Well, it’s Friday and it was a good day. The students all looked very nice in their fall colours and we had lots of fun rolling pumpkins along the floor as one of our activities this afternoon.

Here is the Friday list for this week. This weeks list is about the exciting things that have happened since the year began:

1. I loved the sound of laughter in the class as we got our hands deep into the pumpkins and brought up gobs of goop.
2. Seeing the students excited about their reading at home was exciting.
3. Seeing the first reading logs coming back signed and filled out was a good feeling!
4. Being able to work with the wonderful Mrs. Davies and seeing how well she has fit into our class and how much the kids love her.
5. Having such a caring class of students so willing to be friends, sharing and caring with and for each other.
6. Enjoying a nice walk through the beautiful fall day with the students.
7. Having the students working at home on their own initiative to create their own Oobleck machines was really cool!
8. Seeing G.S buried deep in a book reading to her heart’s content and living through her books.
9. Having B.L. try and convince the class that his theory is the best and why as he stands at the front of the room like a teacher pointing to the diagram he drew to prove his point.
10. Witnessing to the children and seeing their hearts for God!

What an incredible day! Students were greeted this morning by pumpkins everywhere! They also discovered why they needed old shirts as all the students got to carve pumpkins today.

We took a break from their regular math work and incorporated some math into looking at pumpkins. Students had to estimate the weight and diameter of their pumpkins. Then they actually had to measure them using tape measures and scales. Student then had to estimate the number of seeds in their pumpkins before cutting into them. What a mess! But the students did really well and managing themselves and getting the goop out. Once they had counted all the seeds in their pumpkins they had to enter their totals into the graph on the whiteboard. We all discovered that their are a lot of seeds in a pumpkin! Before we had started, we used a neat site called A Maths Dictionary to learn about polygon shapes. If you haven’t seen the site check it out! You can find it on the left side in the links. We learned that polygons are shapes that have three or more straight sides. Students then had to take their learning and carve patterns of polygons on their pumpkins. It was a great day of learning!!! Check out the pictures below!

I also have a short video of the activities.

Lot’s happening today. We started our home reading program today with an introduction and explanations. The students had lots of questions of course, so we spent some time dealing with that.

One thing I would like to mention out of those discussions is when the students need to start reading chapter books. Up to 70 books, students may read any kind of literature including chapter books. After 70 books though, students must be read chapter books. A couple of the students asked about comic books and magazines. I said yes to those as long as they are actually reading the material. However, I will also leave that to your discretion as to whether you, as a parent, will allow those materials to count.

As mentioned before, you can print off more reading log pages from the website here, either from the earlier post or from the box.net widget on the side.

Today we also completed our next experiment for science. I took some video of the event. Though the students were a little loud, the experiment went well and got some good information from the experiement to help us with our understanding of building principles. I will be posting more details and some of the videos soon to share with you.

Tomorrow is a special day in Math. We are going to be getting a little mucky. Please remember to have your child bring an old shirt to school.

Friday is Fall Colour Day. Students will be allowed to wear casual pants and shirts with fall colours.

This week we are starting a new program for home. It is a home reading program where students will practice reading at home with you. Each night students will be expected to read for at least 15-20 minutes a night. Just like any activity we do to get better, reading also takes practice and the brain needs continual work on developing the ability to read fluently.

Your child will be coming home with some materials today. You can also find these materials below, in the widget beside this post or here reading-newsletter and here readinglogembed.

Each child will be given a sheet with ten lines on it. As your child reads and finishes a book, they are to write the name of the book, the author and the date. Then you will be asked to sign the page to verify that you heard them read and finish the book. When the page is filled up, your child can then bring the page back to school. We will be keeping track of the number of books read and awarding prizes for reaching certain goals. Every time a child finishes a page, they will bring it back and receive a new page to fill out.

Monday was a great day. We started our spelling for the week and also worked on the 10 times tables. The students are pretty comfortable with the 10 times tables and we have worked through it fairly quickly. We worked on connecting the ten times tables to real life using dimes and relating that to how many pennies would make up each amount of dimes. The nice thing about the Math U See program is how it connects these ideas to the world around them.

In Science yesterday, we finished up discussing an experiment from last week looking at different types of beams and which would support the most weight over a fictional river. We had some great discussions and are now ready for the next experiment.

Here are the spelling words for this week:

Students were asked to bring a old shirt for Thursday for an activity that we will be doing after the first recess. It will not involve painting but I did not want them to get their uniforms dirty (or any more dirty than they get at recess!!!).

The memory verse for this week is from Matthew 5:16. Students will be reciting this verse on Monday.

In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Thanks to all the parents who willingly attempted to answer that mind boggling answer to where we would end up if we dug straight through the core of the earth to the other side. Here are the answers to both questions including where we would have to be in order to end up in China.

Hello!

Your children probably came home with some strange homework. Their homework was to get you, the parents, to figure out something. You have probably heard the phrase, “dig a hole to China”. However, I asked the students on Thursday whether that would actually happen. If you dug hole straight down through the core of the Earth from where you are in Chilliwack, would you end up in China?

Using a map of the world, the children all guessed where they thought they would end up. There were some close answers. Next, we used the site Antipodr.com, typed in our address and found out that, actually, we would not end up in China but would indeed probably need to take our snorkel gear and rubber ducky with us if we were going to actually dig this hole as we would indubitably find ourselves in a very watery situation.

But where is that place, you ask? Ahh, that is the question and your homework!!! Take a guess and check the site out. Please let us know where you thought you would end up by getting your child to bring your guess in on Monday. Also, if you can let us know how you tried to determine where you would end up!!

But that’s not all!!! There is a second part to this!!! Where would you have to be in order to actually dig a hole to China?

Some of the answers I was given by the children were interesting. Some of them said that you can’t dig a hole to China. So the answer was “nowhere, you can’t dig a hole to China!” I said, “But that wasn’t the question”. Of course, the children are right in that we can’t actually dig a whole to China. What made me think, though, was how tough it was to think outside the box; to imagine things outside the realms of possibility. How many times do we inhibit the imagination of our students and children and force them (inadvertently or on purpose) to always think practically or realistically instead of encouraging them to imagine other worlds, places and dreams? Do we empower them consistently to dream big dreams; to reach for the stars; to say to people who say we can’t do things, “Why are you limiting yourself?”

For my Friday list this week, here is a video you may have seen before but I thought might go with this topic. If you remember last Friday, I said that every Friday I would list things that I love or would like to do or things that have made me and the class happy. Here is today’s:

Here is the memory verse for this week. Students will recite their memory verses on Monday.

Joshua 1:9 (NIV)

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

Just a reminder that Friday is a P.D. day and there will be no school for students that day.

The students did very well today. They listened very well and we got a lot accomplished!

Here is the spelling (spelling-l-5) for this week! I hope the cat doesn’t get to it and change any of the words!!!

There are a couple of things I wanted to remind you of for Monday.

1. Monday is Black Monday. Students are allowed to wear a black shirt as long as it is mostly black. The school is following the same guidelines as the Red Shirt Day we had a while back. Small logos are fine as well as jeans or pants other than uniform pants. If they don’t have a shirt that is mostly black than they need to wear their uniforms.

2. Photo Order forms – Order forms for the photos need to be back by Monday as well. Please make sure they come in by the end of Monday.

Here is a great science video I saw at the teacher’s conference last week. I thought it was just great and showed off some great science concepts. Plus it was quite funny.