TWAS October 5
Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a good, safe, snowy week and are ready to settle in for a nice long weekend. The children were very excitedly sharing about all kinds of family fun that they have planned!
We actually did enjoy the snow this week. We have been learning about paragraph writing and thought that "how to build a snowman" would make for an excellent topic. We thought we should have a recent first-hand experience to write about so off we went, a few times, to try to build one. What we learned was that building a snowman is not as easy as it might seem. You need the right equipment (boots, waterproof mittens, carrots for noses), team work and, most importantly, the right kind of snow. A few of the students did finally get one built during yesterday's afternoon body break. We discovered that as the afternoon sun warms the snow (a temperature science connection for us) it becomes sticky enough to use for snowman building :)
We also continued with Daily 5 groups: reading, passion projects, taking notes and researching from non-fiction books, and spelling work.
The topic of this week's good copy writing was Thanksgiving and/or things/people that we are thankful for. The children each set two of their own personal writing goals and strived to follow through with those goals in this writing. We'll review next week and have a 'goal check in.'
This week's math focus was basic math facts and learning to use math tools. We played bean bag toss skip counting. This would be a great activity to do with your child if time permits. They can teach you how to play; you can use any soft object. We are working on forwards and backwards skip counting by 2's, odd and even, 5's and 10's. We also created human number lines and practiced "bouncing' forwards and backwards to answer addition and subtraction equations, super fun. This is also something that can be done at home if you have the room. I just used painters tape on the floor; again your little one can teach you how we did this. We finished off this week's math, with some fun addition bingo, and math stations. All of the children are working soooo well in these stations. I was especially impressed with how independent everyone is when working at the math problem stations. Great work 73!
A Math Problem to Try (we did the same one in class with a different number): The answer is 20. What is the question?
Inquiry
Our work continued on our Alberta books. We used our paragraph writing skills to write about our community that is in our city that is in our province. This is still a little confusing for most of the students so it wouldn't hurt to continue community/city/province/country conversations if you have time. Next week we will look at our city and then Alberta's bird and flower.
We did some really fun science experiments this week. The results were cool! We were learning about how animals keep warm and different insulators. Using thermometers, and handy snow that nature provided us with, we monitored different insulating thermometers (we had cups of room temp. water in each) to see what the best insulator was. The children did this independently, taking the temperature inside of each container one time, and then as a class each table group monitored a particular insulator and we graphed temperatures at different times throughout the morning. The results are so interesting; I've uploaded our graph for you to enjoy (sorry the quality is not the best; blogger won't upload PDF/Jpeg and it doesn't really like screen shots). I'm more than happy to email you the PDF if you want to discuss the results in a little more detain with your child.
I don't have a picture of this week's art, as quite a few of us have some finishing touches to add on Tuesday, but it's worth the wait; they're beautiful!
I'll leave sharing about music, gym, and all the other things I missed, up to the children, and wish you all a wonderful long weekend!!
Have fun, stay warm and enjoy,
Mrs. McArthur
I hope you all had a good, safe, snowy week and are ready to settle in for a nice long weekend. The children were very excitedly sharing about all kinds of family fun that they have planned!
We actually did enjoy the snow this week. We have been learning about paragraph writing and thought that "how to build a snowman" would make for an excellent topic. We thought we should have a recent first-hand experience to write about so off we went, a few times, to try to build one. What we learned was that building a snowman is not as easy as it might seem. You need the right equipment (boots, waterproof mittens, carrots for noses), team work and, most importantly, the right kind of snow. A few of the students did finally get one built during yesterday's afternoon body break. We discovered that as the afternoon sun warms the snow (a temperature science connection for us) it becomes sticky enough to use for snowman building :)
We also continued with Daily 5 groups: reading, passion projects, taking notes and researching from non-fiction books, and spelling work.
The topic of this week's good copy writing was Thanksgiving and/or things/people that we are thankful for. The children each set two of their own personal writing goals and strived to follow through with those goals in this writing. We'll review next week and have a 'goal check in.'
This week's math focus was basic math facts and learning to use math tools. We played bean bag toss skip counting. This would be a great activity to do with your child if time permits. They can teach you how to play; you can use any soft object. We are working on forwards and backwards skip counting by 2's, odd and even, 5's and 10's. We also created human number lines and practiced "bouncing' forwards and backwards to answer addition and subtraction equations, super fun. This is also something that can be done at home if you have the room. I just used painters tape on the floor; again your little one can teach you how we did this. We finished off this week's math, with some fun addition bingo, and math stations. All of the children are working soooo well in these stations. I was especially impressed with how independent everyone is when working at the math problem stations. Great work 73!
A Math Problem to Try (we did the same one in class with a different number): The answer is 20. What is the question?
Inquiry
Our work continued on our Alberta books. We used our paragraph writing skills to write about our community that is in our city that is in our province. This is still a little confusing for most of the students so it wouldn't hurt to continue community/city/province/country conversations if you have time. Next week we will look at our city and then Alberta's bird and flower.
We did some really fun science experiments this week. The results were cool! We were learning about how animals keep warm and different insulators. Using thermometers, and handy snow that nature provided us with, we monitored different insulating thermometers (we had cups of room temp. water in each) to see what the best insulator was. The children did this independently, taking the temperature inside of each container one time, and then as a class each table group monitored a particular insulator and we graphed temperatures at different times throughout the morning. The results are so interesting; I've uploaded our graph for you to enjoy (sorry the quality is not the best; blogger won't upload PDF/Jpeg and it doesn't really like screen shots). I'm more than happy to email you the PDF if you want to discuss the results in a little more detain with your child.
The X line insulators were: wool; lard; shredded paper; pink insulation; fur and no insulator
I'll leave sharing about music, gym, and all the other things I missed, up to the children, and wish you all a wonderful long weekend!!
Have fun, stay warm and enjoy,
Mrs. McArthur
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