October 23-27

Hello families !

We had another great week in room 11! Our favourite part was continuing our pumpkin investigation! 

Science (and math, and art!)

This week we learned about the lifecycle of a pumpkin! We read lots of stories about pumpkins and made a lot of predictions! We predicted and measured the weight of our pumpkins first. To do this, we compared the weight of the pumpkin to a 1kg weight. Our lightest pumpkin was 2.5kg and our heaviest was 6kg. 



We also made some seed predictions. We started with a "random" prediction. We then learned two things that can give us a clue about the number of seeds inside! Each line on a pumpkin is a row of seeds and pumpkins that are darker orange tend to have more seeds because they grew longer on the vine! We made a second "educated" prediction after learning this! Then, when we opened up the pumpkins and could see the seeds inside, we made our final predictions! We had some grade 5 and 6 students from Ms. Burnham's class come help us scoop out the pumpkins and count the seeds! We counted the seeds by making groups of 5 and 10 and then skip counted. 










We also got to test to see if a pumpkin would sink or float! The students did a great job justifying their predictions! 


On Friday we had fun learning about the parts of a pumpkin through art! Students brought their paper plate pumpkins home to share all the different parts of a pumpkin! 


Art

We did even more art this week as we were working on our Art Cards! This is a fundraiser where your child's art is turned into a greeting card (and other items like Christmas ornaments, plaques and puzzles!) In order to have them ready for the holiday season we had to do them before Halloween! We chose to do a winter scene for our art cards this year but I won't share too much! We enjoyed using water colour paint and salt. We'll be finishing these up early next week. 



Literacy 

This week we reviewed the letters L, W and J! Our characters are Lonnie Lion & Lizzie Lamb, Winkie Walrus, and Jenny the Jaguar. Ask your child about the actions for each letter! We also did a describing activity where students had to write describing words for a pumpkin and use their neatest printing - this was a diagnostic assessment for learning! We ended up having to cancel our Daily LA time a few days this week because we had so much other learning happening and not enough time for everything! We have so much literacy learning built into everything we do though! 




Students also came up with some great costume ideas for me! I always love this activity! This was the first year students actually asked me questions about what I would want to be. I told them I want something that's not too complicated, not too scary, and I want people to easily know what I am when they see me! Here are a few suggestions! 








This week the grade one students focused on the heart words: in, it, that, in and you. Grade two students focused on he, was, on for, are, as, with, his, for, I. Here are the words for next week if you'd like to practice them at home! 

Grade 1:
he
was
on
for
are

Grade 2:
at
be
this 
have
from
or
one
had
by

Math

In addition to learning about weight and skip counting our pumpkin seeds, we returned to some work with representing numbers! Instead of using hundreds, tens and ones, we used haunted houses, broomsticks and jack-o-lanters! To help with this abstract concept we built the numbers using the Montessori Golden Beads and drew the pictures on a whiteboard. Students were able to choose their "just right" level. 






Veteran's Essential Item Drive 

In the spirit on both generosity and building community, Rooms 7 and 8 are organizing an Essential Items Drive to support veterans.   All donations will help the Veteran Food Bank of Alberta provide everyday items to those who have honourably served in the Canadian Forces.  We appreciate any items that you can donate from the list.


We are working on building independence in dressing for the winter weather! Please encourage your child to get dressed for the weather on their own as much as possible! 

Upcoming Dates
  • Monday, October 30th - Zoo Field Trip Forms Due
  • Monday, October 30th - Pumpkin Seed Tasting
  • Tuesday, October 31st - Halloween at LBS
  • Wednesday, November 1st - School Wide PJ Day
  • Monday, November 6th - Zoo Field Trip Penguin Palooza
  • Monday, November 6th - Photo Re-Take Day (We can try to squeeze our students in ASAP in the morning before the trip!) 
  • Tuesday, November 7th - Grade 1/2 teachers presenting at the School Council Meeting 6pm
  • Thursday, November 9th - PD Day 
  • November 10-14 - Fall Break
  • Wednesday, November 15th - School Resumes 
  • Thursday, November 16th - A&W Fun Lunch
  • Thursday, November 23rd - Parent Teacher Conferences (PM)
  • Friday, November 24th - Parent Teacher Conferences (AM)
  • Thursday, November 30th - The Saucy Bread Company Fun Lunch

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