To you on a Sunny Monday!

Hello all,

Has it not been the most beautiful weekend in recent history?!
Hope you and your family made some time to go out and play...

This week, our spelling will be taken from a poem by Canadian poet, George Swede.
This morning our class spoke at length about the poem. We noticed that the poet uses verbs in really interesting and unexpected ways. We also noticed, that the verbs often stand alone - given a whole line to themselves. We all agreed that Mr. Swede felt they were important to the imagery of the poem. Imagine: the tulip struggles, is scorched by sun, is jolted by raindrops, is blasted by wind; but emerges victorious at the end!

The yellow tulip

For weeks
it struggled
through the hard crust
of the spring earth
and a foot
of air

Just to be
scorched
by the sun
jolted
by raindrops
blasted
by the wind

But on this gentle
May morning
as it opens
yellow petals
to the sky

Nothing else matters


Also this week, we continue our mapping unit and have been engaged in co-operative groups while we map our classroom with 'bird's eye' perspective. What fun!

News for the week of May 18-21

Hello families,

Enjoy a week off from the spelling program! The children studied incredibly hard for that last test and did very, very well!
They all deserve a 'study-free' week.

Today is fruit & veggie day and I noticed some beautiful cucumbers sitting on my desk when I returned from recess this morning. Thank you so much to our parent helpers who take on this task every month and deliver delicious treats to our classroom for us to enjoy.

Have a lovely week (in the sun!!!)

Mrs. J.

Geometry Spelling Words

Our words for next week's spelling test are all taken from our current Geometry unit of study. We have been learning about polygons, learning about angles and naming, describing and sorting figures. With this in mind here are the words and definitions:

parallelogram: a figure with two pairs of parallel sides
rhombus: a parallelogram with four equal sides
trapezoid: a four sided figure with one pair of parallel sides
angle: the meeting of two straight lines
acute: an angle which is smaller than a right angle
obtuse: an angle which is larger than a right angle
vertex: the outside point of the angle, where two straight lines meet

We will continue to investigate geometric figures and solids through the month of May. Following this, we will take a look at standard and non-standard measurement.

In other news, we have been busy at work putting our fantastic reading skills to work! We have gathering information from a variety of sources as we learn about some of the animals from the novel "Charlotte's Web." The children have been incredible researchers and writers as they have put together short reports on both spiders and pigs. The spider reports are hanging in our classroom, but I will be sending the pig reports home for you to enjoy!

From now until the end of June we will be studying the geography of Canada and mapping skills. Most of the work will be completed in class, but occasionally I will send something home to be worked on co-operatively with parents.

Thanks, as ever, for your on-going support!
Mrs. J.