This week was an exciting one as we now have four amazing additions to our class! On Tuesday, we were greeted by duckling one - Lemonade. He/she was followed by Bubba and Oreo and then this morning Cookies and Cream was waiting for us in the incubator. All four ducklings are healthy and happy and get along very well. Mrs. Burch and I are sharing evening duck duties by taking the brood home to our families. :) We anticipate the arrival of another duckling this weekend. The students love having the ducklings and are excited to pet them and watch them play and feed in their water. We will be keeping them for one more week and will then return them to the farm.

Lemonade waiting to greet us on Tuesday

Lemonade 

The Brood

Your child's bean plant was sent home with them today. The plants were getting so tall that they were winding up with one another and were moving through our window blinds! You may want to transplant this plant into the ground or into another pot. It will produce runner beans.

This week, we listened to/watched a reading of the book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens. It is a funny story that introduces students to both root vegetables and those that grow above the ground. We did some root vegetable art after listening to this book. On Monday, we will plant our classroom garden boxes.

Last week, we worked on some art with our buddies to represent onomatopoeia/sound words. Today, the students completed this work.

In Math, we continue to work with addition and subtraction in both equations and word problems. I introduced the students to an online addition game that you may want to use at home. The students really enjoyed it. This would be a great game to play with your child either online or at a table using actual dice. :) . Here is the link: https://www.abcya.com/games/sum_of_all_dice

We will not have any more book exchanges at the library this year as Mrs. McLean needs time to do a complete inventory of our library before the next school year. Please take a look at a home for any library books your child may still have and return them as soon as possible.

Thank you to everyone for sending in a baby photo of your child. I was waiting to receive a few at the end of the week so will be making up the guessing game this weekend.

The students will be doing an animal research project in the next two weeks. Please hold onto a shoebox for your child to use for this project. Each student will make a diorama to represent their animal's habitat. If you have more than one shoebox that you can donate, I would appreciate you sending them in. You can send them in starting Monday. Thanks in advance!

We are hoping to go on a community walk at some point next week depending on the weather. We will be observing changes in the vegetation as well as looking for creatures big and small! Please make sure your child wears good walking shoes to school each day next week. We are most likely to go for our walk on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

I hope you all enjoy some rest and relaxation over the next couple of days. See you Monday! :)

 

This week we worked with the digraphs "wh" and "ph". The "wh' work was review from a month or so ago as many students were not yet applying this learning into their written work. The work with "ph" was new. Our focus words were: graph, phone, what, when, and where.

We are expecting our duck eggs to begin hatching on Monday. It has been interesting to see some developments in the eggs recently, however, it is difficult for the students to see many of these small changes. The excitement will definitely rise once we see cracks in the eggs! Here is a recent photo of an egg when it was out over the light. The eyes and beak are becoming visible.

In Math this week we watched/listened to a book called One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. The book focuses on representing different numbers using feet. A snail has one foot, a person has two feet, a crab has eight feet, etc. The students were challenged to represent given numbers using a combination of animals. It is always interesting to see all the different ways students approach these problems. We will continue this work next week.

In Science, we continued working with our unit on Movement. We discussed pathways of movement and did some line art to represent many of the different pathways including straight, curved, spirals, and zigzag.

We enjoyed a great day at the zoo on Thursday. A big thank you to the parent volunteers who joined us. We could not have gone without you! :) The students had lots of time to explore the zoo in small groups and our class participated in a one hour long program about polar bears and other arctic animals. We learned about seasonal and permanent ice and how seasonal ice impacts the ability of polar bears to travel between Churchill, Manitoba and the Arctic. The students were able to touch a number of biofacts including pelts of a polar bear, seal, and arctic fox.

A friendly reminder re: baby photos:

If you have not yet done so, please email me or send in a copy of a baby photo of your child by Monday, May 27 so that I can put together a "Who Am I?" photo board. The children will be challenged to match the baby photos with their classmates. This is part of our unit on Past and Present in Social Studies.

Library:

This coming Tuesday will be the last time the students will be able to exchange their library books this year. Please make sure all library books are returned by Tuesday, June 4. 

Our focus in Word Work this week was on words that end in "ng" and "nk". Our five words were trunk, thanks, thing, rang, and long.

We have been putting more of an emphasis on sentence conventions in our writing and have been practicing using our writing skills to identify and correct mistakes in sentences. The students are looking carefully for the proper use of uppercase letters, correct use of punctuation marks, and accurate spelling of high-frequency words.

In Math this week, the students were introduced to our Canadian currency - focusing on the coins. We learned a fun song about the coins called I've Got Canada in My Pocket. Here is a link to it should you want to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnZlAOSEmYQ.  The students learned how to identify the coins by their images and to give their value in cents and dollars.

Our bean seeds are growing fast and we have started to document their growth and changes in our "Bean Booklet". We will soon have many different plants to compare our bean plants to as we plant our indoor garden boxes next week.

In Social Studies, the students worked in groups of four to make close observations of 6 aerial photos of McKenzie Towne taken between 2003 and 2012. As a group, they were challenged to put the photos in chronological order. We discussed how not that long ago this area was farmland and looked at how changes were made bit by bit to develop it into the community it is today. 

Another little bit of homework...

**As we continue to talk about the past and present, I would like to ask that you send me a photo of your child from when they were a baby. You can email this to me if you like or send in a printed copy. I am going to put together a poster with all of the photos for a Guess Who's Who activity. I would like to have all photos in by Monday, May 27. Thank you for your help with this.**

Important Zoo Field Trip Information:

A friendly reminder that we are going on our field trip to the zoo next Thursday (May 23). Thank you to the parents who have volunteered to join us for the day. Please ensure that your child is dressed appropriately for the weather and that they are wearing comfortable footwear as we will be doing a lot of walking. Please pack a lunch and two snacks and make sure your child has a water bottle.

Other School Events:

Walk or Ride Day to MTS

Starting this week, every Thursday is going to be a Walk or Ride Day. 

Each Thursday everyone at MTS is encouraged to get to school in an active way.  This could include walking, biking, scootering, skateboarding, anything to get to school in an active way! 

Students can store their bikes or scooters at the bike racks at the front of the school.  Hopefully they are nice and full this Thursday!

MTS BOOK FAIR

We will be hosting our third Book Fair of the year and it will be held on Thursday, May 23rd from 4pm-7pm. This is a unique event as ALL ITEMS are BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!!!

PLEASE NOTE: Students will be given the opportunity to buy from the fair on Thursday May 23rd during the day but ONLY books will be available for purchase at that time.

Posters and Boutique items (Pens, erasers, journals) will be available from 4pm-7pm.

If you have any questions, please contact Mrs. McLean at tlmclean@cbe.ab.ca

This week we focused on the vowel combination "ai" and practiced reading and using "ai" words daily in our shared reading and writing. Our focus words were: plain, pail, sail, train, and chair.

We have been checking in on our eggs periodically (placing them over a light to get a glimpse at their development). We noticed some veins but no real structure as of yet. The eggs typically hatch after around 28 days so we have a way's to go yet! We are at Day 11 today.

We have been learning many interesting facts about ducks by reading books, watching videos, and consulting various websites. You may want to ask your child to tell you 2 or more facts they find interesting.

All of the students planted a bean seed today which they will observe over the next few weeks. We will also be planting a variety of vegetable seeds in our classroom's garden boxes and will be learning all about how seeds grow and the life cycle of plants.

In Math, we have been learning about balancing equations this week. This is when you have to come up with two equations that give the same sum or difference. For example, students will be given the problem 4+3 = 2+___.  Most students are now able to confidently balance equations but some are still finding this to be a challenging concept. Practicing this skill with your child at home would serve as good practice if you are able. :)

We listened to the Children's Treaty 7 Land Acknowledgment again this week - the students had been introduced to it back in the Fall. (Please see the link below). We then created our own classroom Land Acknowledgment. Having recently celebrated both the Spring Equinox and Earth Day, it seemed appropriate to spend time considering the land we live on, to show gratitude for the beautiful spaces, and to make promises to the natural world about how we will look after it for ourselves and all other living things. See our land acknowledgment below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXhTLS9aS4

Today, we had a lot of fun with our Grade 4 buddies when we went outside and did a variety of relay races with our older friends. It was fantastic to get out into the warm, fresh air and enjoy exercising with them!

Please watch for forms being sent home on Monday regarding our upcoming zoo field trip. I am still in need of two volunteers. Please email me at jllarmer@cbe.ab.ca if you can join us. Thank you in advance!

A message from Mr. van Sluys:

Starting next week, every Thursday is going to be a Walk or Ride Day.  Each Thursday everyone at MTS is encouraged to get to school in an active way.  This could include walking, biking, scootering, skateboarding, anything to get to school in an active way!  Students can store their bikes or scooters at the bike racks at the front of the school.  Hopefully they are nice and full this Thursday!

A friendly reminder that there is no school next Friday due to a Professional Development Day nor the following Monday due to the May long weekend.

I hope all of you moms enjoy a wonderful Mother's Day and that everyone has a great weekend enjoying this fantastic weather.

It was quite the week weather-wise and we were all very grateful to see the sun shining and the green grass re-emerging today!  

This week we focused on ow and ou and continued to work with r-controlled vowels. Our focus words this week were: clown, town, brown, out,  shout.

We read a book called Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman this week and recorded the main character, what they were seeking/wanting in the story, what got in the way of them getting what they wanted, and how the problem was resolved. We use a method called, Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then, What, to focus on story elements. We will continue to use this method with more stories in the following weeks. We will also be starting to write our own stories soon.

Our duck eggs arrived and we have eight eggs in an incubator. We "candled" three of them this week to see how they are developing. I have attached a photo below. We began learning some interesting facts about ducks and have started recording this information in our "Duck Booklet".

We did an art piece of a male mallard duck today using oil pastels and paint. 

In Math, we continued to do some work with data collection and graphing as well as starting to learn how to add double-digit numbers without regrouping. 

The students were excited to share their pink page from interviewing an older family member. It was great to hear about favourite toys, games, and special memories and the students were proud to share these stories. I hope your child enjoyed learning a little about what it was like for their relative when they were 6 or 7 years old. If your child has not returned their sheet yet, please have them return it next week.

Volunteers Needed for Upcoming Field Trip

We are going to the Zoo for an all-day Field Trip on Thursday, May 23rd. I will need 5 volunteers for this trip. Please let me know if you can join us. You must have a current CBE Police Check done in order to participate. Please email me at jllarmer@cbe.ab.ca as soon as possible if you would like to come.