This Week In Review - April 23 - 27

Poetry was on our minds all week as we waited with great anticipation for Poem in Pocket Day. Parents and children alike had a lovely time on Thursday, sharing poems, eating school-made cookies and other snacks, and sipping tea. Many thanks to all who attended - you made it a huge success.

In math this week, we are continuing our work with probability - in particular with 1 die. It was particularly fun to learn and play a game called PIG. We also start each math class with reading a bit from a chapter book called, Do You Wanna Bet? 

These pictures show the data collection game we played Monday - Wednesday, "The Great Cookie Race". This was a fun introductory one-die probability activity, and gave plenty of practice with making good reasonable predictions and recording clear data. In the future, we will branch out to two dice.

In science class with Shan, we are beginning a unit on animal tracking! Shan read a story about identifying all sorts of animals by their tracks left in the dirt or the snow. Reading hints about the various creatures, the students could guess every one.

Mia and Mila were our special readers this week, and we heard two very different types of literature (both very appreciated by the audience) - an Elephant and Piggie story, and a chapter out of the first Harry Potter series. We also practiced our spelling words (and did VERY well on Friday’s challenge, I might add), and have just 3 chapters left of our chapter book, The Vanderbeekers. The characters of our cardboard city finished their 2nd pen pal letters this week, now that they know their name of their special friend. These letters will be mailed on Monday.

On Friday we had a special visitor - Mary, an occupational therapist (retired), came to visit our classroom to talk about ways that we can keep our bodies and brains working together throughout the day. Lots of recess time is GREAT, but there are also times inside the classroom that we may need to move around. Jinny Potter also very kindly supplied each student with a band for each student’s chair - this will help wiggly feet bounce gently when we need to sit for a while.

Also on Friday, our little City Planners worked together to finished all of the buildings, and place them (mostly) in the place where they will be. A river has been added running right through our city, so bridges will need to be added in the near future! This brings us right to our next big theme - Innovations. (See what we did there?) Lots of fun and learning ahead.