As mentioned last week, Beach Day, which was supposed to happen last week, has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Students can wear regular clothes or beach style clothes. No swim suits, spaghetti straps or belly shirts. There will be inside recesses tomorrow so students will not need to worry about getting cold outside in their beach outfits. However, we do have gymnastics tomorrow so students should bring warmer items for the trip to and from the gymnastics club.

It’s Art time, of course!

We haven’t really talked about Art on the blog before but we are doing a really cool project right now that I thought I would share with you. There is also a really nice video that I want to add before it gets lost in the wilderness of the internet.

We are doing Birchbark Trees as a winter landscape watercolour painting. This is the first time that students have used water colours in our class and everyone is really excited. Water colours are so nice as they are easy to blend together to give a really rich beautiful look to a painting. So, for this project, we started of by looking at an example of a winter landscape done by the impressionist painter Claude Monet. We also had an opportunity to look at a range of works by the artist and discussed the colours, style and types of work done by the artist. A lot of blended, light colours that give a sense of serenity or tranquility.

Once we had had a chance to view some examples, students began their paintings by creating the birchbark trees that were going to be the focus of the painting. We had a really neat way to do this, though the students found it challenging to begin with. To create the trees, students used masking tap to tape off the shape of the trees. To do this, students had to rip off a section of tape and rip the tape down the middle. This was not easy for the students but with a lot of grumbling and hand holding, we managed to complete the hardest part of the project. Having ripped the tape down the middle, the students then taped the pieces on their papers, keeping the straight sides of the tape to the inside and the rough, ripped sides on the outside so that it created a sense of the rough edges of the tree.

Our next step was to paint in the horizon line. Next class, we will be adding the colours of the sky, which should be lots of fun. Keep an eye out for the finished paintings on the bulletin board.

As an update to the last post, in the event that there is school tomorrow, beach day has been cancelled for tomorrow and postponed to the following Friday. Thanks!

So, I hope everyone is still enjoying their extended break with the kids. It’s been a nice little siesta and I know I have enjoyed spending the extra time with my family.

However, if there is school tomorrow, we are supposed to be having a Beach Day! We usually have this once a year during the throes of winter as a way to spread some warmth and fun during this stretch of dark, dreary days.

For Beach Day, we usually wear summer-y clothes like shorts, t-shirts, hawaiian t’s and the like. Nothing skimpy like shirts that show bellies, spaghetti straps or the like. We crank the heat a little and have some fun. However, with this stretch of cold days, we will have to see what happens tomorrow. I will put another post on the blog tonight after talking with Ms. Evans.

Stay tuned!

I hope everyone is enjoying their snow day! There’s something about waking up as a kid fully expecting to have to go to school on a wintry day and then finding out that it is a snow day! That’s awesome! A day of so many possibilities!

Anyway, I thought I would help celebrate the day with a couple of videos. There is even one for the parents!

And one for the parents . . .

And, being a teacher, I would be remiss in not giving out some school work to work on at home. We will still be having our spelling test and memory verse on Friday. I have included the spelling words and the link to Spelling City below!

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Here is the link to Spelling City. The memory verse for this week can be found on the Blog Calendar!

Well, it is certainly great to be back. It was a great holiday and it was so nice to be able to spend time with my children. These years are so precious and it was nice to be able to sit back and have fun with my little Liam and my growing Siena. I hope your holidays were full of fun and joy as you celebrated the birth of our Lord.

I wanted to just let you know about what was happening in Language Arts. We have continued with our exploration of Literature Circles. Literature Circles are a great way to involve students in discussing and thinking about books in ways that are truly participatory with higher level thinking. However, they do involve a lot of modelling so that they are effective. As part of our exploration, we have so far looked at 3 of the five roles we will be doing. Students have done the Discussion Director Role, the Illustrator role and we are now on the Dictionary Dude role. To help us with these roles, we have been looking African Folktales. These short stories are great to quickly get into each of the roles. Plus, they are a lot of fun to read as students learn about storytelling and the role storytelling has in our culture and the culture of other countries.

Today we looked at the story, “Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears?” As part of our discussion, we talked about how some cultures or groups often used stories as a way to explain the natural things they saw around them. So in this case, this story was a way for the African cultures to explain, in a funny way, why mosquitoes buzz in our ears. Now, I don’t know if that is actually what they thought for real, a long time ago. But . . .

Anyway. We then watched a great video of the same story, which I thought I would share with you here. I also included some other videos where cultures have tried to explain the reason for other things they wondered about.

Hey class! Did you like the videos? Let me know by adding a comment!!! Do you think people really believed these stories?

Here is the spelling list this week. You will also find the link to Spelling City.

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Here is the link to this weeks Spelling City. Remember to bring in your completed test or certificate to earn your easy bonus points!

Hi!  It’s Mrs. Goosen here.  I wanted to let you know that I sent home a Canada Study guide with each student today.  My plan was to post the guide onto the blog tonight but I am not as ‘savvy’ as  Mr. H and cannot seem to get it to work for me!  =) Hopefully Mr. Hancock can help me once he’s back!

If your child did not bring it home/lost it etc. please let me know and I can give them another copy!  Quiz date is next Thursday, January 12th.

Thanks!
Mrs. Goosen

Just a reminder that the grade three’s are going to gymnastics tomorrow afternoon!

A few weeks before Christmas break we began a poetry unit. We will be doing a lot of writing, reading, viewing, and representing of different poems during our unit.
One way to hone listening and speaking skills is to have a poetry tournament. Each student has chosen a poem to read to the class. They have taken this poem home and need to PRACTICE it.
On their scheduled day two students will go ‘head to head’…they will each read their poem and the class will vote on their favourite poem.
We have talked about the importance of good presenting skills: eye contact, speaking slowly and clearly, volume, EXPRESSION…the better they know their poem the more confident they will be! They do not need to memorize their poem but should know it well enough to read it clearly and confidently.
We will go through the ‘first round’ of the tournament on Thursday and Friday of this week and on Thursday, January 12th. Once the first round is complete the winners of that round will continue on. I will certainly keep you updated via the blog as to the status of your child and if they need to present a second/third time.

Below is the schedule.
Thursday, January 5th
Louisa vs. Jacob B
Mrs. G vs. Erica
William vs. Elijah C
Austyn vs. Alison

Friday, January 6th
Seanna vs. Ivan
Rachel vs. Joshua
Nick vs. Trinity
Annika vs. Jacob T.

Thursday, January 12th
Jenna vs. Logan
Ruby vs. Felicity
Katelyn vs. Elijah G.