We celebrated Diwali in our class this week, which is one of the most celebrated festivals in India! It is a Hindu holiday that is usually observed for five days, and we learned about some of the traditions and activities that make Diwali special. We made our own versions of rangoli and cleaned our classroom because many Indians believe that the Goddess Lakshmi only steps inside if your home is clean. We played cards, enjoyed some sweets, and enjoyed lunch with some special lights (because Diwali is the festival of lights). Mrs. B at our school even shared some special parts of her Diwali celebration with our school, including the beautiful art in our front entrance! You can watch the videos below to learn more about Diwali. This week we got to start something very exciting: meeting with our buddy class 1C! Ms. Careless' class is very kind and sweet, and we really enjoyed reading to them during our buddy time. The students carefully chose and practiced reading picture books in advance of our buddy time, and I think the grade one students enjoyed hearing all the carefully selected stories. We can't wait to see them again next time!
In Math next week, we are starting a new unit on addition and subtraction. Your child will develop strategies for adding and subtracting whole numbers by using open number lines, addition charts, mental math, estimation, Base Ten Blocks, place-value mats, and pencil and paper.
In this unit, your child will:
Here are some suggestions for activities you can engage in with your child:
The classrooms of Millgrove featured a plethora of very professionally-dressed students today as students showed up as educators for Dress Like a Teacher Day! Teachers dressed up as students, and I am sad to report that Mrs. Woloszyn and I got some very stern warnings from the 26 teacher-doppelgangers in the class. Mr. Cherry, or "Michael" as we called him that day, visited our classroom and got in quite a lot of trouble as well. The students seemed confident in their disciplinary skills, and certainly dressed the part for the day!
This week we started practicing our badminton and pickle ball skills in PE! It is tricky to learn to control the birdie with the racket, but the students worked hard and got some great rallies in by the end of the week. You can watch the world's longest badminton rally below, which was 108 shots!
This week, our class learned about different materials that make up soil, namely minerals, air, water, and organic material, and students enjoyed contrasting the textures, appearances, and components of the peat moss, clay, and sand that we compared in class. We also learned about one of the most common chemicals on Earth: calcium carbonate. We talked about the many uses of this chemical, and its prevalence in many rocks and minerals like calcite and calcium carbonate. Our class tested for calcium carbonate's presence in chalk, shells, and limestone using acid and we found it present in all three! We wrapped up our focus on money in Math for the past couple of weeks with a food truck festival today! This week the students practiced counting and keeping track of different amounts of coins and bills, and we had fun with a scavenger hunt and card game to practice those skills. Today, those students put their knowledge of money to the test as they had to create a budget, apply for a business license, and then create a menu with prices. Afterward, students got to shop at each other's food trucks, and they had a blast calculating the totals of orders and pretending to enjoy each other's food. This week in we got to learn a Ghostbusters running game, and we also had free choice centres. The students especially enjoyed our basketball centre and tallying up their points at the end of the Ghosbusters game.
This month in Science we’ve been learning all about the rock cycle, and the three types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Jess Geo sent us a video message and she gave us lots of useful information about different igneous rocks! You can see her video below. We looked at examples of each type of rock and examined their properties just like a geologist. You can check out the extra videos below to learn a bit more about rocks and how they are formed!
We’ve been keeping busy with reading and writing in Language Arts this past week, and the students have been learning lots about how to make their writing clear and interesting. In addition to our personal narrative writing this week, we read some non-fiction books about turkeys and wrote plans to care for a prospective turkey pet. There were some very entertaining ideas for how to pass the time with one’s pet turkey. Happy Thanksgiving!
Thank you for sending all the beautiful leaves yesterday! We read the book The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert (see the video below) and were inspired by her leaf illustrations to make our own leaf animals. The students were very creative and careful with their leaves. You can see your child's leaf art on Seesaw! Today we got to make some very fun chalk art with Mr. Cherry! The students had a blast drawing themselves on the tarmac, and the results were almost life-like as you can see. We sure have been enjoying all the opportunities that this warm fall has afforded us!
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Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
April 2024
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