Field trip forms coming home this week!

Please go online (powerschool) to pay for our upcoming field trip to Fort Calgary!

What happens when you throw boiling water into -26 degree celcius air?

Ask your child!

We introduced our new science unit today with an experiment that involved throwing boiling water into the air.

We may not be going outside for recess, due to this cold weather, but we did do this experiment outside. Please ensure your child has ALL essential clothing to go outside in this weather - snowpants, coats, mittens, hats, scarves.

Winter Weather

With the very cold winter weather approaching, please remember to dress warmly every day. We will be going outside at all weather temperatures. Students are reminded daily to put on their hats, mittens, scarves etc. If your child is missing something tell them to go to our school lost and found or email us and we can remind them to check.

Have a warm weekend!

Exploring 2D shapes and 3D objects

  

I can describe and construct 2d shapes and 3D objects. 

Students are working on naming 2D and 3D shapes and describing them based on their attributes - side, points, edges, vertices, and faces. They worked through activities today to construct these shapes out of plastecine, on the Montessori peg board, and with geoboards. Ask your child what 2D and 3D shapes they can recall and describe.

Painting landscapes

This morning's message showed a picture of a familiar place.  Children identified this picture as being Calgary, by recognizing landmarks of Calgary's skyline like the Calgary Tower and The Bow.  We also looked at the natural features like the Elbow River and the Bow River.  

The confluence of these two rivers is a significant place in Calgary's history.  It had been a meeting place for the Blackfoot people, then it because the location of Calgary's first building...Fort Calgary.  

We will be visiting Fort Calgary on Wednesday, January 29th, to learn more about our city's history.  

Today we imagined this location, without the bridges, buildings, roads, railways and large trees, back before Fort Calgary was built.  We created landscape pictures featuring the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers, and showing how the landscape changes from prairies, to foothills to mountains, looking west from this location.  

We talked about:

-the foreground (bottom of page, close)

-the background (higher up on the page, far away or in the distance)

-horizon lines 

-that objects get smaller and further up the page when they are far away

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. 

Welcome Back!

   

We hope you had a relaxing winter break and look forward to 2020!
We're right back at it! Students were working hard all today. They were able to jump right back into our Montessori work period. We reviewed our expectations and lessons and students were excited to be back in our routine!