Hi everyone!

It was sure nice to see the snow on the ground today. The snow makes the world seem so beautiful. We had a busy day, didn’t we class? It always warms my heart to see how enthusiastic you are in chapel! You all sing and listen so well.

We are going to have a busy day tomorrow withour final science project starting. I know you are very excited and ideas, thoughts and questions are buzzing around the classroom. Which project do you think you will choose: the two car garage, the water tower or the bridge? I have included a little video for you about designing straw bridges.

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Here is a final question for you. What is your favorite thing to do in the snow? Share your answer here with us!

Parents: Just a reminder that if students are wearing their boots to school to make sure to send their regular shoes with them so they do not recieve a citation for improper footwear.

Hey class!

It’s been a great week. I enjoy learning with you so much! You are a wonderful class and I am glad we can have lots of fun together learning lots of cool things!

I got an idea for today’s blog entry from a neat site for boys who like to read. The author was talking about nicknames and was aksing if anyone from their class had a nickname.

Do you have a nickname? My parents used to call me “Sir” or Eeyore because I really liked Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.

Do you have a neat nickname? Do you know where it came from? Ask your parents and let us know!!!

Here’s a neat video that I saw this morning in our devotions. I thought all of you would enjoy it as well. Maybe something to think about for the spring concert!

One of our students brought in some interesting creatures he made from recycled materials and tissue paper. I have neglected to remember to display them here until but as they say, better late than never!

All science unit, you have been asking how a house manages to stay standing if it is in the shape of a square. You learned from the very first experiment that a square is a very weak shape and will collapse very easily. Well, today you finally found out how a house stays standing: the answer is (drum roll please . . . .) triangles!!!

Triangles are one of the strongest shapes we can use to build. Builders connect the wall to the ceiling or roof with a beam that makes the shape of a triangle. Gustav Eiffel used triangles to build his Eiffel Tower! Bridges use triangles for strength!

In the video below you can see how students used triangles to make domes that held a lot of strength.

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It was good to see all the students again after the long weekend. We had a very busy day as all our days seem to be.

The students are writing some amazing paragraphs in class. We will soon be adding some dress-ups to the paragraphs to make them more interesting. Dress-ups include “because”, -ly words, adjectives, who/which clauses and others.

As hinted at in the title, we are looking at mapping skills. We spent the last few social classes mapping on Google Earth where we have been in BC and it is amazing when we looked at the map, all the places our class has been in Canada. If you haven’t tried Google Earth it is a free download from here. I also talked to the students a little bit about Geocaching. This is a neat activity to do with your GPS device if you have one. In geo-caching, you plug in coordinates into the GPS device which will lead you to a “treasure”. You get the coordinates from a site called GeoCaching. It is free to sign up. Once you are registered, you can find geocaches in your area. The site will give you the coordinates, which you then plug into your geocache device. The GPS device will lead you to the treasure within about 3 metres at which point you will have to look around for the treasure. Usually they are in tupperware or old military shell cases. The last time I checked there were tons of sites around Abbotsford. It is a great activity to involve the family in and have fun outdoors. GPS devices can be purchased at Wal-mart. I find the Magellan ones are the best to use. If you would like more information. Come and see me after school. The great thing is that it can also be integrated into Google Earth which will pinpoint where the geocache sites are on the map.

Tuesday came quickly. I hope you had a nice weekend despite the wind. I bet you are wondering what the title means. Well, if you were in our science class today you would have been designing the perfect baby bottle. You see, we have been talking about how structures need to be stable much like that bridge we talked about earlier. To have a stable structure, we need a wide base. The taller the structure, the wider the base. The base also needs a lot of weight. One of the examples we looked at today on Google Earth was the Eiffel Tower.

Once we learned what made a structure stable, students were challenged to design a baby bottle that was almost impossible to tip over. The students are creating some very interesting designs.

The students have a quiz tomorrow in Social as we are done our look at safe and caring communities and rights and responsibilities. A good discussion to have with your child could be to talk about all the places your family have visited in BC and what made each community different from each other.

Picture of a Poppy, The Menin Gate, Ypres

We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3-5

My Grandfather never talked about the war. He was an airplane mechanic in England and Scotland during World War II. He serviced the airplanes fighting in the dramatic dogfights taking place over the English Channel and over France. Though he was luckier than the ones who actually charged out of the trenches to uncertain fates, he still felt that it was a terrible event and did not want to bring sadness to me by re-telling and re-living the friends he lost and the atrocities of that time. However, with Remembrance Day coming once again, it is important that these memories not be lost. We often take for granted the peace and abundance we have in our country without thinking of the sacrifices made so that we can enjoy them. Our children need to know this history and how our world was changed. It is important to keep these memories of our grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts who served freely and without reservation knowing what it would mean to the next generations. My Grandfather never talked to me. Let’s talk to our children. Tell them, teach them, share with them these events so they do not happen again.

~ from November Newsletter 2007

And the rain just keeps pouring down. It’s going to be a busy day here. We have the Remembrance Day service and skating to keep us busy. The students are really looking forward to the skating and it will be nice to lace on a pair of skates again though mine look a little rusty since the last time I wore them a year ago!

As we are getting close to report card time, students should be expecting a few tests and quizzes. They will be doing a reading and writing test, a social quiz, a science test and a couple of math quizzes on problem solving and basic facts.

For the past week the blog has been being serviced by the creators and so we have been having some problems with uploading pictures and video. However, it seems to be working better now and should seem faster. Here is a video on columns which is one of the topics we have been studying in science.

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No, I am not talking about the rain. We just had lots of fun today. The students performed their piece for the Remembrance Day ceremony and it was amazing!!! The students did a really great job. Then, as we were working on our Remembrance Day paragraphs, we heard bagpipe music. Thinking that there might be a real bagpiper in the building, we went searching for the source of the music. Sure enough, we found the bagpiper who was practicing for Friday. He showed the students the parts of the bagpipe, played a couple of tunes for us and let the students hold the bagpipes. I told the children that the bagpipes used to be used by the Scottish to send messages from one village to the next like our modern day telephone.

Then, for science today, we did an experiment where students tested the stability of a variety of different objects. They learned that for an object to be stable the base must be larger than the top. The taller the object, the wider the base. They also learned the three F’s: Form follows function which is just a fancy way of saying that the shape of a building must follow its function. A firehouse for example should be a much different building than a bookstore as a fire house needs to have different things in it.

It was a very exciting day and time flew. One of our students brought little kittens for us to see as well. The students were very excited to pet the kittens.