Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

I hope that everybody has a safe and happy Christmas break! Enjoy your time celebrating with friends and family :)

I have posted a few important dates to note for the new year under "Important dates." The January calendar and newsletter will be posted in the new year once we return to school.

Merry Christmas, and see everybody back to school on Monday, January 9th!

    Mrs. Miller

Christmas Concert

Congratulations to our students for such a great job singing at the Christmas Concert this afternoon! Thank you to all of the parents that were able to make it, the students enjoyed having such a wonderful audience.

  Don't forget that tomorrow is Pajama Day at school!

 Mrs. Miller

Reminders for this week

Hard to believe that Christmas is just about here! This week is pretty busy with a few special events; here are some things to remember:

  - Tomorrow (Wednesday) is shopping day at the Christmas store. Don't forget to send money with your child tomorrow if you would like them to purchase anything.

- Tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday) I will be showing the movie "The Polar Express" in class as a reward for the students. Over the past 2 months we have been working hard to earn marbles and we have reached our goal to earn our first reward: a movie in class! They have filled the Jar half way (they have earned just over 120 marbles) and they will get a second reward once the jar is filled all the way. Great job students!

- Thursday is our Concert for the parents! The show starts at 1pm in the gym. Please don't forget to have your students wear a red or white shirt that day as well as a Santa hat, if they wish. Hope to see you all there!

   Students are very excited for Christmas but we are still working as hard as we can in between all of the special events! Here they are hard at work this morning working on a Christmas themed math and language package.

   

Liquid or Solid??

Today I put students to the test to figure out whether my "mystery substance" was a solid or a liquid! Sounds easy enough, however our mixture seemed to be showing characteristics of both solids AND liquids. We have been learning about the characteristics of solids and liquids, and students argued their thoughts very well:

   Reasons why they thought the mystery substance was a solid:
                          - You could pick pieces of it up out of the container
                          - The pieces kept their own shape for a little bit
                          - When you hit the substance with your hand it was hard
         
   Reasons why they thought it was a liquid:
                         - When moved slowly it "flowed" like a liquid
                         - It took the shape of the container it was in
                         - You could stick your finger right into the substance like water
                         - It dripped off your hands
                     
   The "Mystery substance" was Oobleck, which is a combination of Corn Starch and water. This mixture is special because it can act both as a liquid AND a solid. It is a liquid in it's resting state, and turns into a solid when pressure and force is applied. I have included a couple pictures of our activity below as well as a link to a youtube video that shows you what Oobleck is and how to make your own.

Video:  Oobleck Instructions


  Mrs. Miller

St. Pete's Band

On Friday we were treated to a performance by St. Pete's Senior Band! They helped get everyone into the Christmas Spirit by playing many different Christmas tunes.

  This upcoming Monday will be the last book exchange until after the Christmas break. Please return your child's current book on Monday if you would like them to have one last one before the break! All books will then be due back on Monday, Dec. 19th and no new books will be checked out until the new year.

   Mrs. Miller

Our first science experiment!

Our new unit of Solids and Liquids is filled with the opportunity to conduct many different experiments. Yesterday we discussed and learned safety rules for conducting experiments, and today students did a very good job at demonstrating them!

  Today's experiment was to determine, by examining different properties of liquids, what the mystery liquids were. Students examined the colour, thickness, smell, and feeling of the different liquids to help figure out what they were! Most students identified them correctly: Vinegar, Honey, Dish Soap, and Water.

 

Quizzes this week

Hello! This week students will write two short quizzes in class. These are very simple quizzes to test understanding and are only testing exactly what we have been working on in class; there is no need to study, students have been practicing these skills frequently!

    1). Students will write a quiz on reading pictographs and constructing a bar graph tomorrow in math (Wednesday).

    2) Students will complete a spelling quiz on 10 of the word wall words we have been working on. There are NO new words this week, and there will not be any new words until we return from the Christmas break.


 Mrs. Miller

Friday Math Centers

Here are a few pictures of some of the work we did on Friday during our Math centers!

Addition trees. Students had to add the two numbers below to fill up the boxes as they moved up the tree. The biggest tree was quite challenging!

Everybody had a chance to use Dreambox Math on Friday. Hopefully they will want to continue using this wonderful resource at home to practice their math skills. 

Graphing game on ABCya.com

The most popular center this week was our OSMO! Students tried the "OSMO Coding" game and it was a huge hit!

December Update

It is very hard to believe that it is already December!! There is already lots of excitement in the air as students anticipate the upcoming holiday season.

There will be quite a few special events and activities this month so please check the blog often to keep up to date on everything. Important events are outlined on the December calendar. Here are a few important things to note this month:

      Wednesday Dec 21st: Shopping Day for St. Francis of Assisi Christmas Store. Information is going home tomorrow about this event so please check your child's mailbag.
      Thursday Dec 22nd: Students will be performing Christmas Songs! Each class in the school is being given the opportunity to perform and present a Christmas song to the school. Parents are invited to come and watch this event at 1pm in the gym.
     Friday Dec 23rd: This is the last day of school before the Christmas Break! School resumes on Monday, January 9th.


 Even with all of our special events this month we will still be covering a lot of the curriculum. Here is what we will be focusing on in each subject this month:

      Math: We will continue to work on graphing data using different types of graphs and will explore addition and subtraction strategies.
      Language: We will be finishing up our work on persuasive writing and learning the last of the 5 "Daily 5" activities.
      Science: We have started our unit on Solids and Liquids! We will continue to explore into this subject and do a few small experiments.
      The Arts: We have moved on from our focus on Visual Arts and will be starting to focus on Music, including practicing for our Christmas Song performance.
      Religion: We will continue to work on activities from the students First Communion booklets and will discuss the Christmas story and the true meaning of Christmas.
      Phys Ed: We are exploring different equipment in our gym and learning how to use them in different ways and during cooperative games. We will also start some discussion on healthy eating,

I am looking forward to this exciting month ahead!

   Mrs. Miller