News for December 22

News for December 22

In the week leading up to the winter holiday, the children were very busy learning the history of holiday songs, folding origami and making fudge!

The big news is that our school fundraiser for the Daily Bread Food Bank, organized by our class, was a great success! The children counted the money and our class raised $93.95! The grand total raised from the school families and from the Winter Concert was $774.41. Well done Davisville PS!

The class continued to write and receive letters during our school’s “Holiday Mailbox” program. 

In math, the children learned how to identify and describe right angles and angles that are bigger than right angles (obtuse angles) and those that are smaller (acute angles). The students used plastic polygon shapes to create “polygon art”. After tracing the shapes and outlining them with sharpie markers, the children coloured them using pencil crayons. They also used what they know about geometry as they folded paper pieces to make origami wreaths.

In writing, the children continued to write different kinds of poems. This week they focussed on rhyming words in poems. They wrote their own versions of the nursery rhyme “LIttle Jack Horner” and then tried writing their own rhyming poems. They also wrote poems based on their math polygon art.

The students watched a few classic holiday TV shows. “Frosty the Snowman”, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” were all TV presentations from the 1960s. Did you know that two of these shows started off as songs? There are many ways to tell a story! While watching the shows, the children ate popcorn that we popped in the classroom. Did you know that each kernel of popcorn is a seed and that there is a drop of water inside the kernel that heats up to 100 degrees Celsius and “explodes” to create the popcorn?

The students continued to learn the history of classic holiday songs in their Holiday Songbooks. They learned the meaning of new words and looked for words that rhyme. We talked about when the songs were written and figured out how long ago that was. The oldest song we learned about was “The 12 Days of Christmas” which was written around 1780. It’s cool to know that when we sing that song, we are singing words written 237 years ago!

The class also learned that the lyrics in a song can tell a story and  become a book. “The Hockey Song” is a classic Canadian song by Stompin’ Tom Connors. The class also watched a video of him performing the song. Did you know that he got his name from stomping his foot so hard on the stage that he would make a hole in the floor? After that he would bring a piece of plywood on stage to stand on to protect the floor when he sang. Here is a link to the video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4TSkpI9wdk0

The class learned how to play “Chinese Checkers”. The board is based on a hexagonal star and is a fun game with very simple rules.

Finally, the children made chocolate fudge. This is a tradition in my family and it is an easy recipe for children to make. We melted the chocolate and sweetened condensed milk together in a saucepan. Recall that adding heat gives the molecules more energy and they move farther apart making the solid into a liquid. Then the liquid mixture turns into a solid when put in the fridge and heat is taken away. Cooking is really science! (You can find the recipe in a separate posting.)

Books read aloud this week:

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (chapter book - finished)

Frosty the Snowman - DVD

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Suess (book and DVD)

Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer - DVD

Merry Christmas Squirrels! by Nancy Rose

The Hockey Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors