Robotics Today

This morning we read part of a non-fiction book on Remembrance Day and talked about why people wear the symbol of a poppy during this time.  We looked carefully at images of famous artist Georgia O'Keeffe's work and at real photographs of poppies.  We discussed the techniques that O'Keeffe uses to make her pictures unique.  The student used oil pastel and paint to create an O'Keeffe styled poppy.  They also used colour theory, like adding water and little paint to make light shades of red and used little water and lots of paint to make darker shades of red.  Students also applied complimentary colours to help our poppies pop off our pages.   Ask your child about the techniques they applied.

After recess, we learned how to use our Ozobots.  These cute little robots use colours and light sensors on their bottoms to follow coded pathways.  You will get a chance to see these in action at our Celebration of Learning next Wednesday night.

STEM Challenges

            
As we start a new month in school, we've added another Montessori work period choice: STEM Challenge. Each week, students' will get to extend the skills they learn in Learning Commons by completing a STEM challenge in work period. Students are encouraged to work in partners and record their work in a communal STEM Challenge book so we can see how others are working and learning. We will have our most recent STEM Challenges out for you to work on when you come to our celebration of learning on Wednesday, November 14. We can't wait to share all the cool things we are working on in class.

On a side note, there are many children away from school today due to illness. We had a class discussion today about the importance of hand washing but please have another conversation at home. We want everyone to stay healthy so we don't miss important learning opportunities.

What happened at school today?

Happy Friday everyone!  We started our day with the continuation of the First Great Lesson.  We reviewed how the universe is thought to have formed, then explored how the matter of Earth separated according to its density to create the layers of our planet.  We did an experiment with honey, vegatable oil and water to see how these liquid naturally separate according to their densities.  We also saw how wax melted into a liquid then cooled to create solid shapes. When we celebrated Kelsie's birthday and lit our sun candle, we saw how the wax turned into a liquid and could spill when poured.  We put the solid wax back in the candle and noticed how easy it was to make it liquid again.  When the Earth cooled, the lighter rock materials that made up the surface became a solid crust.  We tried heating the volcanic rocks I brought in, but learned the melting temperature of different materials can vary greatly!   We also did an experiment with baking soda and vinegar to show how volcanos erupted, spewing molten, liquid rock as well as a variety of gases including water vapour into our atmosphere. 

We also explored the different states of matter:  solid, liquid and gas, noticing that water can be observed in all these states as: ice, water and water vapour (like steam).   We discussed how water vapour condenses when cooled and how it rained down on Earth and over millions of years filling up the low parts of our Earth to create the oceans. Our next Great Lesson will explore how life came to the Earth. 

Continuing our fun from Halloween, students learned to sort using a chart with fun little monsters. The rows and columns helped the children organize their groups especially when sorting by two attributes.  We looked around our classroom and noticed we used charts to organize information in many places.  Examples of our charts:  The calendar, our 100 chart, our weather data chart etc.  Do you use charts in your house? 

Remembrance Day Information

Remembrance Day

There are two Royal Canadian Legion Poppy fund boxes in the office for anyone wishing to donate and receive a poppy before Remembrance Day.  All students will be receiving their own poppies November 9 prior to the assembly. The Veterans Poppy fund greatly appreciates any donations.

 

Family Dance

Don't forget about our CJP Family Dance tomorrow night - November 2!! There will be a contest to judge the best pumpkin carving so come and see how we carved our pumpkin yesterday!

Community Building Project

In the next few weeks we will be building a 3-D model of a community. We are collecting little boxes so we can make buildings to paint. If you have boxes like toothpaste boxes, small cereal boxes, granola bar boxes, smarties boxes from Halloween and other boxes of a small size, please send them to school.

Extra Halloween Candy?? Please think about donating.

If you have any extra/unwanted candy please think about bringing it to school to donate to this Happy Birthday Project that a parent in our school is supporting.