News for February 15

News for February 15, 2018

This four-day week had the children participating in lots of traditions and celebrations, from celebrating the birthday of three students in our class to cooking (and eating) pancakes!

Writing

On Monday afternoon, the students wrote reflections in their journals about the 100 Days of School celebration activities in the morning. Later in the week, each child wrote in his/her journal about a specific February holiday or about all the holidays in February.

The children learned the cursive letters t, j and r.

Math 

In math, the children did a sweet Valentine’s Day math activity by creating pictographs using Smarties candies. They each set up a chart and used the coloured candies to make pictographs of the number of candies of each colour in his/her box of Smarties. Then they counted the number of Smarties in the box. Afterwards we put together all the information and made a bar graph to show the number of smarties of each colour for our whole class. Did you know that a box of Smarties usually contains 10 candies, but some boxes have 9, 11 or 12? Did you know that red was the most popular colour of Smarties (43 out of 237 candies) and blue was the least popular (10 out of 237 candies). The students then talked about why every box doesn't have 10 candies (perhaps the machines at the factory make a mistake) and why there are so few blue smarties (perhaps they ran out of that colour and had to add more of other colours).

The students also estimated the number of candy hearts in the package before we counted the candy hearts to figure out how many each student should have in order to get a fair share. There were 261 candies so every child received 11 candies with 19 left over.

The children created bar graphs of their personal surveys from last week. They also wrote about the information in the graphs and how we can use this information. For example, if most children like the colour green, then if we had to buy something for the class, let’s say folders, green folders would be a good choice because most students like green. Each child created a poster with this information and these posters are now on display in our hallway.

Social Studies

100 Days of School

The children celebrated 100 days of learning in Room 204 by doing some math activities. They were counting out ten groups of ten Froot Loops cereal pieces to string 100 loops to make a necklace. They stamped stamps on the 100 blank rectangles on a blank 100 chart. They played with 100 different kinds of objects, like 100 straws, 100 marbles and even 100 old football trading cards. They used the timer set to 100 seconds (or 1 minute and 40 seconds) and counted, and recorded in a chart, how many exercises (e.g., jumping jacks) they could do in 100 seconds.

Pancake Tuesday

Did you know that Pancake Tuesday is also known as Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday)? This celebration comes from the Christian tradition of using up rich food like butter and sugar before the observation of Lent, 40 days before Easter. So the class mixed up some pancake batter and fried pancakes and ate them with pancake syrup! Yum!

Valentine’s Day

The children chorally read a story about the history and symbols of Valentine’s Day. Did you know that St. Valentine was a real person who helped soldiers send messages to their sweethearts because the emperor did not allow soldiers to be married?

Each child made a valentine card for his/her family and decorated a paper bag to collect the valentines from their friends. On Wednesday afternoon, the students had a chance to read and enjoy the treats.

Flag Day

The children reviewed the reason for Flag Day (Feb. 15) in Canada and watched two short videos, one about flag facts and one on how flags are made.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I-V0ok_v9F8

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wtL_Dhufrmw

Chinese New Year

The children reviewed the reasons for this holiday (lasting for 15 days and beginning on Feb.16), enjoyed some holiday treats of fortune cookies and “lucky” candies and watched a short video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-R-aIq3_E

Oral Communication and Media Literacy

The class recorded two Room 204 Interview Shows this week. Our first guest this week was Ms. Endert (a drama and dance teacher). Our second guest was Ms. Judy (a mindfulness teacher). These videos can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner (chapter book - continued)

The 100 Shirts of Mr. Lee by Nancy Rawlinson