Thursday October 8

Thanks to Mrs. Dagg organizing the turkey trot and Mrs. Burley's support a students from each class won a turkey.  I caught N's mom lugging the heavy load to her car.   I offered to help but she said carrying this turkey and laundry are the only heavy lifting exercise she gets.  Enjoy the exercise and the turkey and Thank you Mrs. Dagg and Mrs. Burley
 

Notices: 

Book fair notices went home today

 

We began our day with a writing assignment in our M.E.  The students had to write a two part response today.  We are still talking things we are thankful for  so part A was The best gift I ever received and Part B was the best gift I ever gave.

As It was picture day I showed one of my favorite  Calvin and Hobbes series of strips where Calvin has his school pictures.  I laughed and laughed, not sure if the students did.    

We worked on our writing until 9:30 when we went to library where Mr. K talked about the bookfair that will be held at the same time and days as the parent teacher interviews.  Next Wednesday and Thursday the 14 and 15th of October from 11:45 to 5:00 pm.  Mr. K also told us that part of the proceeds go to buying books for the school library.

After recess we went to get our pictures taken.  Many students dressed up, and many did not.  Some that dressed up even had nice new shoes.  Others even wore clothes they did not really like but wore them anyway... Either way memories are being made.  Our Calvin and Hobbes for the day reminded us that like Calvin's picture day we are making memories not just taking perfect pictures. 

 

Once we got back from picture the students were off to music

After lunch and silent reading   we continued our discussion about Canadian themes by looking at designs submitted for the 150 anniversary of Canada
Today we looked at things Canadians are passionate about.  The students chose one of the 5 designs and wrote about why they liked the design they chose.  We believe that these designs might be for the 2017 nickle because of the First Nations beaver design in the mix.

You can vote online for your choice up until tomorrow, Friday the 9th

http://www.mint.ca/store/coin-design-contest/contest-vote-form.jsp?lang=en_CA&rcmeid=van_CoinDesignVote

In our SongOff contest: 'Can You Feel the Love" from the Lion King beat "Halloween" from the Nightmare Before Christmas.  Because we had missed a few days we had a second challenger from Shrek the musical.  M's choice from the Lion King has won again so if it beats tomorrow's suggestion it will advance to the finals.

After lunch the students had Gym with our P.E. specialist.  

After Gym we moved to science.  I have combined two similar science themes, one from grade 3 and one from grade 4 from the mandatory curriculum for next year. 

Grade 3:  

Living things are diverse, can be grouped, and interact in their ecosystems.

Grade 4: 
All living things and their environment are interdependent.

We talked about the shrimp noting that:

Shrimp are found all around the world because they adapt easily to the many changes in water conditions.

 

 Shrimp are part of our ocean community.  They are part of the crustacean family which includes crabs, lobsters and barnacles.

 

Shrimp are invertebrates.  That means that they do not have a backbone, instead, shrimp have a hard shell called an exoskeleton.  

We compared our skull to the shrimp's exoskeleton and did a demonstration of the advantage of having an exoskeleton like invertebrates rather than being all fleshy like humans. We did this by showing that we build our exoskeletons with things like bike helmets which protect us from being hit on the head by rulers etc.  

Shrimps are omnivorous which means they eat a variety of both plant and animal species.

Shrimp are food to many other predators both in and out of the water such as fish, crabs, sea urchins, starfish, sea-birds whales and humans 

Note: All underlined words will be on tomorrow's test

they will have to be able to pick crustaceans out of a list and match the other words to their best definition.

There will be no Socials on tomorrow's test just some addition, the usual spelling words (next, left, help, please, believe, many, very, been, seen, she, between, three, easy, sea, leave) and the Science above.

We listened to Elvis sing a song about shrimp and shrimping, then the students completed a food web for shrimp in their Science duo-tangs.

Everyone is quite excited because we are going to do shrimp dissections tomorrow.

Great day everyone.... see you tomorrow.