News for April 5

The news for April 5

This week the students handed in their science posters showing their research on different inventions that use light and/or sound. They all look amazing! The presentations will start next Tuesday. It was only a four day week, but as usual, there was a lot going on.

The students began the week talking about shadows. They are now working in pairs to write a fable that they will tell orally accompanied by a shadow puppet show using their hands and paper cut-outs.

The class talked a bit about the holidays of Easter and Passover. The students created decorated collage eggs by gluing torn pieces of Japanese washi paper over a styrofoam egg.

In math, the class continued the unit on Motion Geometry by learning about lines of symmetry, translations and tessellations.

In science, the children continued to learn about light and had an afternoon rotating through a variety of activities. The activities highlighted what happens to light when you look through different coloured transparent materials, how light is reflected off flat, concave and convex mirrors and how kaleidoscopes use mirrors and lenses to work.

The students began a math/art project by learning about tessellations. These are tiled patterns that cover a surface without any gaps. They each began with a square of cardboard and cut off a patterned edge, translated it and taped it to the opposite side. Then they each traced around this unique puzzle piece to created a tessellated pattern. Finally, using only 3 colours they began to colour in the design to make a colour pattern on top of the tessellated one.

Our class was also invited to watch the grades 5/6 French plays and a school-wide assembly about "honesty".

Books read aloud this week:

Mirror, Mirror by Suzy Lee

Shadow, Shadow by Suzy Lee

The Easter Egg by Jan Brett

Louis Braille by David A. Adler

How to make shadow puppets video:

This is a cool commercial that uses shadow puppets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo_pU6GUPHE