Wednesday, Nov. 4

 Hello Friends and Family,

Today we talked a little bit about the US election and what it means to vote and why we do it.  We read a story called Everyone Has a Say.  

At the end of the story, Pudding the Snail was elected the leader of the Forest.  Afterward, we wrote about the story and about why we thought the animals in the Forest might have voted for Pudding (this is a great reading comprehension strategy called "inferring" that I can practice anytime I read books at home.  If I'm at home now, help me to practice thinking and writing about my reading).  Some of us had the chance to share our writing during Author's chair:

In math we have continued to talk about equations and equality.  We have been practicing remembering that adding or subtracting numbers on one side of the equation means we do the same thing on the other side.   We practiced this skill using manipulatives called 2-sided chips.  If I want to make some at home, they look like this:

We practiced writing equations that matched different arrangements of chips.  If I'm doing it at home, you can start with lower numbers with me and add chips as I get familiar with the job.  Remember to remind me that if chips get added or taken away from one side of the equal sign, the same thing needs to happen on the other side to maintain a balanced equation.

Thanks for reading!

 Hello Friends and Family,

Today we learned about the letters "m" and "n", and that both the sounds are made through your nose!  If you try plugging your nose and making the "mmm" and "nnnn" sounds, it's impossible!  If I'm at home, I can practice printing those letters.   Help me to practice forming these letters correctly, remembering to start at the top and keeping my pencil on the paper for the whole letter.  If you do not have paper at home that you can practice your printing on, you can print some yourself by downloading it here.

Thank you for helping me to remember to wear black so that we could do some filming for our Remembrance Day Assembly.  We got a sneak preview of our segment today and we are excited to share it with you online on Nov. 10.  More details on when and how you can watch to follow.  We started talking about Remembrance Day, and why it is celebrated on November 11.  

In math, we have continued learning about equality and balancing equations.  Below is a tutorial on how we can make our own balance scale.  

We learned about "Read to Self" today and made an anchor chart to help us remember, during Daily 5.  Ask me about my jobs during Read to Self.  We have also had an opportunity to choose books (based on the cover) from the Learning Commons.  Ms. S was able to come to our rooms with a book cart.  We were so excited to bring a book home and show them to our families.  

Art Walk

 Hello Friends and Family,

Our Art for the Art Walk is now up to view until Nov. 13!

During our walk with Sa'a Ko Ko To we became super interested in the Blackfoot peoples of the past and how they used the buffalo/bison to survive.  We have been working on learning to draw bison so we decided to put those two skills together to make our art pieces together.

We brainstormed all the uses the Blackfoot people had for the bison and chose artifacts that we were most interested in, and found some interesting pictures to practice drawing.  Mountainview students each made their own bison out of construction paper and coloured with oil pastel.  Wild Rose students collaborated to draw one big bison, and drew their artifact on the bison.  Ask me about my artifact(s)!