News for November 29

This week the children made rainbow crayons, created money collection jars for The Daily Bread Food Bank and made their own analog clocks!

Math: The children finished the unit on reading and writing the times on analog and digital clocks to the hour (e.g., 2:00) and quarter-hours (e.g., 2:15, 2:30, 2:45). The students will tell you that the hour hand placement is tricky!

At the end of the week, each child made his/her own analog clock. After placing the 12 numbers correctly around the circumference of the clock, they made a short hour hand and a long minute hand and attached the two hands to the middle of the clock face using a paper fastener. The clocks were taken home for the children to practice reading and showing analog clock times.

Writing: After finishing hearing the read aloud chapter book, the class did a reading response activity to write about what they remembered about the story. The most interesting part of this activity was talking and writing about why the author wrote the story. Eleanor Estes based her book on events that happened in her own life. The lesson learned was for children to remember to treat every person kindly and that teasing and excluding are really types of bullying. What is "fun" or "funny" for a few people, is not always "fun" for everyone.

Guided Reading: This week the small instructional groups met to read the Canadian classic book, Jillian Jiggs. The book is written in rhyme and this week the children chorally read the book once and discussed the story. Next week, as we read it again, the students will collect the pairs of rhyming words and look at the spellings to see the different ways the English language spells words to create the same sounds.

Science, Writing and Art: The class reviewed the properties of solids and liquids and did an science/art activity. When you add enough heat to solids they will eventually turn into a liquid. For example, we talked about how rocks turn into liquid rock or magma inside volcanos using the heat in the centre of the Earth. The magma outside of the volcano is called lava and the liquid rock eventually cools to form solid volcanic rock.

 For the experiment, the children sorted the crayons into different colour groups, peeled off the paper, put different coloured crayon pieces into a foil muffin pan and put the pan in boiling water. The crayons turned from a pile of wax cylinders, into a liquid which took the shape of the muffin pan and when the pan was removed from the heat, the "new" crayon shape became a solid again.

Later, children wrote about how they set up the experiment, what was needed, the steps to do it and using science words, explain what happened.

Social Studies: The class finished our class advent calendar envelopes, as we count down to the advent or arrival of the winter holidays. We also talked about what the word "random" means, as every day each child has an equal chance of getting the package of the day, before the star student picks a name.

The class discussed why children lose their baby teeth and learned about the tooth traditions from many countries in the world. Did you know that in Mexico, a child puts her/his tooth under a pillow and a mouse (El Raton) takes the tooth and leaves a small gift?

Media Literacy: The class learned about the tradition in Room 222 to collect money for The Daily Bread Food Bank every December. The students made collection jars for every classroom in our school to collect the money. They made labels with all the important information for the classes to know. (Next week, the children will make advertising posters and speak on the morning announcement as well.)

Books read aloud this week:

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (chapter book - now finished)
Throw Your Tooth on the Roof - Tooth Traditions From Around the World by Selby Beeler
Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Gilman