3B had been working hard in December on Christmas "important books" for their families. We focused on crafting interesting descriptions and making our ideas clear to our audience (who were the students’ families). You can see the original The Important Book below to see our inspiration. The class made the wrapping paper, cards, and everything, and were very proud of their creations. We hope you enjoyed their lovingly authored Christmas books! Merry Christmas! Our class of students have been a resilient, hard-working, and conscientious bunch in this school year, and I’m looking forward to what the New Year brings for learning and community in our classroom!
In late November, the students all wrote letters to Santa, and today we got our letter back from him! He sent us a lovely note, including notification that all the students made it onto the nice list! It was the best mail we could receive right before Winter Break!
A trailer for the Citadel's production of A Christmas Carol (a different adaptation from the David van Belle one we watched this year) This week we explored a mini-unit on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. We read the book, watched the Citadel's David van Belle Citadel play production (which was also available virtually again this year), and watched the Muppet's film version. The students enjoyed comparing the different adaptations of the story, and examining the history of why Charles Dickens wrote the story and how its message is still important today. To cap off our unit, we played Jeopardy to review our knowledge of the story and the students earned an impressive amount (not that the money matters so much, as we learned from Ebenezer Scrooge of course). It was lovely to see the class embrace the Christmas spirit and remember the importance of kindness and generosity this week! Today we went Christmas shopping in 3B! Given the students' growing skills with three-digit addition and subtraction, they were given a mission to make a selection of toys and other items for themselves with a budget of $1000 using some flyers. All the students stayed within the budget (except for a few who felt confident to add beyond $1000), and their selections and adding strategies were varied and impressive. We look forward to planing more shopping trips with our math skills!
Today we celebrated Ukrainian Christmas in 3B! We pretended to wait to eat lunch until we saw the first star outside (as some Ukrainians would do to remember the wise men following the star), and learned how to say Merry Christmas in Ukrainian (Veseloho Rizvda or Веселого Різдва). We decorated our classroom with a Didukh that symbolises the large wheat fields in Ukraine and means 'grandfather spirit' to signify people's ancestors being with them in their memories. The students went caroling like many Ukrainians do (singing “'Koliadky”), and we listened to the famous Ukrainian carol “Schedryk” (it has the same melody as “Carol of the Bells”). We set up our own class nativity scene like Ukrainian families would often do, and made our own spider web decorations like Ukrainian children sometimes make to decorate their houses at Christmas. We read the beautiful book The Christmas Spider’s Miracle to learn about why spiders are so important to some Ukrainian people at Christmas and why there are often spider decorations on their Christmas trees. Finally, we drank some apple juice to pretend we were having uzvar, which is a national Ukrainian beverage, cooked with dried fruits and berries. Веселого Різдва! In our measurement unit, we've been honing our skills in measuring mass in grams and kilograms, and measuring length, width, height, and perimeter in centimetres and metres. The students especially looked forward to estimating mass before we measured it using the scales we had in the classroom this week! This week we've started practicing our typing skills in Language Arts! The students have been practicing lessons on Typing Club, and they're getting comfortable using home row. We're aspiring to be accurate and speedy with our typing as the weeks of typing practice go on! Our amaryllis plants have continued to rocket up in their growth! As part of our learning about measurement and life cycles, we've been closely observing the growth of the plants over the past couple of months. Our plants have grown exponentially, almost to the height of a metre, in the past month, and many flowers have blossomed this week. You can watch the video below to see a time-lapse of another amaryllis growing.
Mrs. Davies and 3B have put together a wonderful virtual Christmas concert for you to enjoy! The singing was beautiful, the instrumentation impressive, and the whole show went off without a hitch. Mrs. Davies put together a very professional and entertaining concert as usual! You can watch the concert by playing the video above.
The students have been hard at work over the past couple of months reading and writing non-fiction, and to celebrate we watched the true-story-inspired One and Only Ivan after reading the book in class. Rowen's family sent some delicious popcorn and treats, and the class enjoyed reading their non-fiction masterpieces to each other before the movie. As a class, we'd learned about how our non-fiction writing should teach others, and we certainly learned a lot from each other today! In Social Studies this month, we began a new unit on the country of India! With 1.3 billion people, India has so much for us to learn about. We’ve been talking a lot about the geography, climate, wildlife and resources of India, and are looking forward to learning more about India’s languages, customs, traditions, and celebrations. You can click on this link to see some of the places we’ve explored in India, and watch the videos to learn more about this amazing country! We bid a sad farewell to Miss Gramson, our student teacher, today! We have learned so much from her, enjoyed her warmth and kindness, and appreciated all that she has done for us over the past few months. We're looking forward to seeing her around Spruce Grove, and know that she will be an amazing teacher when she graduates in the spring
The students of 3B have been busy elves the past few weeks as they've been preparing their Christmas presents and cards! They're all wrapped up now, and the class can't wait to give their gifts to their families at Christmas. Their love and care for their families was very evident in all the effort they put into this (top secret) project! This week, the students were excited to crack out their rulers and begin our unit on the measurement of time, length, perimeter, and mass!
In this unit, the students will:
Here are some activities you can try with your child:
3B was hard at work today as they sewed very special Christmas stockings! Our wonderful student teacher Miss Gramson prepared all the materials, and the students learned a lot about how to use a needle and thread, how to decorate fabric, and how to connect fabric using special stitches. It was a very Christmas-y afternoon! In the true spirit of this season, some Millgrove students are writing to members of our Canadian Armed Forces. Our class talked especially about people serving in the Armed Forces who might be away from home or had difficult assignments this year, and we remembered events like B.C. floods and busy hospitals this year where members of the Armed Forces provided important help. 3B happily pitched in this week by writing cards to them with notes of encouragement, sweet tidbits of information about the students' favourite Christmas traditions, and their artwork. For this group of people who help our country so much, we hope it can brighten their Christmas! |
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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