News for December 15

News for December 15

This week the children learned how to fold origami trees, how to grow crystals and they put on costumes for their performance at the school’s Winter Concert!

First, the students created collection jars and boxes to give to all the classes in the school to collect donations for the Daily Bread Food Bank. Did you know that $1.00 buys a meal for someone in Toronto who needs it? Our class is in charge of this charity project and we will use our counting money strategies to count the money collected next week.

Our school has a tradition of a school-wide post office program called “Holiday Mailbox” in the two weeks before the winter holidays. This program helps children learn how to properly write letters and address envelopes. The children are familiar with letter writing from lessons earlier in the year, but the proper format of an envelope with address, return address and stamps is a bit more challenging. It’s always very exciting to get letters!

In math, the class began reviewing 2D or two-dimensional geometry. Polygons are 2D or flat, closed, shapes with straight sides. Every polygon has sides, vertices (corners) and angles. Did you know that the number of sides, vertices and angles is the same for every shape? For example, a triangle has 3 sides, 3 vertices and 3 angles. As the number of sides/vertices/angles increases, the more the shape looks like a circle. (Circles are not considered to be polygons as they have so many sides/vertices/angles, they are considered to have zero sides/vertices/angles.)

In writing, the children learned how to write “list poems”, listing their favourite foods or the things they find in their desks. They also learned how to write “acrostic poems” where the individual letters of a chosen word become the first letter of additional words related to the chosen word. The students are collecting the poems they've written in personal folders to become a poetry book in the future.

In science, the students learned about how solids are dissolved into liquids by stirring borax powder (used for washing clothes) into hot water. When the powder is dissolved it disappears! The students put a pipe cleaner in the borax/water solution to “catch” the borax crystals. Did you know that the borax molecules went into the spaces in between the hot water molecules? When water is at 100 degrees Celsius, there is more energy in the water and more space between the water molecules than in cold water. When the water cooled down, the borax came out of the solution and formed crystals on the pipe cleaner and the sides of the cup. The crystals were clear and looked like little cubes and were very sparkly!

The class had the third mindfulness session with Miss Judy this week. She reviewed how to identify negative feelings (How am I feeling? Where do I feel it in my body?) and how to pause and consciously breathe to help calm down. (There will be one more session with Miss Judy in January.)

A tradition in Room 204 is for children to create a “Holiday Songbook” to learn more about the poems and history found in some of the popular holiday songs at this time of year. After reading the lyrics, learning the meaning of the words, the year the song was written and calculating how long ago the song was written, the children sang the songs together. So far, the class has learned the history of “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”, “Jingle Bells”, “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth”, “I Have a Little Dreidel” and “The 12 Days of Christmas”. Did you know that the song Jingle Bells was written for American Thanksgiving in 1857? So when we sing that song, we are singing words that were written 160 years ago!

The children learned about the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. After reading aloud a book describing the meaning and traditions of this holiday, the children learned how to play the Dreidel game and even had a chance to try some Hanukkah gelt (chocolate coins) at the end of the day.

At the end of the week, the students learned how to fold an origami tree from a square piece of paper. These are now decorating the shiny red tree in our classroom.

Finally, the students continued to rehearse for the Winter Concert on Monday and Tuesday and performed on Tuesday night. The children worked very hard to sing the two songs and perform the dance routine. They all did a great job!

Books read aloud this week:

The Story of Snow - The Science of Winter’s Wonder by Mark Cassino

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

One Grain of Rice - A Mathematical Folktale by Demi

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns

I Have a Little Dreidel by Maxie Baum

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (chapter book)