Here are our words for this week:
la vache, le cheval, la chèvre, le chat, le cochon,
un oiseau, la poule, le lapin, le canard
In French, almost everyone has now completed their instructions for how to decorate a gingerbread man, and has read them aloud to the class. In a few days, we will have the surprise that we have been looking forward to for so long, and next week I'll send the instructions home along with the rubric. Be sure to listen to your reader read you his/her instructions!
We will wait until after March break to start our next big writing project, but in the meantime, I'd like to encourage the writers to begin writing their own journal entries - without the help of a sentence starter. We'll talk about things that we might write about, for instance, what we did on the weekend, our favourite game to play, something that we're looking forward to, how we are feeling or we can even make up a little story. You may be able to help from home by taking just a second to brainstorm an idea with your student on the way to school every morning, just in case that is our writing activity for the day (sometimes the children forget what happened the night before, or on the weekend).
I heard some good French skip-counting at our centres today! Students had clear cups of material to count, but they had to first estimate how much was in each cup, and then divide the material into groups of 2, 5 or 10 for easier skip-counting. Keep practising this at home (I listed some fun ideas in a previous post) as it will help a lot with the addition and subtraction that we are about to get into. Remember, when you're practising skip-counting or adding and subtracting, it's always helpful to have something countable on-hand. Coins, blocks, beads, toothpicks... it's all good.
Science! We have some cool experiments happening this week! Today we each received a list of materials that we will test tomorrow to see if they absorb water or not. We looked at each material today and noted our prediction of whether that material will soak up any water or not. Tomorrow, when we do the testing, the groups will also be challenged to come up with a way to measure which material absorbs the most liquid.
Later this week, we will also make predictions and test a list of materials to see which ones float. I hope you have fun discussing these experiments throughout the week. There are lots of ways that you can extend these concepts at home. Here are 2 quick examples:
1. Imagine you have a big spill in the kitchen. What material would clean it up the best? A sponge, a paper towel, a cloth or a Kleenex? Make a prediction and then test each material to see how much water it absorbs. OR Don't believe the commercials, find out for yourself. Which brand of paper towel is most absorbent?
2. Why do some fruits float while others sink? Try this super cool experiment!
Finally, if you still have your brown report card envelope, I would really appreciate receiving it back by the end of the week so that I can reuse it in June. Thanks!