2nd Week of April

Monday:

During library, the students had a visitor from the SPCA come in to teach them about bite safety.

We tacked our first Wonder Wall questions about rainbows.

We watched a short video and then used prisms and CDs to demonstrate how white light is actually made up of all the colours of the rainbow.

After we had some rainbow fun with some colour experiments.

Here is a link to a great one to try at home, all you need is milk, food colouring and dish soap.

https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/milk-color-explosion/

And here is one that the parents enjoy just as much as the kids… make your own lava lamp:

https://sciencebob.com/blobs-in-a-bottle-2/

Tuesday:

We continued to talk about rainbows. We started a rainy day art project, experimenting with mixed media and process art.

Students continued to explore light, colour and rainbows, coming up with even more questions.

We read a weather theme book called “Worm Weather” by Jean Taft.

As a class, we wondered why there are so many worms after rain. We drew a diagram and discussed possibilities.

Finally the students decided that it was because their homes filled up with water. The students also wanted to know more about worms so we researched together and found some interesting facts:

Worms have no eyes.

Worms have 5 hearts.

Worms help turn old food, dead bugs, and other organic material into new soil.

Wednesday:

We read “I Love the Rain” and the students completed the second step of their rainy-day art by drawing a silhouette holding an umbrella.

We read a non-fiction book about the Water Cycle and danced along to a water cycle rap.

In the afternoon, we completed some experiments that demonstrate how clouds hold liquid until they are too full, a simulation of the water cycle using popcorn kernels and Alka-Seltzer, as well as practiced estimating to see how many “raindrops” it takes to fill a space.

Thursday:

We started our day by drawing a portrait of our student of the week.

We read a book called “Rain” that is written with only dialogue, so students needed to use inferencing skills to understand what was happening in the story. We then practiced writing dialogue and created our own comics using various templates.

We also finished our Rainy Day Art project using a pipette to create streams of “rain” down our paper with blue paint.

Friday:

We started the day by reading one of my favourite stories, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (The Original) by Judi and Ron Barrett.



Click here to hear the story at home!

The students brainstormed what they would have called the book if they were the author and created their own covers. We combined these into a book for our classroom library.

The rainy weather had us stuck inside all day so we were happy to burn some energy in the gym.

We had buddies in the afternoon, unfortunately we did not get a chance to make our rain-sticks today, but will complete that activity on Monday.

Toy Policy:

This week a few students have brought toys to school. I am totally okay with this, as often the students are motivated to write about and read to their toys, they can be a little extra motivation. We had a class meeting to create a policy and decided that we will have 1 day week that toys are allowed to come. Toys will be allowed to come to school on Fridays, but have a few rules:

Rule #1: The toy cannot go outside at recess and lunch, as I don’t want them to get dirty or lost.

Rule #2: Toys must be appropriate, ie. no weapons

Rule #3: If the toy distracts you or others from what we are doing, the toy goes to “Toy Jail” and stays there until an appropriate time.

Rule #4: If there are any disagreements over toys, the toy goes to “Toy Jail” until the end of the day.

* We will work as a class to construct the "Toy Jail" next week. 

If you have any questions or comments please let me know.  

A few important dates to mark on your calendar:

April 25^th – Early Dismissal at 1:25pm for student led conferences. You can come with your child anytime between 1:30-4:30. This is a chance for the kids to share their work with you and to talk about their goals for the third term.

Friday, May 4^th- Pro-D Day (No school)

Thursday, May 10^th- Mother’s Day Tea Party in classroom in the morning. More information to follow.

Have a wonderful weekend!