News for June 29

News for June 29

Ah...the last week of school...so much to do...so little time left!

The class figured out how many days long the summer vacation is...68 days. They added one day left of June, plus 31 days in July, 31 days in August and 5 days in September (1+31+31+5=68 days).

The students learned the basics of how to create card towers or a house of cards. After watching a video of Bryan Berg, the world record holder, the students realized that making card towers without tape or glue is very difficult! But the children all tried their best. It just takes a lot of practice!

We read books about the word tricks, palindromes and anagrams.

The class looked through their portfolios for a last time and reflected on the work they have done this year and the progress they have made since September of last year.

The students finally painted their papier mache sculptures white and then with bright colours to finished them off. 

The class learned about the math puzzles called "flexagons". These are math-based paper tricks that take a "two-sided" piece of paper and after some folding, cutting and taping create an apparently flat object that has 4 sides. The children made a tetrahexaflexagon (four sides, six sections), but there are many, many variations to this basic idea.

We finally estimated the ages of some of the trees in our school yard. The oldest tree is the silver maple tree facing Davisville Avenue near the baseball diamond by the playscape. It's around 130 years old. The basswood tree by our school exit door is around 120 years old. The students measured around the tree using measuring tapes and using the idea that 2 cm represents about 1 year of growth, they used calculators to estimate the age. These are just estimations because different kinds of trees grow at different rates and variations in the environment influence rates of growth as well.

The children wrote thank you notes to Ms. Francesca, the gym teacher, Ms. Konjhodzic, the music teacher, Mrs. Farrelly, the principal, Ms. Schneider, the vice-principal and the caretakers. It's important for the children to show their gratitude for people who help them. One of the nicest and simplest things one can do is simply say "thank you".

The children cleaned out the insides of their desks and took home any personal items. On the last day of school, everyone cleaned the tops of their desks using shaving foam! It's a fun way to clean off the dirt and use the foam to write words and draw pictures. The classroom smelled very "fresh" afterwards!

Books read aloud this week:

Mom and Dad are Palindromes: A Dilemma Forwards and Backwards by Mark Schulman

ANN and NAN are Anagrams: A Mixed Up Word Dilemma by Mark Schulman

Take Away the A: An Alphabeast of a Book! By Michael Escoffier

What Do You Do With an Idea? By Kobi Yamada