Wiggle Monsters

We are the wiggle experts of St. Nicholas, so it only made sense that we read Lines that Wiggle!

Here is a reading of our wonderful, wiggly story:

In this book, silly monsters show many different lines. Throughout this story is a raised, sparkly blue line that we all loved to touch! 

We got to work practicing our lines and drew 5 or 6 across a white page. 

Then we painted ....

... and added details, like eyeballs and a mouth!

Here are our fantastic, colourful, wiggly, squiggly masterpieces! Our hallway is Halloween ready!

UnScary Work!

We began our week enjoying The UnScary Book, a story about a little boy who wants to write a very scary, spooky, terrifying book. It all goes sideways when lovely, nice things show up to be in the book instead! 

We decided to create our own unscary posters! Students were introduced to a Colouring Rubric. They were challenged to follow the rubric when creating their illustration on their poster. 

We had a blast being creative and writing our own "unscary" pages, and enjoyed reading one another's work! 

Our colouring rubric is now an expectation whenever we tackle a project with any colouring. It will help us to our best!

Senses with Scuba Charlotte

This week we kicked off our newest Science Unit, Senses! We built our Senses knowledge as we went on an underwater journey with Scuba Charlotte!

Hearing

We used our sense of hearing and had to identify sounds from several sea animals, including dolphins and whales. The next challenge was to wear blackout goggles and follow a specific sound (e.g. bells, castanets) as we crab-walked around the room, following our sound! Then we took a minute and reflected on what could hurt/help our senses: 

Sight

Our eyes played tricks on us! On one side of a stick we glued a fish, and on the other a tank. When we spun the stick back a forth, it looked like the fish was in the tank! We also really enjoyed a What is it? game and a few other optical illusions. 

Taste and Smell

We learned that our sense of taste and smell work together!

We challenged our sense of smell with little scented vials. Rose stumped most of us!

We tried a few different mystery tastes, but were encouraged to smell the samples first. We tried salt water, lemon juice, and sugar water. 

Touch

We were able to touch many textures from the ocean, including real coral that was once alive! We identified bumpy, sharp, squishy, smooth and rough textures. 

We had so much fun wearing black out shades and exploring sand and water pails, identifying different items!

Sea Lions and Their Senses

We learned that when a baby sea lion is born, the mama and baby sea lions bark back and forth! If a mama is ever confused about who her baby is, she uses her sense of smell to identify it. 

Sea lions rely on their whiskers as their sense of touch! Their whiskers tell them how the water is moving and can signal to them if food swims by. 

We learned loads about our senses with Scuba Charlotte! Thank you to the parent volunteers who were so patient, energetic and willing to participate!

Senses presentation was made through Teacher's Pet

Praying the Rosary

October is the month of the rosary and we took the opportunity to learn to pray the rosary. To make this form of meditative prayer accessible for our littles, we prayed one decade each day this week.

We made single-decade beaded rosaries on pipe cleaners. 

The decade of 10 beads can be moved around as each prayer is shared.

To connect our daily decade to the full rosary, we coloured in the 10 beads (decade) we prayed each day. 

Learning the Hail Mary prayer has been central to our exploration of the rosary. A "puzzle-piece" prayer came home. Consider praying this prayer as a family. 

If you are interested in learning more about how to pray the rosary, this How to Pray the Rosary infographic is spectacular as well as the free app Laudate. 

Read In Week

Welcome to Read In Week! While we read each and every day in our class, our goal this past week was to make reading EVEN MORE exciting, enjoyable, and engaging! 

MONDAY

We kicked off the week reading eachother! Look at the shirts we chose:

What better way to build a love of reading than to devour some picture books with our Grade 3/4 buddies?

TUESDAY

We enjoyed a "teacher swap". Mrs. Beliveau waved goodbye and read to the Grade 3's. Our class headed to the Grade 3 room where Mrs. Spooner read her favourites to us! 

WEDNESDAY

We warmed up our brains reading the room! Hidden all over our classroom (and into the hall) were picture cards! We used our knowledge of letters and sounds to stretch our reading brains!

"All in the Hall" was fantastic! For 20 minutes, each and every kiddo in St. Nicholas piled into the halls with books to enjoy! It was so relaxing. 

We read some HILARIOUS sleepy-themed book to celebrate PJ day ... but everyone fell asleep! Zzzzzzzzz ...

THURSDAY

We rounded out an amazing week hearing Mr. Rachmistruk's favourite books all together in the gym!

Next week we'll get our daily home reading program rolling! Stay tuned!