Rock Hunt

 Before the snow starts piling up we all need to go on a rock hunt.  We are looking for a rock that is roundish, with a flatish surface about 10 to 12 cm across.  Something that is perfect for painting.  A rock that reminds of something else.  Scientists should also bring to school their favorite rock, a rock they can tell a story about and that they can perform tests on.

Just a friendly reminder that we need brain food for our bodies at school - fruit, vegetables, protein - the Halloween treats while tasty, don't provide us with the nutrition we need to get through the day.  

Have a great weekend!

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Soil Quiz

In a backpack near you is a completed Soil Horizon flipbook that was made to show the layers of soil under our feet.  Please read through it with your little scientist - we will be having a science quiz on Thursday.  Your scientist should know what soil is used for (to support plants and provide nutrients) why it is important (it helps plants grow) and what we saw in the soil sample (clay, silt, sand, leaves, plants) as well as the layers of soil.

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Weathering

 We conducted our first science experiment today about weathering.  We were investigating how rocks break apart to become soil.  Ask your little learner what happens when a force strikes a rock.

This is the anchor chart we created together about the strategies we can use to add numbers and the words that tell us we should add.

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Plastic containers with lids - please

 If you have any small (yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream) containers at home that you've been collecting and are wondering what to do with now -  please send them to school.  We will be conducting a weathering experiment on Monday and if we had some containers with lids it would be helpful to our end result!

Everyone made a set of bones today for the Blackfoot math game, Bones.  Originally, the game would have been played with carved bones from the ribs of bison.  We used craft sticks as our bison bones and drew the traditional Blackfoot markings on each stick to represent a number.  The bones are tossed on the floor and the points counted and added together until one player reaches 50.  It is great to introduce an Indigenous game that helps us develop our basic facts and strategies for adding.

We used the picture book 'Ralfy Rabbit, Book Burglar' by Emily MacKenzie as an introduction to characters this morning.  We loved how Ralfy made a list of all the books he read, all the books he wanted to read and a list of books to recommend to his family and he gave them all carrot ratings!

Friday October 29 students are welcome to wear their Halloween costume to school. 

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Flipbooks

 We have been working hard to finish up our Soil Horizons flip book.  Our flip books show what we know about the humus, topsoil, subsoil and bedrock.  Once they are all finished I will be sending them home for review prior to a unit quiz on soil.  

We have been working on the comprehension strategy of visualization to help us better understand what the author is trying to tell us.  We have created a tree map about scarecrows, been reading picture books about scarecrows and drawing scarecrows in art and now we have taken the poem, Scarecrow by Kristen Riley, and highlighted the picture words the author used and drawn the picture that is in our heads.  The picture should show what is in the text, including the detail ie: the scarecrow is sitting on a haystack with patches on his elbows and a big hat on his head.

Our work representing numbers in various ways continues and we are becoming more confident using numbers in different ways.  Ask your little learner how they best like to represent a number.  We are also working to improve our basic facts (adding and subtracting to 18) by playing games and talking about strategies that are helpful for efficiency.  

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Components of soil

     

Warm colours/Cool colours Fall Art 

We have been using the poem, "Under Your Feet" to understand the various component of soil (clay, sand, pebbles, decaying plants etc) and how to describe them.  In the poem the child has a shovel and invites the reader to help them dig and they come up with the world that lives below us.  So we went outside today with our shovels (spoons) and dug holes and collected the layers of twig, leaf, rock etc and then sorted them. We found a lot of the same things.  Tomorrow we will have a closer look at sand, silt and clay.

No school Monday

Picture day Tuesday Oct. 19

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Components of soil

 We used poetry today to have a look at the layers of soil in our world - this begins our little science unit on the various components of soil (sand, clay and silt).  We will be spending some time outside this week collecting soil samples and going on a rock hunt.

We sorted in science last week and this week we started sorting in math - today we used a variety of attributes to sort the children in the room (hair colour, shirt colour, age etc) by playing  several rounds of Four Corners.  The only thing we couldn't do was sort ourselves by height without talking.  We tried several times with no luck😞

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Thankful Pumpkin

Our Thankful Pumpkin

Have a great Thanksgiving!

No school Friday Oct. 8 or Monday Oct. 11

 

Walking Stories

 We have begun planning our first personal narrative story!   We call it a walking story.  A story based on our own experiences, memories and feelings.  Our stories star us and are all about something we know a lot about.  Us.  Good writers make a plan - the plan is important for putting ideas on the paper.  So we have started by drawing our plan.  We talked to a partner about our plan and got ideas from them about our plan.  Now we are ready to write using our plan.

We have been building numbers with blocks, taking numbers apart and looking at how many ones, tens and hundreds, skip counting by 2, 5 and 10 and today we collected data on our favourite colour and then used the data to answer questions.  Busy, busy, busy.

We have looked at what science is and what a scientist does and next we will begin being a great scientist by working with properties.

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