Tuesday, September 20

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today! 

In the morning, the students learned about leaves, and watched this Sci Show Kids video about why leaves change colour in the fall.

Then, we used 'Northern Red Oak Leaf' tracers to cut out leaves, which we then painted in beautiful fall colours. In the spirit of Wish Tree, the students brainstormed 'wisdom' that they could write on their leaf. We added all the finished quote leaves onto our Wish Tree display and it looks pretty awesome! A little bit bare right now, but I'm thinking we can create new leaves to represent different things, and fill the tree out a bit more. Some of the central themes in Wish Tree are Nature and Wisdom - and the work we did today did a great job of expressing those!

We had an awesome discussion about Terry Fox today, and read a book that went into more detail about his childhood and education. It was interesting for the students to see how much they had in common with Terry! I'm hoping that our talk today will help them feel extra motivated to run tomorrow.

In the afternoon, we did more work on place value in math. We're starting to focus more on the Thousands, Ten Thousands, and Hundred Thousands places. This is brand new terminology for many students, but it's not necessarily any more difficult to learn than ones, tens, and hundreds. Practicing writing and talking about large numbers at home would be a great way to reinforce this new knowledge.

We ended our day by reading Wish Tree. We're reviewing what's happened so far. We talked more about diversity and acceptance, another of the book's prevalent themes.

I am sad to say I'll be away tomorrow and will be missing the Terry Fox run. There also won't be a Blog post (unless our Guest Teacher is feeling exceptionally keen).

Have a nice evening! I look forward to seeing you at the Open House on Thursday!

Zac

PS: The spelling quiz for this week will be on Thursday as Friday is an Organizational Day.