Week of April 4-8

Dear families,

This week we continued our inquiries on Spring and 2- and 3-D shapes.

Spring: The children practised symetry skills by designing two matching eggs, fine motor skills by tracing Spring stencils, patterning with Easter stickers, reading Spring poems, and observing the natural world by looking at real birds' nests, then making their own for their eggs. We will compare the nests of several birds next week and learn more about how the natural world changes in Spring.

Shapes: The children did a search of classroom items that are circles, squares, rectangles and triangles, then tallied their results and wrote the total number. With shape tiles, they designed an object and then drew what they designed. We are learning how to accurately draw simple 2-D and 3-D objects. With their Reading Buddies, they made a 3-D design with the shape tiles and then drew it. The children tied the two inquiries together by mixing blue, green and white play doh to form a sphere called Earth :). The children also matched the name of the 2- and 3-D shapes with the written name, and matched up pictures of household 3-D shapes with similar shapes (i.e. can = cylinder, vase = cylinder).

The grades K-3 children had a wonderful time in the gym watching the Duffelbag Theatre production of Robin Hood!

Our Kindergarten yard got a new layer of wood chips which the children were very excited about. They are learning that the wood slowly turns into soil and gets compressed, so we need more.

The children have brought home their new April words list and April Homework Bingo.

The words of the week are WHAT and NEW, like "What's new?" The children completed a WHAT mini read and write booklet.

The children sang "Like a Lion" at this month's Sharing Assembly. Congratulations to Andrew, Cole and Ellie who received certificates for Honesty.

Thank you so much to Catherine who brought in her book about Feelings. We had a talk with the children about "the golden rule" of treating others as we would like to be treated.

Thank you also to Iris who brought in a beautiful bird nest (now we have three in our Science Centre!), to Stella's mom who helped the children in the Computer Lab and to Andrew's mom who was our Mystery Reader this week.

Thank you so much for bringing in the eggs! The children loved dipping them in "magic" foam (shaving cream with food colouring!). They have also made beautiful paper from the foam for their Mother's Day cards (shh!) :) The children will use the egg shell halves for an eco-friendly mini-planter. Stay tuned!

I apologize for the mix-up with the dates for Computer Lab volunteers. I learned that the April 15 PA Day would in fact NOT bump all the days ahead, after Stella's mom had kindly (re)-organized all the volunteers! The original dates are back in place. Thank you Theresa and thank you so much volunteers!

Next week we will be continuing our Inquiry into Spring/Earth (April is Earth Month, April 22 is Earth Day), and we will finish our Inquiry into shapes, with the childrens' folder going home on Friday.

The April Scholastic order is due on April 7, the 8th by the latest. Thank you!

I hope you have a lovely weekend!