The highlight of this week was our class ice cream party at the end of the day on Tuesday. Hudson won this special event at the Pumpkinfest celebration back in October. The students tried different kinds of ice cream and toppings. Delicious! Thanks Hudson!
Since the class showed an interest in learning cursive capital letters, we reviewed how to write all 26 capital cursive letters. Finally, the students created new name tags for their desks by writing his/her signature and taping it to his/her desk.
In math, the children really honed their skills at recognizing and matching 2D shapes by solving a series of tangram puzzles. At first the students took about a minute to solve a new puzzle by matching all 7 tangrams on the puzzle. By the end of our "contest", the students halved that time to less than 30 seconds per puzzle. The children then designed their own tangram puzzles for their fellow students to solve. Finally, the students had a round robin style competition and the results were very close! Grisha was the fastest when he solved a tangram puzzle in just 10 seconds!
The students wrote a reflection on the shape art they created last week. The students even created letters for the title on the bulletin board using the power polygon shapes. These pieces of art and writing are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom.
The class learned more about our school's bell this week. Did you know that the original Davisville school was only two rooms? It was named after John Davis who owned a pottery factory at Yonge and Davisville. The clay they used in the factory was dug up along the area where Millwood Road is now. John Davis was such an important man in the community that they named the area "Davisville" after him.
The students continued to work on their fiction stories about our school bell. Most of the rough copies are finished and the students are now editing their writing.
The class learned the origin of the names of places important in Canada. The words for Canada (from Kanata meaning "village"), Toronto (from a word meaning "a place where trees stand in the water"), Ontario (from a word meaning "beautiful water") and Ottawa (from a word meaning "traders") all come from First Nations languages. We also learned that Toronto was originally called the City of York until 1834 when the city's name was officially changed to Toronto.
The students learned how to play the strategy game Chinese Checkers. Did you know that the game isn't Chinese and really isn't checkers at all? The game was invented in 1892 in Germany and was later given this name in the United States in 1928 to try and sell more games. After learning the basic rules, the students played each other and shared their different strategies to win. (We have also set up a tournament chart to make sure that everyone gets a chance to play all their fellow students).
The class took some time to discover the math around the Chinese Checkers game board. Did you know that the shape is called a hexagram and is actually a 12 sided polygon called a dodecagon? The students were also challenged to work with a partner to figure out how many
holes are drilled in the board by using what they know about the game pieces (each colour has 10 men).
The class learned about how snowflakes are made in clouds. Each snowflake starts with a tiny speck of dirt for the ice crystals to form on. The pattern of the snowflake depends on the amount of water in the cloud and how cold it is.
The children heard the story of A Street Cat Named Bob this week. It's the true story of how a stray cat changed the life of a man named James, a street musician in London, England. Of course we talked about the connections between this story and the story of Christian the Lion that we read last week. Here is a video of James and Bob:
Books read aloud this week:
My Name is Bob by James Bowen
Where is the World is Bob? by James Bowen
The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen
The Story of Snow by Mark Cassino
Ontario - Yours to Discover by Megan Cuthbert
Infinity and Me by Kate Hosford
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