April 20

 Hello everyone!

We hope you had a great long weekend! Yesterday, we did some experimenting with the snow and decided to try and build a giant snowman. We had to figure out how to make each snowball the right size so that it wouldn't tip over. We also had to find a way to fill in any gaps and "glue" the snowballs together to create our snowman. We worked together to problem solve and ended up with the biggest snowman we'd ever seen - it was even taller than Ms. Byrne! Here are some of us standing with our giant creation:

Yesterday, we had our word review and got our new Wow Words. All our words this week can be sounded out, and we think it's a good batch of words for a short week! They are:

1. make

2. down

3. run

4. so

5. but

Our bonus words all have a King E on the end, making the other vowel say their name. They are:

1. cake

2. bake

3. take

4. shake

5. snake

In our reading groups this week, many of us are practicing a strategy for sounding out big words! We use the syllables to help us chunk the word up into smaller pieces. For example, one of our groups sounded out the word "magnetic" today. First, we use a whiteboard to "drag down the vowels," then we put "walls" around each vowel (writing the consonants that are on either side). We sound out each chunk of the word. Finally, we put the chunks back together to read the whole word!

Here's a picture of the strategy when we used it to help us read the word "sentences":

We started playing a new game for 10 minutes each day where we race to practice sight words! We get to come up and try the game on the SmartBoard. If you are looking for a fun sight word game for us to try at home, try this one: Snowball Fight!

In math, we have started our unit on 3D shapes. Yesterday, we learned about the difference between 2D and 3D shapes. Today, we got to explore some cube shapes and talked about what we noticed about them. We learned that 3D shapes are usually described using 3 things: their number of faces, number of edges, and number of vertices. We used our cubes to help us count these! We learned that we can make our own 3D shapes using a "net." We each got a net for a cube and carefully cut it out. We can't wait to learn how to fold it tomorrow!

In science, we are working on completing our colour unit by painting our final picture. We got to choose 2 elements today to begin painting (ex: a butterfly, a tree, a dragon, a sun). Once we get all the pieces painted, we will cut them out, paint a background, and glue the pieces on to make a scene! We made a list of everything we have learned about colours to make sure we include an example of each in our final product: primary colours, secondary colours, tints, shades, cool colours, and warm colours. We will use our own individual checklist to identify each element in our picture. We had a couple of paint spills happen today. We do use washable paint, but if you are concerned about your child's clothes getting messy, feel free to send a painting shirt (something you don't mind getting dirty!) and they can wear it over their clothes during painting time! 

Reminders:

Volunteers are now allowed in the school!  We will be doing an in school field trip on June 1st.  We will need volunteers for this activity.  You will need volunteer clearance in order to volunteer!  Please contact the office to get your volunteer clearance.  It can sometimes take a while so please complete it as soon as possible.

Have a great evening!

-Ms. Byrne