February 26 - March 1

 Sorry, with Family Day last week, I guess it has been a few weeks.   Some little updates:

• on Tuesday we are receiving a French concert from Roland Bibeau in the afternoon.
• this Wednesday is Pink Shirt Day (Anti-Bullying Day)

In Math, we have moved onto measurement.  Last week, we made our "Metric Staircase" to help us understand the differences between kilo-, centi- and milli- units. We will be continuing some measurements of length, weight and capacity this week.

In Language, there has been a focus on writing short stories.  Specifically, we have been working on a short story called "The Day I Got to be Principal".  I have been trying to spend extra time with the class on the editing process, wanting them to focus on sentence structure, punctuation and what a paragraph looks like.

In Science, we have moved onto Strong and Stable Structures.  Today, we had a brief experiment where they tried to make the tallest tower out of paper that they could, but they had to lift it from the floor (while it stood on a small whiteboard) to their table without it falling over.  It was a lot of fun to discover what made some towers more stable than others.

We have also started some dance classes through the National Ballet School of Canada.  Right now, we are learning about Hip-Hop dance, and learning some of the basic moves.  Lots of fun!

February 12 - 16

 A busy week ahead with a some interruptions to our regular flow.  Today was a good example as we were trying to get our Valentine's Day bags prepared, we ran out of time for our Working with Words lesson.  We will try to get the lesson done on Wednesday, and give a very light quiz on Friday.

Other updates:

• Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday or as the kids like to say Pancake Tuesday.  The parent council will be sending around pancakes tomorrow for the kids to eat.  Also, to acknowledge the day, the children are encouraged to wear Green, Purple, or Gold.
• Wednesday is both Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day.  For Ash Wednesday, we will be having a service in the morning.  Our Valentine's Day card exchange will happen third block.  Please remember that the children should bring cards for all if they are exchanging cards (a class list was sent on Friday) and we are not allowed to pass out food in the classroom due to allergies in the school.
• Next Monday is Family Day, so there is no school that day.
  
  

February 5 - 9

 I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend!  Pretty quiet week ahead, but I will try to give a brief summary of things that we are doing in class.

In Math, we will be moving onto adding and subtracting larger numbers this week.  I would recommend reviewing 2-digit addition and subtraction as we move onto 3-digit. 

In Language, we we will be doing another reading sample this week from an old EQAO test.  We will be looking at how to write great full sentence answers.  Also, we will be going over our writing sample from last week (A Dog's Adventure), and looking at ways to improve and edit our sentences.

In Science, we are finishing up our unit on Forces with a final little project using magnets.  Today, they tried to construct a door lock using a magnet.  They will be given a little more time tomorrow before we do a walk around to check each others work out.

In Gym, we are trying out Handball, and learning about healthy eating choices in Health class.

As we are wrapping up our Drama lessons, we will be moving onto Dance.  We will be having some dance activities over the next few weeks as well as some on-line instruction and activities from professional dancers.