November 28th

Hello all.  It's hard to believe we are down to 4 weeks until Christmas.  Don't forget that there is no school this Friday, December 2nd, as we have a PD day.  Also, there are no new spelling words this week since it is a review week.

We have been moving along great in our studies in 2A.  The students are engaged in their activities and we are working hard to meet our goals. The students are even now practicing for their Christmas Concert performance.  Our Christmas concert will be taking place on Thursday, December 15th.

Math:

We are progressing along very well in Math.  Since the beginning of our patterns unit, we have discussed numerous terms. Our main topic so far is repeating patterns.  A repeating pattern is a pattern that has a section that repeats. The section of the pattern that repeats is called the core.  We are also discussing attributes. An attribute is what is changing in a pattern.  Examples of attributes are colour, shape, direction, or size.  An example of a repeating pattern is up, up, down, up, up, down.  The pattern core is up, up, down, and the pattern attribute that changes is direction. The students have been doing many activities that involve creating, extending, and recreating repeating patterns and recording their patterns in their math journals.


Science:

In science we are well into our hot and cold temperatures unit.  The main thing that the students need to take out of the first few weeks of the unit, is reading a thermometer.  If at any point your child has an opportunity to read a thermometer, please allow them to do so.  Please reiterate with them that any temperature below zero needs to have a minus in front of it.  Some other things that we have been talking about are how changing the temperature of things (melting, freezing, burning, and cooking) changes them.  The students got to brainstorm how different things are affected through these changes in temperature.  Also this week, we are looking at different heat sources (things that produce heat), and how to protect ourselves when handing things that are hot and cold.


Social Studies:

In social, we are looking at the early days of our three communities.  For our study of the early days of Iqaluit, the students got to build their very own marshmallow igloo.  The Inuit people lived in Igluit during the winter when they were following the caribou. This week and next we will be looking at the early days of Meteghan and Saskatoon.


I hope everyone has a great week ahead and beginning of December.

Mr. Aasen