Third Great Lesson

Today we started up our literacy block again.   Some of the groups have changed.  Ask your child who their reading teacher is!  Children should be bringing home reading books home each night to practice all their new skills.

It appears like many children practiced their doubles facts over the holidays!  Today we used our knowledge of doubles facts to learn a new strategy called doubles plus one. 

We played a whole class game, to learn to identify "neighbour numbers" (numbers with a difference of one).    examples:  5+6,  8+9, 3+4,  7+6

These neighbour numbers are almost doubles, so we can use our doubles facts to help us solve them. 

5+6 can be thought of as 5+ (5+1)

Third Great Lesson: Humans 

Today we explored the Third Great Lessons on how humans have changed and adapted to meet their needs.   Ask your child about the needs of humans?  (oxygen, water, food, shelter, safety, clothing, medicine, art...) Through time what discoveries did humans make to help them survive and thrive.  

Ask them what threats early humans faced?

In the beginning humans used materials found in nature like rocks, sticks, antlers as tools and weapons.  We talked a lot about the problem solving and ingenuity people used to make improvements.  Humans started to combine materials to make better tools. (Like attaching sharp rock to a stick to make a spear). 

Ask your child to think of the pictures in the powerpoint or the objects on display to help them think about the changes humans have experienced over time and what discoveries and improvements they made to their survival strategies.