 2B had been working hard the past couple of weeks of school on Christmas stories for their families. We focused on crafting interesting plots and making our ideas clear to our audience (who were the students’ families). They made the wrapping paper, cards, and everything, and were very proud of their creations. We hope you enjoyed their lovingly authored Christmas stories
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 The last day at school before winter break was a fun one in 2B with some coding, games, a movie, and lots of delicious treats sent by generous families. We have a caring and friendly group of students in our class, and it's always a treat to celebrate together! The most bittersweet part was that we had to say goodbye to Miss Rebecca, which certainly brought some tears and sadness. She promises to come back and visit in the New Year, though!
 On Tuesday this week we celebrated Ukrainian Christmas in 2B! 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 paper snowflake 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 warm uzvar which is a national Ukrainian beverage, cooked with dried fruits and berries.  We really enjoyed playing our first Breakout Edu game today to review our learning in Math so far this year. The Breakout box is a student-friendly version of breakout or escape rooms where people have to solve puzzles to escape the room. In our Breakout game, the students had to use their knowledge to solve a variety of clues that unlocked the locks on the Breakout boxes (which contained small prizes). All the groups this week beat the timer on all our Breakout Edu game, which is no doubt a testament to both their knowledge of not only these subject areas, but also their problem-solving, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking!
This week we’ve been learning about traditional Christmas celebrations from communities around Canada. We kicked off the week with an Acadian Christmas today. We ate lunch in the dark by firelight as though it was Réveillon, which is a special Christmas meal late at night, often after Midnight Mass. We watched a bit of a real Midnight Mass, and learned how to chair dance like true Acadians (you can see the video below to try it for yourself!). The students even learned a couple of Christmas carols in French that would be commonly sung in Atlantic Canada. Our class learned about the Christmas tradition of godparents giving their godchildren a large biscuit shaped like a little person called a “naulet” that we decorated our own paper versions of. The most popular tradition of all though was when we got to eat our Bûche de Noël!  The students of 2B have been busy elves the past few weeks as they've been preparing their Christmas presents! 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!
 The students from last night’s concert can be very proud of all their work! The singing was beautiful, the acting, impressive, and the whole show went off without a hitch. Mrs. Davies put together a very professional and entertaining concert as usual!  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, and gifted us with some special sunflower seeds. It’s always special when the students can use their growing writing skills to connect with a meaningful audience, and there are very few audiences more exciting than Santa!
Not only are we learning all about hot and cold temperatures in our class, but we can also portray temperatures using colour! We learned about warm and cool temperatures in Art last week, and you can see your child's winter snowflake that we painted using cool colours (such as purple, blue, and green) on Seesaw. We learned about the science of how snowflakes form, and how at different temperatures the crystals form different shapes and sizes. As we've learned throughout this science unit, temperature has a big effect on things both big and small!
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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. 
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