Dec. 16

 Believe it or not, we are only two days away from our winter break. We have been busy this week doing some winter watercolour and mixed media art, learning about the different kinds of rocks, and learned about where one of our focus countries for this year is (Peru). 

In art, we designed a winter scene using watercolour paint and paper. We first created our sky by allowing different colours to blend into one another on our special watercolour paper. We then used white paper to create a snowy hill and lastly, created ombre stripes for some colourful winter pine trees. When we put them all together, they created a beautiful, calming winter forest masterpiece!

In science, we have learned about two of the three kinds of rocks: sedimentary and metamorphic! We used plasticine to model how these rocks are formed over many years on earth. Tomorrow we will learn about the last type, igneous rocks. Have your child tell you:

• how each rock is formed
• what energy is used to make rocks (heat, pressure etc.)
• where these rocks could be found
  
  
  
  
  
  

In social studies, we have been learning about quality of life and how different wants and needs can impact our quality of life.  We have been using our own lives as a focus for this concept, but will be expanding this into different counties in our world. This year, we will be focussing on 4 different countries: Peru, India, Tunisia, and Ukraine. Today, we used Google Maps to find South America and then Peru and explore the rainforest, mountains and oceans of this country. Your child should be able to name the continent and country we live in as well as the continent that Peru is in. 

Lastly, from Monday, January 4th to Friday, January 8th, schools across our province will be going online. We will once again be using the Google Classroom platform to host classroom meetings and to access the assignments for the week of online learning. Your child has had practice during school logging in into Google Classroom and has practiced assignments and Google Meets. You can find a timetable which includes whole class Google Meets, small groups as well as times I am available for questions or help. We will meet for the first time on January 4 at 9:15 on our Google Meet. Attendance will be taken at our classroom meet at 9:15AM each morning. 

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Friday is the last day before winter break!
• Online Learning - January 4 - 8
• Regular classes resume January 11

We look forward to this week. Please email me if there are questions or concerns.

Dec. 11

 We have finally finished all of our videos to show our knowledge of Animal Life Cycles and adaptations! To celebrate, we are going have a Movie Premiere on Tuesday, Dec. 15. We are going to take the afternoon to watch and enjoy the videos that each of us has made. With this red carpet event, we are inviting students to dress up if they wish and to bring a special second snack that they can eat while we watch them. Once we have watched them, we will post them on Google Classroom for you to watch as a family. 

We are so excited for this special event! Please don't hesitate to contact for me with any questions about this!

Also, your child may have come home with a "metamorphic rock" today. We learned about how metamorphic rocks are made and used plasticine to apply pressure, heat and time to create our own. Ask your child to tell you about this experiment and how metamorphic rocks are formed!

Important Upcoming Events:

Spirit Days - Monday - Ugly Sweater Day; Tuesday - Movie Premier or Christmas Ho-Down - Wear flannel and plaid; Wednesday -  wear red and white; Thursday - wear fun and/or fuzzy socks; Friday - Hawaiian Shirts or Vacation wear

Dec. 18 - Last Day of School before the break

Dec. 19 - Jan 3 - Winter Break

Jan 4 - 8 - Online Learning - No Face to Face Classes. Log on to Google Classroom!

Dec. 10

Welcome back! We were so excited to be together today. Knowing many of us hadn't spent much time outside in the last week, we spent a huge part of the morning outside!  We took a short walk, did a sharing circle and built structures out of snow. We tried to build the different 3D shapes that we learned about during online learning. Students worked in teams to create cones, rectangular prisms, cylinders and of course spheres. Can you find the different shapes in our structures?

We also have some fun spirit days in our school - We have been doing these online, but here is the calendar for the next week that shows them all! 

Important Upcoming Dates:

Last day of school - Dec. 18

Online Learning - Jan 4 - 8

Nov. 25

 Thank you to everyone who met with us for Parent Conferences. That connection is so important for all of us and really helps us keep connected! It was nice to have the time to be able to see each other and talk about your children and their progress. 

I noticed a few questions that many of us had that I thought I could add to this blog today!I  know that families are looking for more books so here are a few sites with some book recommendations for grade 3. I hope this helps keep busy and engaged over the winter break!

This site is great for recommending books based on other books:

https://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/

Recommended Books:

https://www.readbrightly.com/books-for-advanced-second-third-grade-readers/

Grade 3 Series:

https://imaginationsoup.net/24-book-series-3rd-graders/

Non-Fiction:

https://imaginationsoup.net/nonfiction-books-8-year-olds/

The other thing that came up often was around reading sight words. I have attached the list of words that students should be working on reading in grade 3. Remember that not all children are the same and some need more practice with them than others. Here are a couple of websites that have some games and activities you can do as a family to practice sight words. If you practice these at home, try to make it fun and engaging so that kids will want to read them - they will have more success with games and fun than rote memorization.

https://sightwords.com/sight-words/fry/

https://www.themeasuredmom.com/10-simple-sight-word-activities/

https://www.readbrightly.com/sight-word-games-activities-reading-ideas/

We have been working on finishing our science projects creating a Wild Animal or a Life Cycle stop-motion video. I hope to have these posted by early next week to our Google Classroom! The students are so proud of them, so please take some time to ask them about their projects. I will post some guiding questions and more information about the project next week so that you have some background information and ideas for discussion. 

Lastly, with the announcement last night, I wanted to say how glad I am that our students still get to come to school until the winter break! They are so happy to come to school each day to learn and see their friends.  That being said, we will be online for one week at the end of our winter break (Jan 4 - 8). We will continue to practice logging in to Google Classroom, using Google Meet and using the technology tools so that they are ready for this week. We will ensure that what we are doing that week is intentional and  purposeful and that the learning tasks will connect to what we do when we are back to in-person classes. I know online learning can seem overwhelming and scary for many families, but if we all work together, we can ensure this runs as smoothly as possible. Please watch for more information about this before the winter break :)

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Dec. 4 - No school - Professional Development Day
• Dec 18 - Jan 3 - Winter Break
• Jan 4 - 8 - Online Learning through Google Classroom (More information to follow)

Nov. 17

 I hope everyone is having a great week so far!

 We have all but a couple of our Peace Books published into videos for you all to see on our Google Classroom. The students created some beautiful books about Peace that I know you will love. I hope that posting these into video form  on Google Classroom is helpful for you to see! I know how difficult it is not being able to come into the school and see your child's work in person so I am experimenting with this format. I would love your feedback!

In math, we have started using our knowledge of skip counting to help us better understand the concept of increasing and decreasing patterns. Students have been using blocks to help them create and complete patterns. They have been practicing verbalizing a pattern rule based on patterns that peers create or they create. 

Students also played a game that you could try at home. Here are the gist of it. Have your child teach you!

Choose a number between 1 and 5, roll your die. Your first number is what you will start your pattern with, the number you rolled is your pattern rule (how many your pattern will increase by each time). Create an increasing pattern using these numbers, with blocks or drawing a pattern.

You can make a decreasing pattern by choosing a number between 20 and 30 to start with, rolling the die, and decreasing your pattern by that number each time.

We will be moving into using numbers to show repeating patterns, such as 3, 7, 11, __, ___ or 

90, 84, 78, ___ ,____ and identifying the pattern rule. We will also be doing some input and output tables. This is a great way for students to see patterning in another way and one they will see often in future years.

To help your child at home, you could:

Don't forget that Thursday and Friday are our Parent Conferences. You will receive a link for the conference 5 minutes before your time to your email address. Please check your junk folder just in case it goes there.  At your time, I will admit you from the lobby into the Teams Meeting.  Please have your microphone and camera on for this meeting! It is nice to be able to see each other, even though it is through a computer screen. Alternatively, if you don't want a video conference, you can email me and I can call you at your time. I am looking forward to seeing you all and having some time to chat about your child!

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Parent conferences - Nov. 19/20
• No School - Nov. 20
• No School - Dec. 4
• Ms. Wolfe's Last Day - Dec. 8  :(
• Winter Break - Dec. 19 - Jan. 4 

Nov. 11

 Over the last week, students have been publishing their own "Peace Is..." book with Ms. Wolfe. They have come up with such beautiful examples using each of their senses and illustrated a picture to go with each.  Students are using adjectives to help their writing become more descriptive and powerful. We hope that students will have these finished by Friday and then they can start to record them using PuppetEdu. We will put these videos on Google Classroom for you to see! Watch for these to be posted in the next week or so!

We also used the  watercolour pencil crayons for the first time last week to create some poppies  in our hallway.  Students applying using space, line  and colour to create their own poppy art. The soft colours really bring a sense of peace to the school.  

On Tuesday, we also had our first school wide virtual assembly. All classes "met" on Google to view a simple assembly as a way to bring together the school on an important date. Grade 4 students led the assembly in which they talked about the importance of Remembrance Day, read In Flanders Fields  and led us through a moment of silence. 

Don't forget that conferences are next week. These will be available with a video face to face format (Microsoft teams) or a phone call. Please let me know if you prefer a phone call as I will default to the Teams link given when you sign up.  

These meetings will be very brief (only 15 minutes) and will need to stay on time to ensure that each family gets their allotted appointment. If during this meeting you think you require more than the 15 minutes, we can schedule another time to connect, but I will need to stay punctual for each of these meetings. If you have two or more children, you might consider signing up with a buffer of 15 minutes between appointment times to account for any technology issues you could run into. We look forward to connecting next week!

Upcoming Important Dates:

• Parent conferences Nov. 19/20
• No School Nov. 20
• No School Dec. 4
• Winter Break - Dec. 19 - Jan. 4 (I can't believe I am writing this already? Where has time gone?)