News for January 20

News for January 20

It was a short, 4-day week and we had two special visitors!

The big news was the visit of Scientist Lindy to our morning and afternoon classes. The students learned lots of new things about magnets. The children made and decorated a paper fish, put a paper clip on it and then used "fishing poles" with a magnet on the end of the string to go "fishing". The children used wand magnets to do an experiment where they had to predict and then test if different materials were attracted to magnets (e.g., buttons - no, screws - yes). There was a table with lots of different toys that used magnets. Students got the chance to search for buried metal treasure in a big container of sand using wand magnets. Children also got to sit with Scientist Lindy to learn more about the "pull" (attract) and "push" (repel) when two magnets are put together. Your child took home the materials they made during the day plus a bookmark, activity sheet and a magnetic fishing pole! A video of our time with the scientist can be found at the end of this posting.

PULL AND PUSH (sung to "Mary Had a Little Lamb")

Magnets like to pull and push,

Pull and push, pull and push,

Magnets like to pull and push,

Magnets are such fun!

Attract means pull, repel means push,

Repel means push, repel means push,

Attract means pull, repel means push,

Magnets are such fun!

Officer Marcie, is our school's Toronto Police Community liason, and she visited with our morning and afternoon classes this week. The focus of her talk was to tell the students how to recognize a Toronto Police Officer (dark blue uniform with a Toronto Police crest on both sleeves near the shoulder, a red band and badge on the hat and a red stripe down the side of each pant leg). She also spoke about what to do in an emergency (call 9-1-1) and the different kinds of jobs that police do in our city.

We learned the shape, sound and songs for the capital letters O and G.

In math, the students focused on learning how to recognize by sight the number of a group of dots (0 to 6) and how to 1:1 count the dots for higher numbers (7 to 10). We read aloud the book, Ten Black Dots, to help review 1:1 correspodence of objects and numerals and to practice using our imaginations to use black dots to represent something else (e.g., black dots can be balloons). The students each created a piece of art by gluing dots on paper and drawing in some details. They then counted and told me how many dots they used and what their dots represented. I typed up the students' words and now the art and words are on display in the hall outside our classroom.

We read aloud the book, The Moccasin Goalie, over several days. It is a Canadian classic story about a little boy who loved hockey. This is a good book to discuss with the class how the characters are feeling at different parts of the story. As usual, details about the books read aloud each week can be found at our sister blog at http://planet5books.blogspot.com/.

Thanks to the snowfall this week, the children made "Frosty" the snowman. Of course he had to have a carrot nose!

Here is a video our our time with Scientist Lindy: