April - Week 4
X, W and V were our letters this week. It was difficult thinking of words that begin with X, but we found lots that END with X. W was much easier! As we wandered around our yard students were shouting out words like WORMS, WINDY, WINDCHIMES, WATER, WATERFALL, WE, WINTER, WATCHING, WOOL, WASH, … The proliferation of worms lead to a class inquiry which involved digging up worms,inspecting them and their environment closely, looking up information about them, and recording our learning.
Math activities focused on measuring capacity, counting and subtraction. We subtracted when spaghetti worms wiggled out of the sandbox. Students are able to say that if 5 worms were in the sandbox and 2 wiggled away, 3 are left in the sandbox. It’s much more difficult to determine that if 5 worms were in the sandbox and when we looked again only1 was left, so how many wiggled away? We also used vehicles in a parking lot and vegetables in a pot to practice this concept.
Making marble runs with cardboard rolls and masking tape was a popular undertaking this week. Lots of experimenting, problem-solving, cooperating, sharing of ideas, and redesigning went into these projects.
Friday was Dress As Your Favourite Character Day. Students were delighted to use their Halloween costumes again or to try on a new character role. Those who forgot to bring in a costume were very creative in cutting, colouring and taping together masks and accessories. In the morning we made a people graph to show how many vehicles our families have (most have 2), read and talked about our favorite vegetables (JKs), and checked on the tomato, bean, corn and flower seeds we planted last week. We noticed that the tomatoes sprouted first and are the tallest. In the afternoon we charted the vehicles we saw on our walk downtown. Mini-vans were the most common with cars and pickups following close behind.
Math activities focused on measuring capacity, counting and subtraction. We subtracted when spaghetti worms wiggled out of the sandbox. Students are able to say that if 5 worms were in the sandbox and 2 wiggled away, 3 are left in the sandbox. It’s much more difficult to determine that if 5 worms were in the sandbox and when we looked again only1 was left, so how many wiggled away? We also used vehicles in a parking lot and vegetables in a pot to practice this concept.
Making marble runs with cardboard rolls and masking tape was a popular undertaking this week. Lots of experimenting, problem-solving, cooperating, sharing of ideas, and redesigning went into these projects.
Friday was Dress As Your Favourite Character Day. Students were delighted to use their Halloween costumes again or to try on a new character role. Those who forgot to bring in a costume were very creative in cutting, colouring and taping together masks and accessories. In the morning we made a people graph to show how many vehicles our families have (most have 2), read and talked about our favorite vegetables (JKs), and checked on the tomato, bean, corn and flower seeds we planted last week. We noticed that the tomatoes sprouted first and are the tallest. In the afternoon we charted the vehicles we saw on our walk downtown. Mini-vans were the most common with cars and pickups following close behind.