News for February 13

This was a two-day school week, but the class was busy learning about and celebrating the 100th day of school, Valentine's Day and Flag Day!

Math - On Monday, our class celebrated the 100th day of school. The children spent half the day rotating through five different activity centres. Each centre focused on ways to understand and demonstrate the number 100. First, I read aloud a book that I wrote many years ago, about a project that was done in 2009, counting the 100 patterned shirts of a teacher (since retired), Mr. Lee. then the children got a chance to explore the number 100 by drawing or rubber stamping 100 images, working to solve a 100 piece jigsaw puzzle, measuring the length of 100 objects or how many objects it takes to make a line 100 cm (one metre) long, counting and stringing 100 plastic beads and finally, counting and recording how many exercises each child could do in 100 seconds (one minute and 40 seconds).

At the end of the week, the class began to learn the words used to describe probability, or the description of an event happening or not. The words are: certain, likely, equally likely, unlikely and impossible.

Social Studies -   The students learned the history of Canada's Flag Day (February 15). This date is the "birthday" of the flag. It was first flown on February 15th, 1965, which makes the flag 55 years old.  The children also had a chance to create their own Canadian flags and learned the artist's trick of gluing an image to paper and cutting it out then flipping it over to show a clear shape. This helped each child to make a more accurate maple leaf shape to put in the middle of each of their flags. Did you know that the day the Canadian government decided on the new Canadian flag they didn't agree until 2:00 in the morning?

The children learned about the history of celebrating Valentine's Day on February 14th each year. The class talked about the different kinds of love in the world. For example, I love my children, but not in the same way that I love chocolate cake! The students created "mailboxes" by decorating paper bags with paper doilies and stickers. On Thursday, the children had a chance to deliver their valentines to their friends.

The class taped two episodes of The Room 222 Interview Show this week. We learned more about Mr. Culakovski and Ms. Bozzo. Both guests are vice-principals at our school. These videos can be seen in a separate posting.

Books read aloud this week:

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (chapter book - continued)
The 100 Shirts of Mr. Lee by Nancy Rawlinson
Our Flag - The Story of Canada's Maple Leaf by Ann Maureen Owens and Jane Yealland