The Winter Blues

Well, here we are in the middle of January already.  The weather is cold, the wind chill bites, and then we warm up to 0°C, within a matter of days.  Then repeat.  Freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw.  Typical central Alberta winters...

I have a few important reminders for everyone.  The permission forms for our trip to Telus World of Science have been handed out.  They are due back Tuesday, January 27th, with payment of $20. This money pays for exhibit admission, 2 programs, and transportation by bus.  For anyone that ordered from Scholastic this month, thank you for supporting our classroom.  The books have been ordered and will hopefully arrive early next week. 

This Friday, Jan 23rd, is TROPICAL DAY!  Dress up in your best beach wear, Hawaiian shirts, sun hats, lei's, etc.  Whatever you can think of that is tropical.  

Language Arts

Spelling:  Weekly spelling words you can always find in the spelling tab.  Next week though, there will be will be no new words as we have a review week, and the following week is only 3 days, so no new words that week either.

Writing: In writing, our focus has been on writing detailed story segments.  We are learning to use our 5 senses to help us with adding detail.  Sight (What do we see), Smell (What does it smell like), Touch (How does it feel/textures), Hearing (What does it sound like), and Taste (What does it taste like). Using our senses we can add detailed description to really dress up our critical characters, settings, and objects in the story. 

We are continuing to build up our reading and writing stamina by way of Daily 5.  The kids love it when I tell them we are doing Daily 5 and they have the choice of listening to a book, reading to self, working on writing, word work, or buddy reading.

Math

In math, we are finishing up our number concepts to 100 unit.  Over the past couple of weeks we have been studying different ways to represent numbers to 100, looking at equal and unequal sets, and comparing different groups of numbers. This week we will be wrapping up this unit by finishing comparing different groups of numbers and ordering numbers to 100.

Science

In science, we will be finishing our unit on Hot and Cold Temperatures this week.  Our latest outcome we looked at was insulation.  The students learned what materials are good insulators and the purpose of an insulator.  The purpose of an insulator is to help keep the temperature of something the same by keeping warm and cold temperatures separate. Once done this unit we will begin unit 3, Exploring Liquids.

Social Studies

We are also finishing up our second social studies unit this week. We will begin our next unit, Looking at People.  We will look at specific details of the people from the 3 communities, Meteghan, Iqaluit, and Saskatoon. We will look at things like, traditions, holidays, languages, and activities that the locals take part in from the 3 communities.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I hope you have been staying warm.  The temperature could really improve.

Mr. Aasen