Tuesday Fun Day With our Grade 1 Buddies

Here's just a quick post to let you in on some of the fun that we had today with our grade 1L buddies. As one of the older grades in the school, it is very important for our grade 3s to model appropriate behaviour and to show the grade 1's what it looks like to be a good buddy. We are so lucky because our students in 3FM take their roles as a buddy pretty seriously and in turn, model an important part of being a good citizen - volunteering their time to help others - and doing so in a respectful, thoughtful manner. It is so important to be able to work with other students - and I am so proud of 

this class during our buddy activities.

Here are a couple pictures from this afternoon:

Although at times, I did have to remind them to put a little more candy on their houses and less in their mouths...J...

they did an absolutely fabulous job being helpers 

to our buddies!!!

 A great time was had by all the students!

Awesome job today 3FM! 

The Final Countdown!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1!!!

The kids are on the countdown but I am still working them pretty hard!

As I mentioned in my email last week, we are keeping super busy in 3FM!

Most of our "desk time" this week has been spent working through our place value unit. Students are dong extemely well and can now:

- identify whether a number is in the hundreds, tens or ones place

- identify the value of a digit in a three digit number (eg, the 4 in 245 is worth 40)

- increase or decrease a number by 10 or 100

- write a number in words

- write a number in base ten form

 (3 hundreds 2 tens 6 ones)

- write a number in expanded form

( 300+ 20+ 6)

- represent a number using base ten blocks

- determine which number is greater or less than another number

- place numbers in order from greatest to least or least to greatest

Phew! No wonder we have been feeling a little tired over the past ten days! We have been working so hard! 

We have focused our writing around Christmas, writing letters to Santa and a paragraph about life in a snowglobe! The students are really finding their voice when writing! I love when their personalities shine through their work!

Our last three days are action packed!

Wednesday- Work, work, skate for the morning! We will finish up our Christmas art in the afternoon!

Thursday- Assembly performance first thing followed by a little bit of work time! No skating!

Friday- PJ day, skating first thing in the morning, party food for a special Christmas brunch, fun Christmas activities, lunch and then movie in the gym!

Thank you to the parents who have been coming out to tie skates and spend time on the ice with the students! We REALLY appreciate your help!!! 

I want to take this opportunity to wish you and your family the merriest Christmas wishes! I hope your holiday time is filled with love and laughter!

One Week Left Until Christmas Holidays!

It's almost the most wonderful time of the year... 

I think everyone is looking forward to Christmas holidays - it is such a busy 

time of the year... so much to do and so little time! That goes for in the classroom, too.

We have been working hard, although at times we are battling the build up of 

excitement that the season often brings.  Something else that comes during this 

time of year is cold/flu season. It's a great time to remind your child about proper hygiene - things like keeping their hands out of their mouths, noses, etc., proper hand-washing, covering their mouths when coughing - anything we can do to try and prevent the spread of those nasty germs!

Science Update

We continued to work on our Hearing and Sound unit this week. I introduced our unit by reading the book, "The Listening Walk" by Paul Showers. Check out the picture below to see our
class brainstorm efforts on the many different sounds that we hear.



We then took time to listen to the sounds in our classroom, and with the beautiful weather - we were able to take a listening walk around the schoolyard to investigate the sounds we hear outside.

Below are a couple pictures that I managed to take while trying to lead the walk!

We also explored the following concepts:

R how humans talk

R sound is energy  

R sound is created by vibrations

R pitch means how high or low the sound is

R volume means how loud or soft a sound is

Ask your child what we learned using balloons and tuning forks in science class? 

(They should tell you about the vibrations that they felt!)

It gives me such pleasure to watch the students when they are exploring a new concept - 

the excitement that they have is contagious! 

I feel so lucky to share in the learning of your child.

Social Studies Update

This week we continued to look at quality of life - however, this week we focused on a character from Tunisia. We started to learn about the day-to-day life of a student in Tunisia, 

making comparisons with what we previously learned about Maria in Peru, 

and what we know about our lives in Devon, AB.

There will be a letter coming home to explain how we will be celebrating each country that we are studying by having 4 cultural days throughout the school year - our first one, India Day, will be the first week back in January. It will give the students a chance to experience a number of aspects of each culture - from trying food, doing crafts, listening to the languages, etc - we hope to give your child an opportunity to really experience each country and its culture.

Enjoy your weekend - only 1 week left!

A Special Book Reading for the Grade 3's

On Monday all of the grade 3's were treated to not one, but two wonderful surprises. 
We were lucky enough to have a local author, Nicole Brook, come in to do a book reading

of her new series. It is called The Amazing Adventures of Abigail Andrews.

Along with her reading, Nicole spoke with the students about their dreams - 
and the students seemed quite engaged with her message. 
She explained her three 'secrets' to them:

First - you need to DREAM it.

Then - you need to BELIEVE it.
Finally - you need to WORK at it.

 Thanks to Devon's FCSS, and much to the excitement of the students, she personally signed a book for each child. Below you can see a picture of some of our students getting their books signed:

All of us at Robina Baker were very excited to have a local author come in and talk 
with the students. Her message to the students was inspiring - it's such a fabulous 
thing when we can celebrate local successes - it really shows our students that 
anything is possible if you work at it! 

You can find more information on her, and the series at abigailandrewsseries.com. 

It's Christmas Time in 3FM...

It was another short week at school - but wow - was it jam-packed with activity.

Thanks so much to our Christmas Concert team headed by Mrs. Stanski for a fabulous show. Also thank you so much to all the parents for supporting your children and partaking in the entertainment

Although rehearsals and last-minute touches for the Christmas Concerts definitely took center stage, we still were able to get some fabulous work out of our exceptional 3FM students!

Social Studies Update

This week we continued to look at quality of life, however, we narrowed our focus onto one of the main characters we are studying who lives in Peru. 

Students read and discussed the difference between life in the city of Lima and in villages of Peru.

We discussed things such as family, houses, school and work.

Science

This week we started our second unit, Hearing and Sound. Students discussed what they know about sound and hearing, and we came up with some questions that they would like to see answered. 

Here are some of the examples of what they already know:

There are loud and soft sounds.

There are high and low sounds.

Tigers, lions, heavy metal concerts, race cars are all loud sounds.

Mice, whispers, some winds are all soft sounds.

We hear with our ears.

Our eardrums can be damaged by loud noises.

Instruments make different sounds - high or low.

Water on a glass can make a sound.

Here are some of the examples of the questions they would like answered:

How do people make sounds?

What do our eardrums do?

How do our ears work?

How do we talk?

How can we hear our heartbeat?

Students also started a title page for this unit using the netbooks and their gmail accounts. They were given a list of requirements for pictures that they needed to have. Some students brought home their gmail information so that they could try and work on it at home. 

I guess the countdown is on - I hope you all have a fabulous long weekend!