaron
In the movie there was a part where the book had surgery and the book was hooked up like a person to see if his heart was beating. When he read the book, there were bumps like his heart was beating. -Tyson
My favourite part was when the man put the little jacket on the book. -Jadyn
When he looked at the book it made him turn colour because he liked it. -Kendall

A day away...

Today you won't see a post from the kids of Room 9 as I am away at a meeting all day. They are spending their day with Ms. Koehn, our very favourite substitute! The meeting that I'm attending today is a bit of a new experience for me. I was asked to be a part of a conference planning committee for a big educational technology conference happening in Winnipeg in 2014. I was a bit nervous before I arrived as I had taken a look at the list of other committee members and wondered why I was included in the group. (Of course, I Googled them, because that's just what I do.) I found out that I would be sitting around the table with superintendents, consultants, and presidents and executive directors of a variety of educational associations. Needless to say, I was feeling quite nervous about the day. However, I very quickly reminded myself how often I ask my students to try new things that are outside of their comfort zone, and how they step up to the challenge each and every day. Teacher becomes student...again :)
-Mrs. Malkoske

Sweet and Sour Science!

Today's blog post was written by Madeline. She has been wanting to blog our day all by herself for quite a while now :) I think she did a fabulous job!
-Mrs. Malkoske

Today we had science centers. They were about the  5 sences. One of the centers was taste and we had to taste a leamon salt, suger, lifesavers and a orange. The leamon tasted horribele. The lifesavers tasted hot and minty.The orange tasted  okay. One of the other centers was smell. Ms. Anderlic put some liquids and some solids into a cup and she put foil on the cup so we could not see what was inside. Ms. Anderlic put little holes so we could smell what was inside. Then we had to write we thought it was. After Ms. Anderlic told us what was inside the cup. Some things in the cup smelled yummy. Some of the things it the cup smelled yuckey. One of the other center was touch. We had to cover our eyes so we could not see what it was. We had to try to figure out what it was and what it felt like. Then we had to write what it felt like and what we thout it was. The next center was sight. We had to sort them. We had to write about are sorting rule. The last one was sound. we had to close are eyes again. Ms. Anderlic got a thing and she put it close to our ear for the sense of hearing. An example is a pencil sharpener. Then we wrote what we thought it was on are paper. We did a art project with crayons. Last day we picked out some crayons for the art project. Then we put tape that was sticky on both sides. Then we stuck the crayons on. The next day Mrs. Malkoske had two hairdryers. Then we  blowdryerd the crayons. Then it melted and then the wax came down. My Grandma came to read a book called Ladybug Girl. Beacause I am star of the week. The book very good. I liked when my Grandma came to read.- Madeline 

Thank you to all of the families that have taken the time to read and comment on our Mixbook! The children are enjoying sharing their hard work with you. Here are some of the comments we have received so far:

The 100th Blog Post!

Today is a very AWESOME day! This is our 100th blog post of the 2011-2012 school year. We are celebrating with cake and juice and balloons and a very special blog post. Today each of the children in our class is going to type a short message in this post by themselves! For some of us this will be our first time typing our own post.

So... here we go!

We are going to have a cake that looks our like a blog post. We are going to have some juice to. I like bloging because sometimes I get to write my own idea. -Madeline

Today is the 100th blog post and we are going to celabrate today. -Rhianna

Today it is are 100 blog post we are celebrating. I am so happy about it. -Lindsay

It is our 100th blog  post. We are going to have cake. It looks like our blog. -Sydney H

When I came in and saw all the balloons I didnt know why their were balloons. -Kendall

When we came in in the morning there were balloons in the classroom. And when we came in Mrs. Malkoske told us that it was our 100th blog post! -Sydney R

Today is the 100th blog post and thir is balloons on our table. -Jadyn

today we get to eat cake because it is the 100th day of bloging.-Olivia

Today is the 100th . blog post I like to read it on. the computer at home And put stuff on the blog. - Jonathon

I like to blog because i like to look at it at home. -Aaron

I like to blog because I did one at home and it was fun. -Alexander

I like to blog because I get to tell about my day. -Cole

Today it is 100th day and we are haveing patey and we blog evry day.-Taylor

we  are having a patey it will be awesome! .-Rylee

Today is a very awesome day becuse we are celebrating are 100th blog .-Ashley

When I got here I was suprised because there was balloons.-Aliegha

100 blog post today.- Nicholas

Today was a doble awesome day because it was the 100th blog post! i like bloging because you can tell idias to mrs malkoske tipes it.i love bloging it is fun. bloging is at the end of the day lots of the time.i do coments at home on the computer.- tristan

Today is the 100th day of bloging! we got cake and cupcakes I like bioging because you get to put your own  ideas on the blog.-peyton

we made a BIG blog post today because we did the 100TH blog post.-tyson

i had cake today it was awesome so good. -Cameron

I like to post because it is awesome!.-Jolene

it was tristans birthday.- Brandon

I love Dr. Hamilton School and I have lots of fun at Dr. Hamilton. Blogging is really fun and you get to put ideas up. -Kaspir

Number 99...

Today I'm posting by myself as the kids of Room 9 are off to Music class. Our afternoon was very busy and we ran out of time to post together. However, as always, they were very clear about what today's post should say. :) Here is what the kids wanted me to tell you:

This morning during Daily 5 we took a look at a few pieces of writing that some of the children are working on for our next Mixbook. In order for us to be able to see the writing and revise/edit as a group, I took a picture of a few students' notebooks with my iPad and connected it to our projector. We opened the pictures in the Glow Colouring app (a word work favourite!) and we were able to write on top of the student writing to highlight, fix, and add. It was very interactive and the kids loved to see their writing on the big screen :) Here is a picture of one of the pieces we looked at. ------->

In this piece we were able to see that the author was using language that made it sound more like a poem than a story, they were using some WOW! Words (descriptive words) and that they had asked a couple of questions. This group revision/edit was valuable to both the student who's work was on the wall, as well as to other students who were working on similar pieces.

The second thing the kids wanted me to share with you is about an art project that we've started during our inquiry time. We are learning about different states of matter and we have had many discussions about changing from one state to another (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, etc). One of the student in our class talked about a crayon maker that she got for Christmas. She explained that you can melt crayons (solid to liquid) and make new ones. This reminded me of an art project I saw on Pinterest where crayons were attached to a piece of foam core and heated to melting with a blow dryer. Of course, the kids had to try it. They busily peeled broken crayons during indoor recesses last week, and today we did step one of the project... choosing our crayons. Here's a picture: ----->

Tomorrow we'll attach them to our board and blow dry. I have a feeling it's going to get warm in here!

Just one more note... This post is our 99th blog post of the school year!  Be sure to check out our special edition 100th post tomorrow :)

Science Centres!

Today we had centres. One was water table, the rest were stirring. The water table was dirty. -Nick

We were doing our thing and we put in sand and we mixed in the sand. The sand was floating and when we were mixing it, it was sinking. -Sam

I had fun during centres. -Rylee

When we had centres we were talking about solids and liquids and gases. -Aaron

During centres Mrs. Klausen came and helped us. -Olivia

My first centre was syrup, paint, and water. There were questions on our paper. Our centre was number 5. We had to pour sugar in it the second time. The first time we just had to talk about what it looked like. -Tristan

At our first centre, it was at our table, it was number 5. We had to do something with sugar, water, paint, and syrup. We had to put the sugar in the paint and the water and the syrup and then after we mixed them up. At the end of the centre we went to the next one. It was the water table. We had to write down the objects that we used and we had to write what the things did, if they floated or sunk. -Ashley

We had a fantastic time with Mrs. Klausen at science centres time. -Cameron

My centre was number 4. We had to put the sand, sugar and salt in the water and see what happens. -Lindsay

Our centre was number 3 and we had to put food colouring in paint, oil and water and mix it and see what happened. -Peyton

When we did centres, my first centre was the water table. We had to see if something floated or sunk. One of the the things was both. A cup sunk if it had water in it. If it didn't have water in it, it floated. The slinky sunk. -Madeline

My centre was the fifth centre. I liked pouring the sugar into the paint, syrup and water. -Sydney R

For those of you who have been waiting to see our SNOWBALL characters... Here they are!

This morning...

This morning I was greeted by one of my grade one boys who had come to school early because his older sister is involved in an early morning club. He asked if he could come into our classroom instead of watching in the gym. I invited him in and told him he could find something to do as I prepared for our day. After a few minutes, and not even a peep from him, I turned around and saw this:

Out of all of the things he could've chosen to do, he quietly took out his writer's notebook and wrote and wrote and wrote. What a great way to start the day :)

-Mrs. Malkoske

Yummy Word Work & Science Centres!

Today at Word Work Mrs. Malkoske got a new word work material. It was crackers and we got to make words with them because they had letters on them. After, when you were done word work, you got to eat them. (And I am star of the week). -Madeline

I did fishy crackers at word work. When I was done my words I ate them. They tasted like cheesy crackers and they were letters. -Nick

Today word work was yummmy. It was exciting to work with things you eat. After your round you could eat them. That's the part that made it yummy! -Ashley & Cameron

Today in the afternoon we had centres. There were 6 centres. There was different groups. Some were with their whole table group and some had one person away to make another group. We got to pick our own spot at our table. After that we got to pick where we wanted to go. -Taylor

We kind of used marbles and we put some water in to see if it would go up or no. -Sam

Today we did centres. I really liked using the marbles and the blocks. It was hard. -Rylee

My favourite science centre was the ones with water. In one of the water ones you filled a cup with water and put marbles into it and see if it overflowed. The other one was there was a container with a line and a big marble. You poured the water into the cup with the line then  put the marble in. -Sydney R

My favourite centre was the one with beads but the beads spilled everywhere! It was still fun. -Kendall

This weekend I took another trip down to Grand Forks with my Mom to visit my sister and her family. We were celebrating my nephew's 4th birthday and watching my niece perform in the North Dakota Ballet Company's production of Alice in Wonderland.

Whenever I go across the border Target is always on my list of places to visit. (After family of course.) When I shop at Target my rule is to only buy things that I can't get in Canada. This weekend I found Cheez-It Scrabble Junior crackers... and they were a huge hit during word work this morning! The kids are always excited to use a new material, especially when they can eat it after. :) -Mrs. Malkoske

The WOW! Word Day

 Today we had a substitute teacher because Mrs. Malkoske had to go to a meeting. Our subs name was Ms. Koehn. (Rhianna) Today Mrs. Malkoske went to a meeting and then she came back with Mrs. Kosolowski. We were talking about snow and Wow words. One of the wow words is white as flour and white as a wedding dress. (Madeline) We had two charts; one was ordinary words and one was Wow words!(Kendall) When it was recess I was playing Lego and we made the biggest houses and mine was a little bit big and I liked it. (Nick) We had gym and there was a subistitute. We played Ollie Ollie Octopus and after that we played soccer and then we played basketball. (Ashley)
Today at lunch, Nicholas' tooth started to hurt and I thought that it was going to fall out. (Kaspir)
Today it was hot lunch. It was pasta from Boston Pizza. I don't like pasta so I didn't get any. (Aliegha)
Kendall's mom brought cupcakes because it was Kendall's 7th birthday. The cupcakes were yummy. (Sydney R)
This afternoon we did math and I finished because I used a ruler. (Rylee)
We did mini bubble art with little pieces of paper. Mrs. Barnes helped us. (Jonathon)
We have had indoor recess for the last week. We are tired of playing inside and want to play outside. (Olivia)

Snowballs!!!

Today we read the book, "Snowmen at Night" and decided to create our own snowball people! Here is a photo collage of our process:

Check tomorrow's post for some photos of all of our snowball people!

All Together Again

Today was the first day since before Christmas break that our whole class has been at school! Here are some highlights from today:
Today we had family groups and I had fun making my brick. -Kaspir
Today we have early dismissal. -Lindsay
Today we had indoor recess again because it was so cold out. -Taylor
We had gym and then we were exercising like running. -Sam
It's early dismissal and my Dad's going to pick me up but he doesn't know it's early dismissal. -Jonathon
At all the recess I was peeling crayons. -Aliegha
We had gym today and we were exercising. At recesses I was peeling crayons with Aliegha, Jonathon, Tristan, Tyson, Cole, Jadyn, Olivia, Lindsay, and Jolene. It's for an art project. -Madeline
At Daily 5 we had to do Read to Self and then we got to pick our last choices. -Peyton
When it was school my Mom dropped me off because I wanted to because it was too cold out and my bus was early in the morning. -Nick
Today at recess I played Connect 4 and Let's Go Fishing and Lego. -Cole
Today at the end of the day Mrs. Malkoske showed us a video of a man that helped people have light and he used a plastic bottle, and water, and bleach, and sealer. -Sydney R & Kendall At family groups we had to do a project with a paper that looked like a brick with a stick person. There was a speach bubble. You had to colour it and write something in the speach bubble about what conscience means. I put "Doing the right thing." -Ashley
Today is early dismissla and wer're having indoor bussing because it;s really cold. -Rhianna

Not Funny Mother Nature.

We had library today. The story was about a girl and dad and a mom and a whale (Sam & Olivia). When we were doing centres, when I was at bubbles, I made a really big bubble (Aliegha). When we were doing centres today we made bubbles and if you blow into it with a straw, it makes it bigger (Sydney R). Today at the stations, first I went to bubbles and when I was blowing bubbles I made the bubbles run down the side (Rylee). There were four centres. One was sand, one was water, one was bubbles and one was blocks. The first centre I went to was the sand. The people in my group were Taylor, Jolene, Aliegha, Madeline and Jadyn. It was exciting because when we were in the sand there was a little marble. Then someone would hide it and everyone would try to find us (Ashley). At centres when I made lots of bubbles, one time I accidentally swallowed it and it tasted horrible (Madeline). I got to school early in the morning and we just came in because it was too cold and that's what Mrs. Caldwell said on the announcements. It's really cold out today (Nick).

Today we had another day of indoor recess. It was way too cold to go outside and play (-35 or colder!). This afternoon during our inquiry time we did some centres to explore the properties of solids, liquids, and gases. Here are some pictures from our exploration centres this afternoon:

Here are some pictures of some of the creations that have been made with blocks during indoor recess:

Mystery Numbers and More!

Today it was Kaspir's birthday. We drew pictures for him and sang Happy Birthday. He went down to the principal's office to get a pencil. (Ashley) Today we did Mystery Numbers. My numbers are below. 14 means my bus number, 5198 means my home, 8 is my age, 17 is my birthday number, 99 is the number of times I've been to the States. (Jadyn) My numbers are below too. Can you guess what they mean? (Mrs. Malkoske)  Today we did Daily 5 and I did Read to Someone with Brandon. He is my best partner. (Nick) Today in gym the girls played Ringette and the boys played Hockey. (Sydney H) This week I am the Star of the Week! (Lindsay) We played a counting game in math with high fives. (Sam) Today after lunch in Inquiry we talked about solids, liquids and gases. (Rylee) In math Mrs. Malkoske put her mystery numbers on the white board and we tried to guess what they were. I put 7, 65, 215, 2, 13, and 7 (Madeline). Today it was my birthday and I had fun. (Kaspir)

The Bubbly Day

In the morning we did daily 5. (Madeline) We did T.W.A.S and it was about the artist who came to the school. (Nick) Her name was Allison Moore. (Jadyn) We went to music today. (Lindsay) In music I got gummy bears. (Cameron) In math, we worked on adding and subtracting. (Peyton) In inquiry we wrote about our Frosty Experiment. (Rylee) We wrote about what Frosty looked like the first time we saw him, at the end of the day and this morning. (Kendall) He was a liquid today. (Kaspir) Today we did a project with bubbles, liquid watercolor and soap. We used straws to blow the mixture and it made bubbles. We put a piece of paper on the color we wanted and when you lifted it up it looked really cool. It looked like a circle made of bubbles. (Ashley) Ms. Anderlic was back today. (Jadyn)

Frosty the Snowman

We are learning about solids, liquids and gas in science. We know that ice melts into a liquid that's water. He will melt unless we put him back outside where it's cold enough. Frosty looked like he was sweating and the sun is making him hot and trying to melt him. Frosty is going to melt and at the bottom there is a crack and it looks like a marble. Frosty the snowman is getting cracks in his head and all of his parts on him like his nose and eyes and buttons and tie are starting to leak off. We know he's melting because the water is making the sticky stuff fall off. When Frosty melts he'll look like a puddle. He looks like a snowman made of marbles. He was big and his nose fell off. He's getting smaller and smaller and there's water in the bottom of the water table. Some leaked out on the floor. He has holes in him now. We think that tomorrow he'll be all water.

Science! Solids, Liquids and Gas!

Today during our computer lab time we started our next Inquiry project. We will be learning about SOLIDS, LIQUIDS AND GASES as well as THE SENSES. Over the next few weeks we are going to be SCIENTISTS! We will be doing many, many experiments.... starting tomorrow! We will blog about our experiments and explorations here! Stay tuned...

Here are some of our ideas about solids, liquids and gases. We know that there are many more than will fit on our list.

Solids	Liquids	Gases
Shoes Toothpaste Ice Car Table Books Sand Bricks Coal Clothes	Drinks Hot chocolate Water Coffee Milk Blood Iced Tea Smoothies Paint Ink	Smoke Dry Ice Fire In outer space Steam Carbon Dioxide Water vapour Oxygen

In the computer lab we did some experiments on the computer. It was fun! Here is a link to the BBC Science site if you want to try some experiment too!
BBC Science
-The Kids of Room 9

We Are Artists

Today we had artist in the school again an we used ink to color in the lines. When we were done we had lots of ink on or hands. We had to draw the shells from the ocean and we had to outline them with ink. Today Allison taught us how to use ink. We had fun doing it. Before we started we did a blind contour drawing. Then we traced and drew the shells and fossils.
Ty, Sam, Kaspir and Jadyn

The First Day Back at School... 2012!!!!!!!

sWhen I saw my friends at school I felt awesome! (Taylor) When I came in I felt good. In the morning I got to play with Kendall (Cameron). We had an assembly first thing in the morning. I picked out two books in library. One was Baby Mouse Skating Girl and I'm on page 36. The other was Deer and Rabbit. It was hard to choose which books I wanted so I didn't have time to sit down and read them. (Jolene). Today Mrs. Malkoske showed us our Mixbook. While we were gone the Mixbook came. I get to take it first. (Tyson) During Daily 5 we did Read to Someone and Read to Self. I had fun reading to self. (Kaspir)Today at Daily 5 we changed partners. My partner was Rhianna and my new one is Tyson (Sydney H) We Read to Self for 14 minutes. (Lindsay) We did Daily 5 all together. My new partner is Cameron (Kendall). We had Artist in the School. We had to trace a flower and then paint it. After you were done you could either read a book or draw a picture. She had a collection of stuff we could look at and use while we're doing the project. She's going to be here until Thursday. It will be fun. (Tristan) Today I was surprised that it was our turn to be with Artist in the School. We got to paint flowers and do the background. Tomorrow we're going to draw pictures of things we want to have under our sea. Then we're going to glue them on. (Ashley) The artist's name is Allison Moore (Jadyn). I sat beside Aliegha and Jadyn. We got to mix the paint and make some new colours. We could draw over the flowers that we already drew and paint over the other things. (Madeline) At the tables when we started painting we mixed up 3 colours. When it was time for us to go, Jolene was still painting so I helped her finish quickly. (Taylor) It was in room 7. (Nicholas) After we were done we could draw. I drew a picture of Nick and Rhianna and me and Kendall and Kaspir. (Rylee)

Here are some pictures of us working on our art projects:


This is the end of our first day back at school... we'll be back tomorrow!
-The Children of Room 9