Just a reminder to meet at the main school at 5:50 tonight for the concert! 

As you hopefully saw, a bunch of work came home in backpacks today. We are cleaning out all our work from term one so we can have a fresh start for term two in the new year. What came home yesterday is their morning work and work when they're finished section. It's normal that not all of this work is finished and it's nothing essential in the curriculum. It's more to warm up our brains first thing in the morning. Feel free to work on these things over the break if you're looking for academics to do.

Today and tomorrow, more work will be coming home. There maybe some things that are unfinished but that's nothing to stress about.

Just a reminder that our winter concert is tonight at 6 PM at the main school. Students can wear any combination of white black and red and if they want to wear a winter hat that's totally cool.

We had great success yesterday with gingerbread houses! No tears when they didn't succeed at first, and they're all standing today! 

 

Just a reminder that we are walking to the main school tomorrow. It is predicted to be quite cold, so please help your child dress appropriately 

Today, it snowed in class!!

 
 
The recipe is just two cups of baking soda to half a cup of conditioner :)

Here are the lyrics for the other song https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6Vt4mDrRM

We have just been having too much fun for me to remember to do a blog post. While we are still continuing with all of our academics right through until the end of December, we have been doing a fun winter activity every day as a countdown to the end of school for the year.

Thursday, Friday, and today were all to do with decorating our class! It's looking very Wintery in div 1! 

Please send dictée books on Friday. Our dictée activity for this week will be done only in class. It is essential that students bring their duotangs in order for this activity to happen. 

Some students have some writing to finish for homework tonight, and need to practice their song for the winter concert. You can find the words here, and the audio here. 

Here is a great article to explain about writing and how I approach it in our classroom. You can read it here

Just FYI there is no dictée this week. We are taking a little break before we go back and do words that they misspelled before. 

We had a some very special visitors at school today!!

 
 
 

 

We had such a busy day with science experiments today! 

 
 
 
 
 

Ack! User error seems to be the most common problem with technology. I wrote a whole post and forgot to press publish. 

We will be doing a science experiment blitz on Wednesday. I need your help to make sure we have enough materials for each kid. If you have any of the following, please send it to school on Tuesday or Wednesday. 

- clean glass jars. Please make sure these never had nut products in them, as we will be eating out from some of these jars. 

- tin foil

- packing peanuts 

Thanks in advance! 

 

The students came in this morning absolutely buzzing about last nights American election. It's a hard thing to know as a teacher when to talk about current events in the classroom and when not to. Children shouldn't be sheltered, but eight is too young to know all challenging things happening in our world.

I made the decision to speak to them about the election, but coming at it from a perspective of what life lessons we can learn. I didn't go into any details of allegations or exactly what was said. My hope is that you continue this conversation at home, as these things come up in day-to-day life, not just during election time.

I will try my best to remember all the points of the conversation and lesson, but nothing was planned. It was all organic. 

Here are some of the things that came up:

- it can be hard to see adults in our lives upset about things on TV. Sometimes, it's children's jobs to take care of the adults and give them an extra hug

- we practised how to say 'no thank you, that's not cool' two people who are saying things that we find it disrespectful. This came out of speaking about how politicians have different views and that we don't always agree with them. This is something students can use with any disagreement in their lives. 

- we spoke about how lucky we are to live in Canada, and all the wonderful things about our country including diversity, acceptance, and respect. It's not a perfect country but it's headed in the right direction. 

- we spoke about how boring the world would be if everyone was exactly the same, and why it's important to allow people from other countries into our country. This also falls into our socials curriculum, and learning that the aboriginal people were the first ones here and the rest of us are immigrants. 

- We spent a long time speaking about the power of positivity. It can be easy to have anything negative get stuck in our head and dwell on it. This can happen with anything… An argument at home, trouble on the playground, a bad dictée test mark. We spoke about ways to focus on what's going well in our lives, and to use that to push out the negative. I find this one extremely important for adults and children alike. We need to be taking care of ourselves, and it can be really hard to do if we are always focussing on the negative.

- I spoke about the concept of being the bigger person, and that you may find someone who has different ideas than you. It does not do anything productive to call this person names, or say bad things about them. We spoke about strategies to engage in conversations about ideas. 

I will admit I got a bit teary eyed speaking to them about all this. It feels like a lot of life lessons for young beings. 

I feel like there is more that we spoke about, but that I can't remember right now. It was a wonderful discussion with your children, and that was my way of positivity today. I came into work feeling worried and stressed this morning but hearing all the positive things that your children have to say, I am less worried for the future of our world. I know they will take good care of it. I encourage each of you to take time to yourself this weekend if you're feeling overwhelmed by the state of this world. Spending time with children can be just what's needed

une colombe and Remembrance Day

On Wednesday, the grade 3s will be singing at our rememberance day assembly. You can get your child to practice the song along to this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cdM3bz8OOMg

We asked student to wear black and white for the assembly, but red would be appropriate too. 

Just a reminder that there is no school this Thursday and Friday, and to send skating forms in ASAP. 

Merci! 

Today, the first time reading books came home. There may be some level adjustments to do but it is somewhere to start! It is up to you and your child to decide when you switch books. 

I hope everyone had a fun and safe halloween! I loved hearing their stories, and I was so touched when they thought of mme Chantal and I and brought us chocolates. I am set for chocolate for the whole year! 

As you hopefully noticed, there is no dictée this week. We will resume next Monday. 

Also, I will be away this Thursday and Friday. I have the amazing opportunity to work with a Special Olympics athlete at a conference together. If you want to check out where I'll be, you can read more here: http://www.coach.ca/-p159377

For those of you who don't know, I volunteer a lot of my time with special Olympics. If you want to know more, I love speaking about SO anytime! 

Today, we learned about Diwali celebrations. Here is a great link to learn more. http://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/whats-the-story-diwali/

We will also be learning about the day of the dead celebrations. Here is some info about it http://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/day-of-the-dead-and-the-sugar-skull/

On a side note, both these articles came from the CBC kids Facebook page. They have some awesome posts, so if you're on Facebook, they're a great page to follow. 

 

Approximately 14,400 seeds! We will be eating these on Monday. 
 

 
 
 

 

I hope everyone had children who were tired and slept well after yesterday's field trip. I know I was exhausted after a day outside! Make sure everyone goes to bed earlier for the rest of the week - I could tell everyone (including myself!) was a little slower and sleepier today. 

We still got lots done today! We picked pumpkins from the pumpkin patch, and did lots of estimations of measurement. 

 
 
 
 

Lynn Canyon Trip

What a fun time today! 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 

Dear parents,

A reminder that we are going on our Lynn Canyon nature walk field trip tomorrow, October 25^th. We will be spending most of the day outside no matter what the weather. It appears rain is in the forecast, so please make sure your child is dressed for the weather (gum boots, rain jacket, rain pants, gloves, toque). Umbrellas are not an appropriate option for this field trip. Also, please make sure that lunch is easy to eat on the go.

If your child is having photo re takes done, please send an extra change of clothes. The will have a chance to change when we get back to school. We will do our best to fix their hair before they have their pictures taken.

          Thanks,

                   Mme Jessica

Thank you to everyone who came to the conferences last week. I love sitting down with the kids and seeing what they really want to work on this year. There are lots of plans in place and I will be putting together any packages that we decided to use this week and next. 

Just a reminder that tomorrow is our field trip to Lynn Canyon. We are going rain or shine and it is unfortunately supposed to rain. We will be outside all day so please have your child dress in dumb boots and rain jackets. For this field trip, umbrellas would not be appropriate. We need to have hands-free as we will be doing lots of fun activities!

The kids won all of the pieces to their puzzle for hard work, good listening, and treating others respectfully. In brief, they have been following our class contract very well!

Tomorrow, Friday October 14th, we will have a pajama or costume and stuffy day, and will watch a movie in the afternoon (with the option to do other activities if they don't want to watch).

 

Home Reading

Last Friday, I sent home our home reading sheets. In grade 3, we track home reading minutes that convert to kilometers. With those kilometers, we try to cross Canada! There is a page explaining all this at the front of the package, which is now at the front of the dictee duotang.

Later this week, we will start taking books home from our home reading collection at school. It's up to you and your child to decide how often to change books. This is not something I will police, instead, it is to make it easier to read at home by having books at an appropriate level.

Happy Thanksgiving. I was going to send our gratitude trees home for thanksgiving, but I loved having them in the class, and want to give students a chance to read what others wrote.

This morning, there was a segment on the news about gratitude. They listed some of the benefits in children of recognizing what they are grateful for. Those benefits include improved happiness, increased life satisfaction, improved sleep, increased motivation to improve relationships, and generally able to focus on the positive instead of the negative.

If you're looking for ideas to focus more on gratitude at home, a candid approach is best. Let your children hear you talking to others about what you're grateful for, or try keeping a gratitude journal. I personally keep a gratitude journal and try to write one thing I'm grateful for every night. It's not an easy practice, but it is extremely powerful. It doesn't have to happen every day, and doesn't even have to be formal journaling. When I have done this activity with children in the past, it can be helpful to take a '5 senses' approach. What did you smell today that was nice? Did you taste something yummy today?

Yesterday, we spent a whole day talking about what we are greatful for. This is always my favourite project to do with students, as they come up with so many amazing things! This is a group brainstorm we did, that I had to cut off after 20 minutes so we could start the project. I'll post a picture of their finished projects tomorrow! 

We also did an experiment to examine how matter changes form in class today. It's very easy and can be done easily at home! 

Just a reminder to bring dictée duotangs to school tomorrow. We will be starting our home reading program tomorrow, which will also be kept in the duotang. 

 
 
 

In math, we have been working on patterning. We do lots of number patterns, but it's fun to go back to colour patterns too! 

 
 
 

Yesterday, we did our terry fox run. The students ran so well!  We listened to a song about terry. You can find the song and YouTube video here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpzXxU7VWk

I spent the morning at musqueam cultural center as part of my professional development. I had a wonderful time, and  learned so much. If you're interested, they have a great exhibit at their cultural center that has many artifacts from the culture.  If you have some spare time, I'd highly recommend checking it out! 

Here is some beautiful art the kids did last week. Feel free to stop by and see it in the hallway 

 

 

Just a reminder that tomorrow is our turn to provide goodies for the bake sale!

 

 

Here are some pictures from last week.