I found a great site a couple of days ago which allows you to create polls to find out information about various things. So I thought I would try it. I will also put photos and videos from our Pumpkin Math Day up this weekend but I just wanted to do a quick post today. So here is my poll. Try it out and lets see what happens!

I also found this hilarious photo of toy stormtroopers that I thought you would like.

Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, if you haven’t been able to find a costume yet or simply want to add something to the old costume chest for inside playing, check out these great masks you can print out and use. Just click on the picture to get them and more masks!

Unless you have been living in a cave lately, you have probably heard about the new movie, “Where the Wild Things Are” that came out a few weeks ago. Well, today our class looked at the original book with story and illustrations by Maurice Sendek and talked about the various characters, words, and other elements from the story. Tomorrow, we will be using the book to gather ideas as a springboard for our own stories. We will be trying to create new endings for the story that start where the book leaves off. When I read the story, I was very surprised to find out that the story only has ten sentences in it. So, we decided that our stories will only have ten stories in it as well. It should be very interesting to see how the students use the ideas to create their own, creative endings to the story with only ten sentences to work with. We will also be putting the good copies on the blog for you to read and share with your family!!

Here is a video of the story along with the trailer from the movie. Kylie had already seen the movie and told us about many of the differences from the book. It sounds like a great movie!

Here is the spelling list for this week with the link for spelling city. The memory verse will go up on the blog tomorrow. Also a note that Friday will be Fall Colour Day and I am looking for some volunteers for a project we will be doing on that day as well. It would be for the morning. I told the students that they do not want to miss Friday as it will be an action packed day!!!!

Spelling M 5

Here is a story from Storybird.com that Eilidh and I co-wrote. I am really enjoying the ability to put these stories into the blog. If you have a story that you would like me to include just let me know the name of the story and I will keep my eye out for it to embed it in the blog. Enjoy!

donuts anybody? on Storybird

Just a quick post of some fun things. In the rush of last week, I forgot to mention that tomorrow is School Colours Day – jeans, and red, white or black shirt. If you do not wish to wear those colours, you must wear your uniform. As well, please try to pick a shirt that is mostly red, white or black with as small a logo as possible if there is a logo on your shirt.

I just discovered that today, Storybird.com is now allowing you to embed stories into your blog. So let’s get going!!! I have added the very first storybird I ever did below! Enjoy!

An Animal Alphabet on Storybird

Finally, a fun video from a series that my wife and I enjoy. The Simon the Cat series of videos are always hilarious. Enjoy the rest of your day! I am off to do some singing!!!! Ta ta!

I really enjoyed this article on giving compliments on this nice site I just found called Eensies. In the article the authors talk about the importance of giving compliments and the different types of compliments; some of which are more effective than others. I have pasted the article below:

We all try OUR best to focus on positive reinforcement and giving our kiddos compliments that will make them feel confident and validate their efforts. However, it’s quite easy to forget to teach them the art of complimenting. We do want them passing on the love to siblings, friends and you!

At school we make lists of compliments- a.k.a. “put-ups” in kid language. We discuss ones that are heartfelt, “You are a good friend because you listen to me.” Ones that are nice, but don’t really boost someone up such as, “I like your shoes.” And ones that compliment a specific skill, “You are good at reading because you use characters’ voices.”

It takes some time, lots of practice and the opportunity to discuss how it makes them feel to give and receive put-ups. But, little by little, I start to “catch” the kids spreading words of kindness. Of course, we discuss the opposite, the put-downs, and what they sound and feel like. But, I try to accentuate the positive in an effort to eliminate the negative. Why not give it a try at home?

This is something we could try to focus on in our weekly class meetings. We always start our class meeting with greetings where the students learn to look others in the eyes and shake hands properly. We then go on to thanking the people in our class for the good things they did. These tips would certainly fit in when we talk about why we are thanking the other classmates for what they did that was nice. It would also make a nice lesson on how to treat friends and encourage others.

Here is a nice video talking about raising people up, which is what we can do when we try to compliment and not hurt people. I’m not always a Josh Groban fan but I really like the African Children’s Choir.

Just wanted to say a big thank you to all of you for doing your homework tonight and cheering for the Oilers. The cheering and encouragement from all of you paid off and the Oilers were victorious over the Canucks. The final score was 2-1. Thanks for all your wonderful support!!

Here is a little bit of fun to start of your weekend. We have been listening to the Brad Mehldau Trio this week. They are a jazz trio using piano, bass and drums. They probably are one of the bigger names amongst the most recent of jazz groups coming out and we have really been enjoying them. The low key, soft sounds have really been nice to have as background. Anyway, I found this video a few days ago and I thought it would be a nice compliment to what we had been listening to. It is a jazz piece by John Coltrane called Giant Steps. The author of the video took the music and matched it with the sound of the music to create a really neat video where you can follow the music along with the sound to get an idea of how they match.

Have a great weekend!

Last Friday, the students and I had a blast doing our Oreo Cookie Math projects. First of all, thank you to all of you parents that donated a package of cookies to the class. It was very generous and we ended up with lots and lots of cookies to use which was fantastic.

The project we were doing involved classes around the world. Here is a map showing all the classes involved including ours!

There was a lot of math involved with this project. As part of the project students had to estimate how many cookies they thought they could stack. Once the students had finished estimating, the student stacked, with bated breathe, each cookie until it tumbled down. The students were very excited and we had a lot of fun stacking. The students then had to determine which of their stacking attempts was the most successful by using subtraction and greater than/less than statements. We also used pictograms to chart the number of cookies each student stacked. We then found the average of cookies stacked by the class. The average number of cookies stacked by our class was 15. Once we had an average, we submitted our data to the main Oreo Cookie project site. Not only did we have our name put on the map, but our data was added to the over 10,000 other students worldwide who were a part of this project! The students were amazed. We also found out that the average number of cookies stacked worldwide was 18. As a class we stacked over 274 cookies!!!! It was a very fun project. Here are some of the pictures:

I also captured some of the video from the event which you can watch below:

Here is our spelling for the week. Sorry it took so long to get it up. Remember! The spelling test is on Tuesday next week.

M-4

Click on the link to get to the Spelling City page with this weeks spelling words.

Phew! That was a long post! Finally, we will be doing our memory verse tomorrow so please make sure you know it!!!!!

I know that our Oobleck projects have been done for awhile but I wanted to have a chance to showcase our Oobleck machines. If you remember, we had designed our Oobleck machines to deal with the properties we had discovered in Oobleck. We had discovered that Oobleck gets hard when it is squeezed, soft when it is loose in your hand, and is somewhat sticky. Using those rules of Oobleck, students needed to design a vehicle that could handle those conditions as if it was going to be having to drive on a lake of Oobleck.  Now, you can just come and see the finished projects in the hallway outside Mr. Shinness’ office, but that wouldn’t be using cool technology would it? So, here are all the finished projects in an awesome Animoto video.

If you would like to create your own bowl of wonderfully, thick and messy Oobleck, here is a recipe you can use.

Oobleck was the name given to a type of slime in a Dr. Seuss book that was capable of gumming up a whole kingdom. The oobleck the you can make for a science project isn’t gummy, but it does have interesting properties of both solids and liquids. It normally behaves like a liquid or jelly, but if you squeeze it in your hand, it will seem like a solid.

Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 10-15 minutes

Here’s How:

1. Mix 1 part water with 1.5 to 2 parts cornstarch. You may wish to start with one cup of water and one and a half cups of cornstarch, then work in more cornstarch if you want a more ’solid’ oobleck. It will take about 10 minutes of mixing to get nice homogeneous oobleck.
2. Mix in a few drops of food coloring if you want colored oobleck.

Finally, as we have two weeks of short weeks, I have decided to still do the spelling lists this week. However, we will do the spelling test on Tuesday of next week. I will put the spelling words on the blog tomorrow along with the link to the Spelling City site. As we ran out of time for our memory verse on Friday due to skating, we will be doing the same memory verse this Friday.

Grade 3’s have a quiz on the 0, 1, 2, 5, and 10 times tables this Thursday.

This week, in Science, we created our own building company as part of our building unit. Each of the students got their own business card and business paper to use for the unit. Not to brag or anything, but I think the business cards turned out very well. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce . . .

The Heavy Weight Builders Inc.: Master Builders and Engineers!

Today, we started the prep work for our first project. My Uncle Richard is an engineer in Vancouver and is going to be working with us throughout the unit. He will be sending projects to help us learn about the types of building designs he uses to create structures that are safe and stable (not like the bridge in the video below!)

Towards the end of the unit, students will take all the knowledge they have learned and designs they have tested and use them to help them design and build one of three things: a bridge, a water tower or a two car garage. I always enjoy this part of the science unit and so do the students.

Don’t forget, we are collecting packages of oreo cookies (or like type) for Friday!!!