Wednesday, October19

 Hi parents,

Today we continued working on writing and solving addition and subtraction equations. We're starting to work on problems involving numbers of with different numbers of digits - for example, "14032 + 148 = ___"

This kind of problem is a great way to really put your place value knowledge to the test, and it also brings in the skill of 'regrouping', aka 'carrying the one', which will be our focus for the next week or so. A lot of this is work is basically review from grade 2/3, but involving larger numbers, so it shouldn't be too tricky.

The students also did some data collection today, as they chose five holidays that they celebrate, and then surveyed their classmates to see who else celebrates them. Tomorrow we're hoping to use the data to make bar graphs.

In Science, we learned about trees. We learned that there are two types of trees - trees with broad leaves (deciduous) and trees with needles (conifers). We learned some other differences between the two types as well, but also the many similarities. Trees also have quite a bit in common with other plants, even small flowers!

We'll be learning about plants a lot more over the next few weeks.

We also spent a bit of time learning about Diwali, and discussing aspects of the holiday that are most interesting, or similar to other holidays we may celebrate.

Thank you to everyone who has already sent in boxes! If you have any more shoebox sized boxes and aren't using them, please continue to send them in. We're getting dangerously close to the end of Wish Tree, and it would be really cool if we could start the project right after we finish reading it.

Have a nice night,

Zac