I hope everyone is having a great holiday. The days are going fast and school is creeping up. However, we have had lots of fun here at the Hancock household. We have been geocaching and fixing things around the house and enjoying the lazy days (or as lazy as they can be with two young children).
One of the things that we did this summer was play with lego! It was a blast! You can see what we made in the videos below! Enjoy and I’ll write another post soon!
Well, the first day of summer holidays are here for me. I know the rest of you have all been enjoying the days of no school for about a week now but this is the first day for me! And how did I celebrate, you ask? Well, I woke up early with my children. However, I don’t mind. They are fun to be with and Liam has been calming down and is not quite as fussy as he has been since he was born which is nice.
I just wanted to say though; we’re not done! Though the school year is over, the blog is still yours to use. This will always be your blog to visit, to use the resources you have come to enjoy, and to say hi! Just because you are moving on to a new class and grade, this will always be your spot. Come and visit often, kick back your feet and stay for awhile! You know you want to! 🙂
Just to reward you for coming back to see us, I have a couple of soccer related videos for you and especially for Mr. Morris, who enjoys a good game of soccer! The first one is a silly one about those loud horns they have been using at the World cup called vuvuzellas. They are very loud and annoying. If you have watched any of the soccer games on tv or the computer, you would have heard them. They sound like very angry hornets!
Here is another video explaining the offside rule in soccer.
Here is a cute video I thought you would enjoy. We had rice for supper and it was enjoyed by everyone including our daughter.
Thursday was a busy day last week with the start of our second year doing the Tomatosphere tomato growing project. The students were all excited to get planting. As this is a multi-year project, our class was automatically signed up to do the tomato seed project again this year. As I told the students, this experiment is an actual live experiment with our results being combined with class across Canada in a test to see the viability in growing plants in a zero gravity environment. This year is very special as these seeds have actually been in space!
To start, we discussed why this experiment was important and why we might want to find the answer to this questions. We learned that the amount of food needed to go to Mars would be too great an amount to fit comfortably on the space shuttle packaged as it is now. However, if astronauts were able to grow their food on the way, it would not only save space, but also help provide clean air and water and give the astronauts something to do on the way.
We then used the links (you can find them on the left hand side) to learn more about Mars and compare it to Earth. We also had fun learning how old each of the students would be if they lived on Mars as well as how much they would weigh! I have to say, after all my wife’s wonderful cooking, Mars is looking pretty good right now!
Next, we learned about the tomato seed and plant and ended the morning by planting our seeds! Students planted two types of seeds: regular seeds and space seeds. As this is a real life experiment, we needed regular seeds to compare. However, WE DON’T KNOW WHICH ARE WHICH!!!!! In order to make sure there was no favoritism, we are not told which seeds are which until the end of the experiment! I LOVE SUSPENSE!!!
As the days go by we will be making observations. The success point for these seeds is whether or not they grow two leaves. We hope they will grow more of course but we need at least two leaves from each plant in order for the plant to be considered successful. At the end, students will be able to take the plants home. Hopefully students will get to take both types home but we will see.
I found some video on plant seed growth and germination. The first one is from the book The Carrot Seed, which is a very old book and not having anything to do with tomatoes but just substitute carrots for tomatoes in your head.
The second video is a neat animation of the journey of a seed which is kind of neat and is theoretically one way a seed can move from place to place.
The next video is a neat time-lapse showing the growth and germination of radish seeds; again nothing to do with tomatoes other than the same growth a tomato seed would go through if we could see our seeds from the side.
Enjoy and check tomorrow to see if there has been any growth in our tomato seeds!
It has been a fast couple of weeks in Mr. H’s class. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t wonder incredulously where the time has gone. We have been having so much fun and there are so many events crowding the days in May that we may have to do May all over just so we can get everything in! Show of hands . . .?
Anyway, the students have been working very hard on all sorts of projects. In Social, students have been discussing and learning about jobs in the community. You can see a list of the jobs we brainstormed below:
Students are now working on reports on a type of job they are interested in. We used a couple of great kid friendly sites to learn more about specific careers and students are using the information to help them create their reports. We will also be doing Animotos of the jobs they have chosen to present to the class!
Science has been fascinating with lots of experiments happening as we continue with our unit on Properties of Matter. Students have been creating different kinds of solutions and testing to see what kinds of solids will dissolve in water. We have a couple of very interesting experiments happening. One of the experiments looks like it might take longer than I expected as the water does not seem to be evaporating as quickly as I would have like. As a demonstration, to created a solution of water and salt in a bowl, placed a sour cream container on top and wrapped the whole thing with saran-a-wrap. We had been talking about how important it was to take care of our water as part of Earth Day and how places like Saudi Arabia were having trouble with their water supply. It was a great topic because we had just had some visitors to our blog from Saudi Arabia that very morning. I told the students that Saudi Arabia was starting to look at changing salt water from the ocean to regular water for drinking and irrigation. That afternoon, when I did the demonstration, students were able to hypothesize that the salt water would evaporate into the container leaving the salt behind in the bowl. We then connected this to what Saudi Arabia might have to do to get more water! It was a great conversation! We are also creating crystals from sugar water. So two experiments on the go!
We will also be starting another long term project next week. Once again, our class has been sent seeds from the tomatosphere project which is run with the Canadian Space Agency. Classes are sent to packages of seeds; one package which are regular seeds and another package containing seeds that have been in space! We will be testing the seeds to see if being in space will make a difference to how the seeds grow. Problem is . . . we don’t know which are which! When the project is done and our results have been submitted, we will find out which seeds were the space seeds! Here is a video about the project:
For the next couple of weeks, we will not be having spelling tests as I would like to give students time to practice for the Spelling Bee. On May 17th, selected students will be participating in our school’s Spelling Bee. On the prior Friday, we will have our own Spelling Bee in the class to select students to go to the Spelling Bee. We will be selecting 4 students per grade to go. You should have seen a list of words and and letter in your child’s planner to explain the procedures. The words for the spelling bee will be selected from the words on the pages sent home.
Whew! That’s a lot of stuff! I should do this more often!!! 🙂
Finally, yesterday was a very special day especially for Jacob. It was May the 4th; the unofficial Star Wars holiday! (Get it? May the fourth?) Anyway, I found a funny video to help us celebrate even though we are a little late!
I wish I had thought of this. I think Gaston would be a great singer!
We are doing well here at home. We are very tired but very happy to be at home. Liam doesn’t seem to understand right now that sleep is a good thing and that 2:00 in the morning is not a good time to party but other than that, he is doing well. Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayer.
Today was a busy day with lots of things happening in every corner. For Language Arts, we started looking at middles of stories and how important to have a story where the middle was easy to follow, events are in order, that it makes sense, and only focuses on the important information. We read two books today as examples. The first book was called “The Doghouse”. It is a very simple story about some animals who have to retrieve their ball from the inside of a doghouse but it is very good at showing organization of events and how one event leads to the other. The other book we read was called “The Great Paper Caper” by Oliver Jeffers; on e of my favorite childrens authors.
I thought I would add a couple of fun things for you today. The first item is some games you can play at the dinner table. Simply print the circles out just like you do for your spelling test, cut the circles out and choose one of the sections to play at supper. Or you can make them into spinners and spin them to see which game you get!
Finally, here is another video starring one of my favorite cats. Enjoy!
It’s been a busy week and thus the blog posts have been few and far between. My apologies and I will try to be more regular with my posts.
First of all, there is no spelling list or memory verse for this week due to the shortened week. We will continue with the spelling and memory verse next week as per usual. After this next spelling list, we will be going back to review past spelling words and start doing more work with them in sentence form.
You may have noticed that your child brought home a poem in their planner (or pocket as the case may be). It is that time of year again and we are preparing for the Speech Meet which is held annually in Abbotsford. This is a big event for us and we always do very well. However, this year is a little different for us as we have a winter break between now and the day of the Speech Meet, which will be held on March 5. As we want to get our entries in before we leave, we will be choosing the students who will be going on February 10th. Participation is optional and if your child did not bring home a poem or memory verse that may mean they did not want to do it. Please ask your child if they selected a verse or poem to practice. Poems or memory verses must be memorized. We are also working on adding expression and proper standing postures to the recitations with students standing nice and straight with no hands in their pockets and their eyes on the audience. Adding expression is always hard for students but we are looking for students who can recite with confidence using a proper volume and with excitement in their voices. On February 10th, we will hear all the students from our class who chose to do a recitation and I will pick students from there. We are allowed to send 1 poem reader and 1 memory verse reader from the Grade 2 and 1 poem reader and 1 memory verse reader from the Grade 3’s in my class. If you have any questions or you need another copy of the poem please let me know!
Science has been a frantic, “let’s finish it up” time with students trying to get all their projects and papers done and in order before the deadline. Looking at the budgets from each class, all students were able to complete their projects on time and within budget. Luckily the storekeeper was very kind and gave some great deals towards the end of the projects. Projects will be going home tomorrow, but you can see them right now by watching the video below!
Our next science unit will be on States of Matter where students will be taking a close look at the properties of air, water, and gas.
In Language Arts, we have been continuing with our Daily 3 reading program. It has really been great to be able to work with small groups of students at the same time. As I work with the students in these small groups listening to them reading and working on certain aspects of their reading and comprehension skills, the other students are focused on sharing reading with a partner, reading on their own or reading along with a Cd. It has been a great program. For our writing, we have moved into organization of stories with a focus at this point on story beginnings. We have talked about how a story beginning needs to draw in readers and make them want to keep reading. One of the students today said that it is like writing the first part of a story and putting a “to be continued” at the end of it. It makes the reader interested in how the story is going to resolve itself. We took some common events from throughout the year, and drew a picture of ourselves doing that ordinary, everyday activity. However, the students added something interesting into the pictures to make it more exciting. Now, they are working on taking the picture and crafting it into a story beginning. At the same time, we have also talked about how we need to make our first sentence interesting as well, which is always a hard thing for students to do. We talked about how they can use beginnings like “One day . . . “, “It was a warm and bright . . . “, use conversations to start a story or use a book to find a beginning that you can adapt and use in your own story. We have already been getting some very interesting story beginnings. From there, we will work on the middles of stories and endings. I also told the students that I had a crazy idea for putting all those story beginning, middles and endings together into one story but I would tell them later. I will give you a clue though:
Speaking of Oliver Jeffers, if you haven’t read any of his children’s books, I highly recommend them. They are lots of fun and the illustrations are beautiful! They have also made one of his books into an animated video, which you can see a preview of right here:
I have placed some new links on the side. You should see a link to the Reading A-Z site where students can read books online and have them read to them as well! I have also put a link to a neat site where students can make regular maps and treasure maps to play with and print out. The last link is to a neat free program where students can make cool mindmaps of anything they want. It is free but annoying pop ups to buy to program come up every once and awhile.
Hi everyone!
I am showing some of the teachers how to add video to their blog and thought I would add this funny video about math. See if you can figure out what they are doing wrong!!!
I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas break. At our house, there was a lot of laughter and eating happening. In fact, my father brought us a “terduckin” for Christmas dinner, which is a turkey and a duck together in one. Don’t ask me how they do that. It is probably better if we don’t know!
Anyway, we are getting right back into the swing of things. Here is the spelling for this week.
Here is also the link for the Spelling City lists. Don’t forget that you can print out your certificate or completed lists to get an extra mark on the spelling test!
Our memory verse this week comes from Galatians 5:22-23:
Finally, to start off the year on a fun note, here is another great video from the “They Might Be Giants” Science CD.