News for May 26

News for May 26

This four-day week, every day a lot classroom time was devoted to the grade three EQAO testing. The grade two students went to Ms. Ceneda's class and the grade three students from her class came to Room 204. The grade three testing is now finished.

Each student wrote me a letter to tell me where they would like to have his/her desk put in the classroom next week. In the past, I have chosen where to put the desks but now, with only 5 weeks of school left, I thought I would let them choose.

The children finished their painted, symmetrical butterfly art and these are now on display in the hallway outside of our classroom. There is now a "Kaleidoscope of Butterflies" in the hall!

The class learned about the collective nouns used to talk about groups of animals, like an "army of caterpillars" and an "embarrassment of pandas".

In math, the students reviewed analog time and how to interpret pictographs.

Most of the Painted Lady butterflies came out of their chrysalids this week! Did you know that the butterflies are insects and have a three-part body (head-thorax-abdomen) and they have a tongue like a straw to drink nectar from flowers and the science word for this type of tongue is "proboscis"? Also, butterflies use their antennae to smell. The butterfly cage now has a large orange slice and orange Gatorade for the butterflies to drink. The students even had a chance to taste the Gatorade. On Friday, we took the butterfly cage outside to the playground and set the butterflies free. It was amazing to see them fly so far, so high and so fast!

The children folded origami boxes and decorated them with paper butterflies. We will use these to save and protect an empty chrysalis to take home.

Books read aloud this week:

The Snow Cat by Dayal Kaur Khalsa

The Snow Cat (video) retold by Sheldon Cohen at

 http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2015/02/19/watch-4-winter-films-kids/

A Crackle of Crickets - A Compilation of Insect Collective Nouns by Patrick George

A Shiver of Sharks - A Compilation of Aquatic Collective Nouns by Patrick George

A Drove of Bullocks - A Compilation of Animal Collective Nouns by Patrick George

A Filth of Starlings - A Compilation of Bird Collective Nouns by Patrick George