Last News for 2008!

Our last news for the year was written by all the students on the last day of school.

(Sara) This week the whole school went to the gym and we sang Christmas carols. From December 15 to 18 we all brought in canned food. Our class had 24 cans of food (for the food bank).

(Kevin) To make pizza we put dough and flour on the table and we put toppings on the pizza like pepperoni, olives and green pepper. The we cooked the pizzas in the oven.

(Angie) A scientist visited our class. Her name was scientist Cartan. We got a science workbook. We learned about structures, stability, bridges and point load.

(Raika) On Friday we celebrated Shab-e-Yalda, which means the sun's birthday in Iran. Ms. R brought in some Iranian food to celebrate. Also on Friday, there was a huge snowstorm. Some of the students went home!

(Alison and Nicole) In math we studied 3D solids. We took pieces of paper and folded them into 3d solids. At the end, we taped them on to pieces of yarn and hung them up.

(Liam and Parsa) This week we studied about Hanukkah. We learned how to play with our dreidels (spinning tops). We also made donuts and they were very delicious.

(Cole and Grace) We made crystals with borax and hot water using pipe cleaners, string, popsicle sticks and cups.

(Eve) On Thursday, December 18th we did our holiday concert. We sang When You Wish Upon A Star and O Sole Mio. Also the whole school did something called holiday post office. It's when every class has a street name and other students can send you letters.

Update from Ms. R

This week's homework is to practise singing the songs "When You Wish Upon A Star" and "O Sole Mio" to get ready for our school concert on Thursday Evening. Also complete the word search puzzle with all the names from Room 5 in it and create your own word search using words from all the different things we have learned about so far this year.

* FOOD DRIVE Please bring non-perishable food (in cans, jars or boxes) for our schools food drive to help those people in the city in need.

Dec. 16 (PM) - Scientists in the Schools
Dec. 18 (AM) - Our Italian Feast
Dec. 18 (evening) - Holiday Concert - 6:30 to 7:30
Dec. 19 - Last day of class
Jan. 5 - First day of class for 2009

December 10 News

This week's news by Ms. R (we ran out of time this week!)

As you can see in the photo, my son Max came in to connect and set up the Smartboard computer in our class. We are the first classroom to have this technology and we are slowly learning how we can use it in our class. We used it to learn how to make the "Iggy's Holiday Dance" video, create notes for our science experiment and to listen and learn a new song (When You Wish Upon A Star) from the movie of the old Italian folktale "Pinocchio", written over 100 years ago by Carlo Collodi (Nicole did her research project on this famous Italian).

In math we are learning about 3D (three dimensional) geometric solids.

Eve brought in a DVD with a Pink Panther cartoon called "Pink da Vinci" where he gets in trouble for repainting the smile on the Mona Lisa. The class then wrote an opinion story about the cartoon.

In science we continued to learn about the scientific method for conducting experiments. The photo shows "silly putty" that the students made using glue, water and borax. They wrote about their theories on how two liquids mixed together actually made a solid (or more accurately, a semi-solid).

This week and next we are reviewing all the word wall words we studied so far this year. One way we reviewed these words was to create word search puzzles for other students to solve.

The children created snowflakes on the computer at www.addictinggames.com/createasnowflake.html.

On Friday afternoon, the children snuggled with their pillows to watch the holiday movie "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer".

Update from Ms. R

The homework this week is for each student to teach an adult learner how to make a kirigami paper snowflake and then write a report on how the lesson went.

On the afternoon of December 16 "Scientists in the Schools" will be visiting our classroom. We need 3 adults to help us out. If you are interested please write a note in your child's agenda and I will get back to you.

December 3 News

December 3 News by Raika and Liam

This week we finished our pillows and wrote stories about how to make a pillow. My favourite part was using the fabric crayons (Liam). I liked sewing up the opening with a needle and yellow thread. I liked teaching the students how to use a sewing machine (Ms. R).

In music, we learned the song "Bravo Bravissimo" and "O Sole Mio". We listened to Luciano Pavarotti and Bryan Adams sing a duet of that song (due = two in Italian).

In math we used what we know about 2D shapes (polygons) to help us design building. I designed a building for a vet (Raika) and I designed a school (Liam). We wrote about how many different kinds of shapes were in each building.

We went to the gym to see Dufflebag Theatre perform "A Christmas Carol". Sara from our class was asked to go in the play and be a girl called Victoria. She did a really good job. In our opinion the play was funny.

We made kirigami snowflakes (that's Japanese for cut + paper). We glued them to black piece of paper and wrote our names with chalk on them. These are now on the wall in our classroom.

We worked with tangrams. The more we did the puzzles the faster we got. Each student designed their own tangram puzzle. I did Dracula (Liam) and I did a puppy with big ears (Raika). We then tried to do everyones puzzles and we could do one in 30 seconds or less.

Each student picked a famous Italian person. We made posters and on the poster we put stenciled their last name at the top. We also wrote research facts about the person on the poster. Finally we put on a map of where they were born in Italy.

We did drama plays with Ms. Adeodu. The story was "Strega Nona Meets Her Match". I played the part of Big Anthony (Liam) and I played the part of Strega Nona and the narrator (Raika).

We said good bye to Ms. Adeodu this week. We hope she becomes a great teacher!

Ciao! from Liam and Raika