Joyeuse Saint-Valentin

Important Change!

Thank you for all the mail. I have already received most of the forms and money for the upcoming field trip. If you have not already returned it, please try to do so by this MONDAY (Feb. 9), not Thursday the 12th as I indicated on the forms. Thanks!

The following note was sent home today:

Dear parents,

Area 24 will be having a small Valentine’s Day celebration on Thursday, February 12^th. We will have some stories, an art activity and a card exchange. Please do not send candy or chocolate, all the children will receive a treat from me.

If your student would like to make Valentines for his/her classmates, here is a list of names so that you can ensure no one is left out!

Tamara

Anna	Georgia
Azadeh	Jared
Beatrice	Kasia
Chiara	Lee
Clark	Markus
Colt	Nikko
Evan	Shawna
Evey	Simone
Evelyn	Soren
Finch	Taisia

Words of the Week etc.

Words of the Week

The sound ‘in’ is very tricky. I remember sitting around the table with my exchange family trying to match exactly what they said so that I might have a nice French accent!

Your expert French speaker needs no assistance speaking this sound, they know it well. The best way I’ve found to describe it is to start saying the word “kangaroo” but pause on the “an” part. This is approximately the right sound. Note: The last 2 words in the list have a pesky e in between the i and n. We already learned what sound e+n makes, but in this case, they make the ‘in’ sound. We still hear the regular i sound as well. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, Très bien!

lapin, la fin, train, vingt, bain, rien*, bien*

Bonus words: cinq, dinde

Sadly, we have completed my favourite graphing unit. We talked a lot about how to make a level 3 or 4 diagram before we began graphing the results of our individual surveys, so we used rulers and colour to make our work look very organized and neat. Students also answered questions about their diagrams, which choice was the most popular and the least, and how many people answered their question in total. Looking pretty good!

We have also completed our collages. To review, we used our practice sheets from working with ink and graphite with Donnely, as well as the colourful texture rubbings we did recently, to cut out the various pieces of our animals and cities. Then we added some fine details with chalk. This morning we wrote a couple sentences (with incredibly little help) about what's in our picture. Our writing is coming along amazingly!
By the way, see the 3 white rectangles coming out of the round building in the cityscape on the brown background? That's the sound of the crowd in the Skydome. We also have dinosaur fossils on one of them. I wish I was this creative!

Cool, safe, things to do with snow!

Science Fun!

Hello Scientists,
We had an incredible afternoon today with Scientist Kathy. Hopefully you have already heard about it. Kathy brought tons of materials and set up 5 centres where the kids got to do hands-on activities that led us to discover a lot about structures and materials. After rotating through the centres, each group worked together to build a stool using what we know about strong shapes. At the end, every group presented a stool capable of supporting 3 heavy books. 

Scientist Kathy has already written to me to say how much she liked working with our class and I can't wait to continue exploring what we did today. Here are some quick descriptions of the 5 centres and plenty of pictures for you to look at and talk about with your little engineer! 

At Natasha's centre, we learned about different materials. We sorted objects onto our placemats according to what they were made of and talked about why it's important to choose materials carefully depending on what it is needed for. We also learned about bamboo, a renewable resource. Ask your scientist how much bamboo grows in one day.

At Yukimi's centre, we talked about fasteners. We brainstormed lots of ideas of different fasteners and how we use them all the time in daily life. Ask your scientist what kinds of fasteners they have on their clothes. We got to experiment with tons of different fasteners including hammering some nails and screwing some screws!

At Scientist Kathy's centre, we talked about building a strong and stable structure that can withstand forces, like wind. We learned that the framework of a structure is very important and that buildings can have supports buried 11 stories underground! We experimented with 2 shapes, triangles and squares, and discovered that triangles are much stronger than squares and that we can use them in building to make structures stronger. Ask your scientist how they can take a regular square and add a piece to make it way stronger.

A Brook's centre we talked about the importance of having a strong base on a (tall) structure. To test this, the scientists were asked to decide if they were more stable standing on one foot or two. They looked at some pictures of buildings that have nice big bases, and then they built their own tall tower as a group. Ask your builder how tall their structure was and how they managed to get it that tall without falling over.

At Darin's centre, students learned about structures that support, structures that contain and structures that span. On a map, they found example of each (e.g., a shelf, a boat, a bridge) and then sorted objects into categories on placemats. It was interesting how some objects could serve more than one purpose. Ask your scientist to look around your house and find examples of structures that serve these purposes. Finally, students assembled a treehouse with ladders, doors, windows, roof pieces and supporting trees!

The Stool Experiment 

(Thanks for sending in all those newspapers - we had plenty.)

Testing...

Thank you again to the parents who helped out, and all the others who would have. These workshops are always a lot of work for the parents and wouldn't be possible without you. It was so nice to be able to stand back and watch all the activities happening without my help!