Grade 5 & 6 Class Blog: Anais

Showing posts with label Anais. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 February 2015

2015 BCA Geography Challenge

After a long wait.......The 2015 BCA Geography Challenge is underway!! We went to the devotions room right after lunch, and thanks to the hard work of Miss Alexandar, everything looked great and was ready to go. Here you see some of the competitors ready to begin!

The contest was long and arduous....but our very own Sharon was second place in the Junior Category.

AND........The FIRST PLACE CHAMPION was GABRIEL!! Congratulations to all the students what qualified and especially to our winners!! It was a great job by everyone!

--Miss Leonard

Friday, 23 January 2015

Bible Times Drama--Queen Esther

As you can see we have had a bit of drama going on in our classroom this week! Above are the ferocious guards of King Ahasuerus. These men strong-armed their way into the house of Mordecai and took away the beautiful Esther.

As we finish up our unit on Esther, yesterday we acted out her story in three parts. Each group had a lot of good pieces. Some groups really went out of their way with costumes and props. Some groups spent a lot of time working on the drama and doing rehearsals. They had time in class, but most of them worked in their spare time (lunch and recess) as well. They went much further with this activity than I had originally planned, and the results were fantastic. Good Job, class!

Below, you see a very pampered king getting fed grapes at his royal party.

Unfortunately, while Ahasuerus was eating grapes, his Queen Vashti was actively denying his request for her presence--Here played by Anais. (Voted MVA--Most Valuable Actor--by her group)

Having done away with Vashti, you can see below the sentries as they knocked on Mordecai's door to capture Esther.

Above, we see the next group as the king and wicked Haman discuss affairs of state.

Below, the king is read to from the Chronicles because he cannot sleep.

Ahasuerus: Really, what was his reward?

Reader: He didn't have one. That always happens around here.

(This was one of my favorite lines! I laughed so hard!)

Here the third group's king displays his royal scepter as he prepares to extend it to Esther.

This was the royal banquet of ....grape juice. Haman was dragged away and killed at the end of this skit.

Everyone had so much fun with the story, and we all got a lot of laughs. All the students begged to do something like this again soon.

--Miss Leonard

Thursday, 15 January 2015

Map Design

This week the students studied maps of Ottawa and the major government landmarks there--we are studying the Canadian Government this term. After we had studied the map of our capital city, the students were able to design their own cities with significant landmarks. They were so creative and enjoyed this assignment so much! We spent longer on it than I had anticipated, but they were having such a good time and doing such a great job....I just let them go! You can see some pictures here. Not all the maps are finished yet, but they will be ready to go on the wall by next week. Moms and Dads feel free to come up and see them after school next week!

I'm very proud of all the student's hard work and creativity on this project! Good job, folks!

--Miss Leonard

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Gingerbread houses and Christmas party!

We headed off to Christmas break so quickly, that I never got our last Christmas blog posted! That last week was so busy and FUN! We got to help the Pre-K to 2s with their gingerbread houses again this year. The room was super crowded and full of sugary kids, but they did a great job on the houses.

Each younger student was given an older student (or 2) to work with them and be their buddy. Our kids worked so well with the younger ones--guiding them on their designs and helping them not eat too much candy!

I also have to comment on how well our class helped clean up the HUGE MESS that was left in Miss A's room after the younger kids had been cleaned up and sent to lunch. Several students in our class gave up part of their lunch to help myself and Miss A deal with the crumbs and sticky tables. We were so grateful and appreciated the help!

I hope the little ones had as much fun as our class did!

The next day we had our class party. Thank you so much to the moms who were in charge. Here you see our class playing a game.

And after games and yummy snacks.....Everyone's secret buddy revealed themselves, and they got to open their gifts! We had everything from stationary to Nerf guns! Everyone was very excited and thrilled with their gifts. It was a great wrap-up for our secret buddy activity.

I love looking at these pictures to see all the excitement and happy faces. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I would like to thank everyone for the sweet gifts that I was given. There are so many wonderful and thoughtful families in our class! I appreciate you all!!

We are off and running with all sorts of Term 2 excitement including the BCA Social's Fair, Book Reports, Studying the Canadian Government in Socials......the list goes on and on! Looking forward to a great term 2!

--Miss Leonard

Monday, 15 December 2014

Remembrance Day in Retrospect

Well, it seems that I am getting a little behind in my blogging all the fun things we do. In November, we spent a lot of time on things for Veteran's Day. All the BCA students entered a poster contest held by the legion. Before the posters went off to be judged, we had our own school contest. Our class had several winners: Anais, Bethany, Gabe, and Jed.
On the Friday before Remembrance Day, we had our Yearly BCA Veteran's Day assembly. At the assembly, our class sang a song called "Standing Silently". It is a great song about the reason behind the traditional moment of silence, which is typically held at these events. They kids sounded great, and I was so proud of them.

You can check out a recording below.

A big thank you to all our Veterans and currently serving service men and women. We appreciate your sacrifice for us.

--Miss Leonard

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Today we got the privilege to hear (and sing with) the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Bramwell Tovey. The Orpheum Theatre itself was breathtaking with the ornate gold trim, chandeliers, and "bathrooms covered in marble". Here we are posing for a brief class shot.

As you can see Jonah and Silas took time for some "chillaxing" in all the grandeur. Don't they look right at home!

Inside the Theatre, it was even more beautiful!! Once we found our seats, there was an infinite amount of things to see and food for the imagination.

Here we have our relaxed gentlemen again. This was directly before they broke into an ear wrenching rendition of "Oh, Canada" full of enthusiasm and patriotic verve......not a hockey game, fellas!

Yes, we waited long enough to get a bevy of pictures, but when the concert started, all was quiet, and we listened to the amazing compositions of Beethoven, Mozart, Gershwin, and even a segment from the Opera "Carmen". It was hard to pick a favorite, but among the ones I heard talked about were "The William Tell Overture" and Beethoven's 5th.

In addition to the beautiful sounds, talented musicians, and riveting conductor, another great thing about the music today was that the students recognized almost every piece. There were lots of over the shoulder smiles to Miss Leonard and whispers of "We know this!" or "The Five Browns play this!" It made me very proud of them!

After the 1 hour concert, which we all decided was not that long at all, we hustled out of the theatre to beat the hordes of "bus students". Unfortunately, we didn't get to look at the wall of composers on the way out--this discovered by the bathroom frequenting crowd just before the concert began. It would have been a great place to explore, but not with a full house of 500 other students!!

On the way home, we stopped at McDonald's for a quick lunch....generally these lunches consisted of a lot of ice cream and french fries....delightful treats before they hit the playland area. "Yes, Miss Leonard! We are allowed in here! It says 3 to 12! We are 12!"
And so they played.....

I think a good time was had by one and all. It was a wonderful day away from our normal learning environment with some wonderful music and new experiences. After all....how many kids can say they sang with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra!!

Thanks to our volunteer drivers and Miss D for their help. You all were great!!
--Miss Leonard

Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Student Council

BCA Student Council elections were a great hit! We had four excellent candidates that campaigned from our class. Anais is seen here giving her speech.

Ella handed out campaign buttons and gave a very confident speech regardless of being the only grade 5 in the running!

Bethany also gave a nice speech with many campaign promises.

And then Super Man showed up....or is that Joey?...Yep. That is Joey.

AND THE VOTES ARE IN!!

Newly Elected Student Council Member for Elementary...

JOEY

Student Blogger--Bethany

This year we are having a group called the Student Council. The high school students were voting for President, Vice President, Treasurer, etc. The Student Council needed a kid from the Grade 5/6 class for an Elementary Representative. Everyone in 5/6 voted for a classmate they thought would be the best representative for the elementary students. Eight were chosen. Four stepped down, and four ran for the office: Ella, Joey, Anais, and myself.

On Monday we started campaigning. We hung posters and handed out slips saying stuff like "Vote for Bethany as your Representative". ON Friday, everyone in Elementary came into the 5/6 classroom to listen to our speeches. After that, we all voted. Joey won by one vote!

--Bethany

Congratulations to Joey. And thank you to all who ran and campaigned hard! Good job, everyone.

--Miss Leonard

Thursday, 18 September 2014

Relief Maps of Canada

Salt maps....I remember making a salt map of West Virginia when I was in grade 4. What a great idea for teaching the major land forms of Canada! We started with amazing parent participation. Everyone sent in 2 cups of Salt. THANK YOU!

The students had previously traced the outline of this very complexly shaped country onto a pizza box (Very kindly donated by Panago). The pizza boxes were then spray painted by each student, covered in an economy sized garbage bag as a smock--don't want a bright royal blue on those uniforms!!

Miss Leonard supplied the flour, and the next step was to make the dough. It was a bit of a messy process (upon reflection, I would cover the entire room with a drop-cloth next time!), but we managed to get it all mixed up without any major damage!

The next step was to start filling the outline with dough. It is not as easy as it sounds and took some of the students a LOT longer than they thought!