This four-day week began on Tuesday with our class celebrating Pancake Day! We discussed the origins of this celebration and its many different names (Pancake Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday). We had a great discussion about where all the ingredients come from our pancake making when we compared our experience with the boy in the book, Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle.
In writing, the children continued to learn more about poetry. They reviewed different poems they already had inside them...nursery rhymes! It's amazing how many rhymes the students remembered. We also talked about how these poems have a beat or rhythm to them and they were often used as the lyrics for songs and clapping games. (Ask your child to clap out the poem, From Wimbleton to Wobbleton.) The children reviewed the 5 senses that humans have and used these to help them write poems about maple syrup ("It tastes like liquid raisins.") and pancakes ("It looks like a flat sun."). The class also learned about concrete poems (also called shape poems). These are great fun to read and write since the rules of writing really can be broken because the words in the poem can be written all kinds of different ways in order to make the shape of topic of the poem.
In math, the children continued to work with Canadian money. They learned the strategies needed to help them count a large number of coins (sort, put into piles of $1, count up the dollars and then count up the cents). They learned how to choose the number of coins to match a certain value. For example, what are the fewest coins needed to make 37 cents?
The children learned about Roman Numerals. In Room 5 we use Roman Numerals to write the date, For example, "February 20, 2015" becomes "20 II 15" (because February is the second month of the year and 2 = II). The students also learned about the Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci, who discovered, over 800 years ago, the Hindu-Arabic number system and introduced it to the western world. Before that time, the western world countries were still using Roman Numerals and by converting to the Hindu-Arabic system, it introduced place value and the concept of zero.
In preparation for the author Michael Wade's visit to our school next week, each student read at least one of his books. Then, each child wrote him a letter telling him what they liked about the book, ideas for improving his books and asked him a question. The class put together these letters along with some pictures they drew into a binder to give to Mr. Wade when visits. Hopefully, after he reads the letters, he will write us back and answer the students' questions!
In art, the students practiced sketching techniques and used their foil figure sculptures to help them. This art is now on display on the wall outside of our classroom.
Finally, our video with cool facts about Ontario is finished! Here it is:
Books read aloud this week:
Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle
My Very First Mother Goose (Nursery Rhymes) edited by Iona Opie
Oh, Canada! The Illustrated Anthem by Roxanna Bikadoroff
Blockhead: The Life of Fibonocci by Joseph D'Agnese
A Poke in the I - A Collection of Concrete Poems by Paul Janeczko and Chris Raschka
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