The big news this week was our Pioneer Day on Tuesday. We pretended it was May 4, 1810. We did not use electricity (although there were some exceptions - like our fish tank!) The students helped to prepare a lunch of homemade butter, cornbread pancakes with maple syrup, baked beans, carrots, pickles and cheese. The students learned how to use quill pens (feather pens) with ink and practised their cursive writing. They worked with a partner, using blackboards to practise their addition and subtraction facts. We had a "spelling bee" using our word wall words. There were two teams, The Blacksmiths and The Millers. The children sowed (or planted) oat seeds to represent how pioneers would plant grains in the spring. The children learned about why twisting yarn makes it stroner and how to spin wool and how to use a spinning wheel. A video of the "power of the twist" is at the end of this posting. Please note that fleece (sheep wool) is easily pulled apart, but when it is twisted, it is very strong!
The students worked hard to create cards and gifts for Mother's Day.
The class finished up the good copies of their book reports on the "Martha" series of books. They learned about portraits and then created a portrait of Martha the dog. These are now on display in our hallway.
In math, we continued the unit on probability. The students did a variety of experiments to learn about the chance or probability of something happening. We flipped coins, used spinners, rolled dice, picked cards out of a cup and looked at coloured blocks in a "peep box".
As a class, we started to read aloud the Canadian classic, "Owls In The Family" by Farley Mowat.
Our bean plants are growing beautifully! The children took very good care of their plants and took them home this week.
In science, we started our investigation of life cycles by observing caterpillars. These updates will be posted separately.
In computers, the students practised figuring out lines of symmetry at:
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