We are so excited to get started! The first day of school is August 29th. There is a new look to our classroom, including our new teacher, Ms Adrienne. Ms Adrienne has over 9 years teaching experience in elementary and will be a great asset to the LED teaching team. Ms Adrienne will be outside, along with Ms Marcia, to greet the students and parents on Monday, so please feel free to get acquainted. There will also be a Parent Orientation night on September 6th which will offer ample opportunity to get to know Ms Adrienne.
We have sent a welcome letter to parents detailing the schedule for LED, what to bring, and other important notes. Please remember that Monday and Tuesday are half days. There will be a lunch break, so all students will need to bring lunches both days. The first full day is Wednesday.
Our first week will be dedicated to orienting the students to the new classroom arrangement, getting to know each other through “ice-breaker” activities, composing our Classroom Constitution, and completing some academic “warm-ups” to assess where the students are after the summer break.
We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday. Enjoy your weekend!
From now to the end of the year we will be linking out cultural studies to the continent of South America.
So far we have touched upon the land forms and biomes of that region, country names, and country capitals. Ask your child to share the “South American Capitals” song with you (link below):
Since the March break we have been working from our studies of North America and the Caribbean to learning about the Ecology of those places. We have introduced the concept of biomes and food webs, and some students are investigating more deeply into the various biomes found around the world. They are encouraged to choose a biome and do a project on it. If you would like to take this work home, please let us know! Next week we will be linking ecology with our recent studies of “The Story of Fish,” by zeroing in on our local “Coral Reef” biome. Students will choose their favorite reef creature to research, and we will create our own “reef” on the glass wall.
Recently, we have been learning about mapping skills, including interpreting scale, estimating distances on a map, using coordinates to describe a location, using the language of cardinal directions, and using a compass and to find bearings.
We have also been working with each grade level on telling time, understanding how long “one minute” and “one hour” feels, and calculating elapsed time.
Today we combined all of these objectives into a field trip taking the “long way” to Kaibo. We located points of interest on a map, and made predictions about the elapsed time between various locations. We brought along “measuring strings” made by the children, and compasses to track our direction on the journey.
For a bit of history, we stopped midway at the “Wreck of the Ten Sails,” and had a ginger-themed snack to settle tummies.
Thank you to Claire for providing fruit punch on the beach at our destination. The kids had a blast playing on the swing and stretching their legs after all those mapping exercises.
On the way back we took the Frank Sound “shortcut,” sang songs and enjoyed recapping the map from a new perspective.
Last week, we discussed good sportsmanship, and how we treat one another when playing a game.
This week, we are talking about hurtful things that can be said, and what is and is not appropriate to say to someone. As a group, we all wrote expressions that we would like the group to know are hurtful. We read them out loud and took turns tearing them up. This prompted a lot of discussion about why certain words are hurtful.
We learned that it is important to keep our observations about other people- their clothes, their food, their shape, etc. to ourselves. It was eye-opening to see how many examples our classmates were able to provide, and the discussion that followed was very positive.
Take a look at our “Kind Words” banner, proudly displayed on the glass door in our classroom. The children will continue to add to it as they notice kind words being said to themselves or their classmates.
“Sports Day” this week was a great success. There were lots of smiling faces and positive team spirit going around.
In the classroom, we have been progressing through our studies of ‘Matter’. We started with an exploration of the two basic properties of matter (mass and volume), and went more deeply into the three states of matter by finding properties of liquids that are common to gasses and solids. We learned about the rock cycle, and put our collections of rock samples on the shelf for students to investigate and identify. This week, we have focused on liquids. Students have been introduced to the difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures, how to identify a suspension, solution, or colloid, the role of water as a solvent, and the meaning of saturation.
Our “North America” studies will be wrapping up on Monday with our “Countries Quiz.” We are looking forward to sampling some of your delicious international dishes at our Food Fest after the quiz!
In keeping with our philosophy of raising awareness of the world beyond our students’ own experiences, we will be taking time to discuss current events. This week we discussed the record breaking snowstorm that has been sweeping across North America.
Our students have been stepping up to the plate with ever more challenging Math work, and are producing writing that is becoming more careful and detailed.
Thank you for your continued support at home with spelling!
We have had a fantastic first two weeks after our return from the Winter Holiday. During our first week, we discussed our classroom culture, and made some inspiring resolutions about the way we treat each other and our classroom environment.
Some exciting changes in our classroom environment that the children are aware of include: a new set of mailboxes for receiving work to be corrected, a new set of marking symbols for corrections, and new math facts materials that will help the students work on facts each day.
During our second week, we launched into our North American studies. All students have been working on labeling maps with countries and mountain types. Grade 2 and 3 students will be memorizing the names and locations of countries in North America. Grade 1 students are focusing on flags, Grade 2s on totem poles, and Grade 3s are embarking on an exciting imaginary trip to Alaska that will require the use of many skills across our curriculum.
We also commenced on the study of matter, which will be a focus over the next 3 weeks. We end the week with a performance of “Dance of the Water Molecules,” an impressionistic lesson that conveys the concept of changes in states of matter at the molecular level.
Our field trip was delayed due to an illness, so we have all learned to exercise patience in anticipation of this exciting trip! Fortunately, the delay has allowed us extra time to delve deeper our botany studies in advance of the experience! We have been learning about the scientific names for the parts of a flower, and have had some hands-on experiences dissecting flowers to find the pollen and seed producing parts. We have explored the various human uses for flowers, from the fruits that are produced by pollinated flowers to products like “sorrel drink” that are actually made from the sepals of a sorrel hibiscus! Samples of the homemade drink were quite popular, and the students have had the opportunity to open up samples of the hibiscus sepals to look for the seeds inside. Many children have been curious to see the development of a flower into a fruit, so Miss Kristina will bring in her Barbados Cherry tree for observation on the front walkway.
A big “Thank you!” to all of you who filled out information at home for our “Timeline of My Life” lesson. The information that was provided was interesting, and at times, entertaining! The students have been interested in seeing how the timelines line up as we create one timeline for our class, and we can see who our oldest students are by who has a card in the 2002 column. Please come in and have a look at our class timeline on the bulletin board by the front door.
In preparation for understansing some of the timelines we will be looking at soon, we are focusing on regular units of measure as well as timeline terminology. We will learn to visualize the scope of words such as “decade,” “century,” and “millenium” through visual aids. Can you imagine what 2010 beads lined up end to end would look like?
Additionally, we are tying our History studies together with Math by using timelines and the concept of B.C. and A.D. as a segue for introducing and discussing negative numbers. Grade 3 students can subtract positive and negative numbers to answer the question: “How much time has passed?”
This Friday we will be visiting Every Bloomin’ Thing for an adventure into Botany! In preparation, we are talking about scientific names for parts of a plant, and we have been tending some plants of our own outside. Soon we will be looking at the parts of a flower, and if you have flowers growing at home that you can send in for dissection, please do so! We will keep them together in a vase until we’re ready to use them.
Last week we continued our “Great Lessons” with the “Story of the Earth.” In this presentation, Miss Kristina provided impressions of how the Earth was formed through the use stroytelling, props, and demonstrations. From popping balloons full of glitter (Scientists believe the Earth and Solar System were formed from the remnants of a supernova) to erupting volcanoes, it was a fun and educational morning that explored ideas like density and the answer to the question: “Why does hot air rise?”
Last week we also began our introduction to Botany with a group lesson exploring all the ways that plants are used in our daily lives, from furniture, rubber car tires, medicines, clothing, and more.
Many students have become interested in various writing systems from around the world after the “Story of Writing.” Some have taken on the challenge of copying alphabets from such elaborate languages as Thai and Arabic. We hope to expand on this enthusiasm with some further studies of world communication systems.
Finally, we had an exciting trip to the Airport Fire Station on Friday. After the trip, the 2nd and 3rd Graders wrote thank-you letters to the firefighters, and wrote that their favorite part of the trip was riding the fire truck (Miss Kristina got to turn on the siren!) and spraying the fire hose onto the runway.
