News for December 14

News for December 14

This week, the children wrote letters to staff and students, finished their snail shell sculptures and learned how to solve crossword puzzles!

Our school has a tradition this time of year called "Holiday Mailbox". For the last two weeks of school before the winter vacation, students and staff practise correct letter writing and envelope addressing by writing letters and "mailing" them to other staff and students in the school. It's very exciting to receive a letter in the mail!

In math, the children continued the unit on Canadian money. They practised how to count mixed groups of coins, deciding with coins can be used to made a given amount and the equivalence between $0.34 and 34 cents.

The class learned the history and lyrics of more seasonal songs that are traditional in Canada. Did you know that "Up on the Housetop" was written in 1864, three years before Canada became a country? When we sing this song, we are singing words that were written 154 years ago!

The children continued to work in groups to go on the morning announcements to advertise our fundraiser to donate money to give to Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank. We are accepting donations up until next Wednesday. There are 527 students at our school, so if each student brings in $1.00, we could raise $527.00!

The students finished their snail shell plaster sculptures. Then, they wrote about the project and how to make them,  in their writing journals.

The class started to decorate the holiday tree in our classroom. Each child created a snowman ornament made out of felt and hung it on the tree. The class even used what they know about money to figure out how much the craft kits cost. There were materials for two snowmen in each kit, so we needed 9 kits at $1.25 each. How much are 9 loonies and 9 quarters altogether?

In science, the students reviewed the states of matter for water (ice, liquid water, steam or water vapour). They also did a "sweet" experiment to learn more about how solids dissolve into liquids. After learning about how solids dissolve or "disappear" into liquids by going in between the water molecules. When water is heated, the molecules have more energy and move around more, so there is more space between the water molecules. More space means more places for the dissolving solids to hide. On Friday, the children made hot chocolate using hot chocolate powder. When stirring the powder into cold water all the powder did not disappear. However, when we added hot water, the powder did disappear and then the hot chocolate was ready to drink!

At the end of the week, after learning the story, song and history of the children's character, Frosty the Snowman, the class watched the cartoon version, while drinking their cups of hot chocolate!

The children learned how to solve crossword puzzles. There are many different things that the brain does when solving these kind of puzzles.They have to look at clues for across words (horizontal) and down words (vertical). The words need to be spelled correctly to fit the number of given squares and to connect with the other words. The children need to apply what they know to think of the answer to the clues. For example, "Two years equals 24 _________."

Our amaryllis plant now measures an amazing 64 cm tall and has begun to flower.

Books read aloud this week:

The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real (read over several days) by Marjory Williams
Little Snowflake's Big Adventure by Steve Metzger