News for Dec. 1

News for December 1, 2016

A four-day week does not stop our class from covering a wide range of activities! From learning about Canadian money and writing letters, to creating a homemade advent calendar, the students were busy...

The children finished their letters and drawings for Queen Rania of Jordan. Recall we read her book, "The Sandwich Swap" and even re-created the story by making hummus and eating the same food as in the story.

The children learned about "book reports" and why and how they are written, to help children understand and think about the story in book they've read. The challenge was to pick one of the six "Martha the dog" books that were read aloud to the class and write about the book in a structured way. That is, to recall story elements (setting, characters, problem, solution) and to reason through questions such as, "Which character did you like the best? Why?" and "Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why?"

In math, the children continued the unit on money. They had a chance to look at actual Canadian coins and bills with magnifying glasses and we discussed the information on coins and the security features on the bills. Did you know that the "loonie" was originally supposed to be a picture of a voyager in a canoe (from the Canadian silver dollar), but the picture had to be changed because the original stamp design was lost or stolen and to prevent anyone from counterfeiting the dollar coin, they had to introduce a different design?

The children learned how to create equal values of money using different combinations of coins. They practiced determining and writing money values using the dollar and cents signs (for example, $0.75 is equal to 75¢).

The class drew and used a Venn diagram to compare the two pieces of art they created last week (polygon art and curved line art). They also wrote an art reflection on the artistic process, areas for their improvement and what kind of art they would like to try next.

The students learned about our school's December tradition, "Holiday Mailbox". This month the students are encouraged to write letters to friends and staff members. The goal is to have the children review how to write letters and address envelopes correctly. It's fun to write and receive  letters! This activity will continue until the school breaks for the winter holidays

We filmed the last sock puppet movie this week. The movies can be seen in a separate posting.

The class learned about the Christian tradition of advent calendars. The word "advent" in Latin means "arrival", and Christians would count the days until December 25th, or Christmas Day. Eventually, advent calendars were made for this purpose, usually involving opening small doors or gifts for each day. The class now has a store-bought advent calendar that has an owl sticker behind a small door for each day.

In Room 204, we built on this tradition by creating our own advent calendar to count the days until the winter holiday break. Each child decorated an envelope for a particular numbered day, put some small gifts inside and wrote a letter to the person who gets their gift. Now, each day, the star student randomly selects a name and that person gets to take the designated envelope for that day. This is a wonderful exercise in patience! Every student knows that each child will eventually get an envelope of gifts but they have to wait for their turn.

On Thursday, our whole school had permission to chew bubble gum for five minutes before recess. We read aloud a book on the invention of bubble gum. Did you know that the first bubblegum was pink because that was the only colour available in the lab at that time?

Finally, the children learned about the German mathematician August Moebius. (We have daily readings from an alphabet book on math concepts.) Moebius (or Möbius) discovered that putting a half-twist on a paper strip creates a ring with only one side! So the students experimented with creating Moebius strips and, by drawing a line on the middle of the strip, proved it has only one side! When you cut along this line, something spectacular happens. The small ring becomes one large ring, but twice the size! A version of the Moebius strip can be seen in the standard recycling symbol, to illustrate the never-ending cycle of materials.

Books read aloud this week

Perfectly Martha by Susan Meddaugh

Loon by Susan Van de Griek

Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak

Colour My Canada by Elina Diaz

Pop! The Invention of Bubblegum by Meghan McCarthy