Happy Monday!
First of all, when I picked up the children from library this morning, I noticed that many readers have 2 or more overdue books. They were not able to take out new books today, so please make sure they search the house and find any books that need to be returned. Thanks for the reminders!
We have begun our measurement unit. We reviewed the terms "long" and "court" and compared objects using the language "plus long", "plus court" and "le plus long" and "le plus court". The mathematicians were very clear that this task was way too easy, so we continued with some measuring activities using various objects as our units of measurement. For example, we measured our desks using a pencil, a paper clip and a toothpick. We confirmed that the smaller the unit of measurement, the more of them we need. We also compared a 30 cm ruler to a metre stick and predicted how many rulers would fit inside the metre. We also compared ourselves to a metre and remeasured our heights. We've grown since the beginning of grade 1!
First of all, when I picked up the children from library this morning, I noticed that many readers have 2 or more overdue books. They were not able to take out new books today, so please make sure they search the house and find any books that need to be returned. Thanks for the reminders!
We have begun our measurement unit. We reviewed the terms "long" and "court" and compared objects using the language "plus long", "plus court" and "le plus long" and "le plus court". The mathematicians were very clear that this task was way too easy, so we continued with some measuring activities using various objects as our units of measurement. For example, we measured our desks using a pencil, a paper clip and a toothpick. We confirmed that the smaller the unit of measurement, the more of them we need. We also compared a 30 cm ruler to a metre stick and predicted how many rulers would fit inside the metre. We also compared ourselves to a metre and remeasured our heights. We've grown since the beginning of grade 1!
To continue learning about lengths, we talked about distance. We estimated how far a toy car would roll down a ramp, and the number of footsteps needed to cross our field. Of course, after estimating, we measured exactly, using the given unit of measurement. We're learning that it's good to make mistakes in our predictions, and not to erase them once we have the correct measurement!
In Science, we are going to build on what we learned in our workshop last week. We learned that the sun is the most important source of energy (as we would not have any others without it). We also learned that the sun gives it's energy to plants to help them grow and produce food for animals and humans. After everything we've learned, many of our scientists predict that a plant cannot survive without access sunlight, but not all of us are convinced. We're not taking anybody's word for it, and will judge for ourselves after an experiment. We currently have 2 healthy flowers. One is staying by the window for the next 3 weeks, the other one is staying in a dark cupboard. Both will be watered regularly. Ask your scientist what their prediction is for the cupboard plant. The results will be analyzed the week before Easter.
We also spent some science time outside looking for things that move. We took pictures of cars, birds, a plane, a bicycle, branches and a few other things. After I printed them, we organized them according to the source of energy they use. You can play the What makes it move? game almost anywhere, and it will be a great application of what we're learning at school!
In language, we are working away on our fairy tales. We're all at different stages of planning and starting our rough copy. We have learned that writers often make many many drafts of a book before they're done, so we are using our planning sheet to write our draft, and then we will make some revisions and write out a nice clean good copy with very careful illustrations. You can help with this big project by talking about it at home. Ask your writer who his/her two characters are and what they're like (nice, mean, old, funny, has magic powers, likes to steal things, human/animal or otherwise...). Ask where the story takes place. Ask what the big problem is going to be (all fairy tales have a problem in the middle) and how it will be solved at the end. It will be great if the writers think it over a bit, and come to school full of ideas!
Have a great week,
Tamara