Week of March 9-13

It's hard to believe that there is only one more week of school until the March Break. When school resumes, it will officially be Spring! Many of the children have talked about their past or upcoming vacations to warm climates with beaches, so our Ocean Unit has been interesting to the children. I've learned a lot too! We want to spend one more week on this unit, and next week we'll be learning all about Sand (what it is, how we use it), seashells, and marine mammals. Look for additions to our hallway bulletin board! Our classroom bulletin board looks great with the children's "submarine windows" and writing about what they can see (what they drew) outside their window. This was simple pastel and watercolour and looks really effective.

This week we compared and contrasted the Great White Shark and the Killer Whale (without being scary!), using two hula hoops as a Venn Diagram and simple sentences about the animals that the children had to put in the correct place. We also practiced our three poems "Smiley Shark," "Lobster," and "Crab." The kids continued to bring in interesting things from their house: a shark tooth, a beautiful conch shell, books about the ocean, coral, shells, barnacles, sand from California, and photos. Wonderful!

We learned interesting facts about the Octopus and the Jellyfish this week, and watched a short video by Animal Planet. We also played a word game in which the children had to place three different letters in a submarine window to make a real word (i.e. sub, tub, rub) As well, the children came up with 25 different words hiding in the word S-U-B-M-A-R-I-N-E. Way to go! Writing them out is the SK homework this weekend. The Juniors played a upper and lower case letter matching game called "Fishing for Letters" with a bingo dabber. We also read "The Rainbow Fish" and started a mini book study on this wonderful book about getting along and being a friend.

Continuing on with our Popcorn Word work, the SKs tallied and graphed how many times they "spun" WHO, HAVE, CAME, ARE, WENT, and WILL. They also played a "roll and read" game with those words on paper cubes. The next popcorn words are THIS and WILL.

When we learned about mollusks, I brought in some real pearls for the children to see and also some plastic ones to compare.

Our science experiment about pennies in vinegar and salt continues to interest the children; we left the pennies in the mixture, and after about a week they started to turn dark again, and now the salt has separated from the vinegar is moving up the sides of the cup! There is also a blue colour in the salt from the copper oxidizing. We talked about copper a bit and how it changes to bluish green, and the children learned that we have copper in our houses, too.

We also had a mini lesson on oil and water not mixing with the roof repairs going on! The children of course wondered about the tar smell and learned that tar comes from oil and it is used on roofs so that water won't go through!

Thank you to our parent volunteers: Sabrina's mom (who I forgot to thank last week!), Tessa's mom, and Adam's mom. Thank you as well to Caden and Will from Mrs. Wilson's class who pair-share read to the children.

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!