Week Eighteen

On Friday we got to have an extra music class! We joined up together and Room 13 joined us, so it was a little bit packed in here! We had a special guest, Ms. (find out) who used to be a member of an orchestra. She plays the viola and the violin. She started playing when she was in grade 3 and told us all about the bow and how it is made from horse hair. We got to feel the horse hair and it was very thick and strong.

An artist came in this week! Her name is Ms. F and we started to construct our masks. We started with a paper plate and built up the shape of our animals faces with news paper and tape and then paper mache over top of it! The paper mache was made from flour, glue and water, it was super goopy! We added the ears and facial features this week and next week we will continue to add on the details and begin painting. Thank you so, so, so, so, so much to the parents who came in to help us with this!!!!!!!!

In gym we started volley ball this week! We learned the skills of bumping, setting and serving. We practiced with balloons, practice volley balls and real volley balls if we felt we were ready.

In Science we continued on with our design and building challenge. We started building our prototypes this week and we will be adding popcorn to them next week to see who had the most effective popcorn bag design using the rubric we made together. We are looking for a bag that is stable, durable, and strong.

This week we got a new student teacher that is going to learn with us. She is called Miss S. and this is her second year in university. We are excited to get to know her and help her become a great teacher!

Open Gym started this week. Grade 3's go on Thursday mornings from 7:45am to 8:15am and Grade 4's go on Friday mornings from 7:45am to 8:15am.

In writing we are creating fables about the animals we chose from the countries we are studying. We worked on figuring out which characteristic we would like to write about and we also started to make up a problem for our stories as well as setting. We used the computers to research where our animal is from and what their habitat is like. Next week we are going to be working on making a character list, and writing our ideas down for a beginning, middle and end. These stories are going to be amazing when they are finished and it is so cool that it is connected with Social Studies, art and soon to be Science. We read a story called "Why are There Shooting Stars?" - ask me what shooting stars are!

We got new jobs on our job board and we also emptied out our ticket jar! New year, fresh start! There have already been lots of tickets handed out this year, and we will recycle the old tickets, but not before we graph how many were handed out!

We earned free choice this week! Yay!

In math we got partners and we shared the addition strategies we already know with each other. Lots of us have some creative problem solving ideas! We had a piece of paper and we showed them our strategy and then we wrote down out partner's strategy on our paper too.

This week we finished "Big Hero 6" and "Monster's Inc." at lunch time then we started watching a movie called "Mulan" (one of Miss Kolb's favourites from the 90s!)

We continued on with Wonder and we are now reading from Auggie's sister's perspective, her name is Via.

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Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8

Week 17

It was so wonderful to finally get back together again after two weeks apart! The first thing we did was write about our two week holiday. It sure sounds like we all had a restful break with lots of fun activities!

We had our ICNR Pizza Party this Wednesday. It was so fun to get to spend extra hours with each other and eat sooo much pizza! Thanks to everyone who braved the cold to come out and an extra big thank you to the Village Square Library for hosting us and organizing such a fun event!

We had a birthday this week! Happy Birthday S!

On Thursday we got to pick an animal from one of the countries we are studying. The animals are from either Canada, Tunisia, India, Peru or Ukraine. We started researching these animals because next week an artist is going to be joining our class and we are going to be making masks of these animals. Along with this we will be learning about the landforms and regions in these countries that make up the animals habitat and we will be writing stories about them!

In gym we started to learn about a new sport. We learned about curling and we got to play in the gym! We also played Lady GaGa Ball!

In science this week we received a building challenge! We have been put to the task of designing a popcorn bag that will hold the most popcorn. We started by drawing up a blue print and we will be creating prototypes next week!

In Social Studies we started mapping the regions in Tunisia, Ukraine, Peru and India. We used textbooks to look at maps and learn more about the regions and the natural resources in these countries as well and the different climates.

In math we started addition and subtraction. The first thing we did for addition was we got our  notebooks and what we did was we showed a variety of ways to show addition strategies. We were given time to come up with our own strategies and then we got to share them with each other.

We have continued our novel study of Wonder. We have been having some really good conversations about this book. The book Wonder is really interesting and there are a little bit of sad parts. We read that the main character's favourite day of the year is Halloween because he gets to wear a mask and no one knows who he is. It turns out that a lot of us can understand how Auggie feels because we have been in similar situations.

We got a new friend in our classroom this week! Welcome S, we are so happy to have you spend the rest of the year with us!

We had some inside recesses because of the freezing cold weather! We finished watching "Monsters Inc." and we started watched "Big Hero 6" at recess and lunch.

Until next week,

Love,

Room 7 & 8