TWAS November 18th
Hello Families,
It was great to see so many of you coming together to enjoy family movie night last night. The children were very excited; what a wonderful social event. It is so important that the school is a part of the wider community so thank you so much for making that happen! I can't wait to hear all about it in the "over the weekend" reflections Monday morning :)
I hope the children have been sharing their painting experiences with you. As you probably know, we have been learning about colour in science, so for our Thursday art the children created a colour wheel. Here's the thing, they were given only the three primary colours (tempera paint), 1 paint brush, a bowl of water, a napkin, a cleaning cloth to share with 2 friends and a colour wheel template. They had to create all of the secondary and tertiary colours by blending with only those materials. I thought that this was going to be extremely challenging (it was for me when I made the exemplar); once again the children completely surprised me. Everyone followed the instructions perfectly, no one needed to start over, or get a new paint brush and everyone was able to blend to make secondary and tertiary colours. The wheels are beautiful. They were still drying on the rack after school Thursday, but I will add pictures next week. I am sure the children will be very excited to share their experiences with you.
We have been continuing our conversations about the connection of "who we are" to "where we are from." Where we are from is very difficult, of course, because there are so many layers, and we are trying to look at it from as many perspectives as possible. We are talking about clothes, as related to climate, social practices as related to cultural traditions (things such as eye contact, expression and greetings) and we looked at the naming practices of Lakota First Nations. We learned, through the story of Sitting Bull, that in Lakota tradition children are named for their unique characteristics, and that those characteristics may not always appear to be flattering. It was most important that they were reflective of that particular child. Sitting Bull's childhood name was "slow," another was "runny nose." We are learning that these children had to earn their adult names through acts of bravery or contributions to the community. There are very rich lessons in this, and we will continue to reflect and work with these questions over the next few weeks.
The children put all of their recent paragraph writing work and practice together for their first big writing "assignment" this week. They brainstormed, planned and then composed responses to the prompt "if you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go?" They were extremely focused and took this task seriously. It is hard to believe that such strong, thoughtful and creative writing, can be produced only 3 months into grade 2!
We spent a lot of time working on number relationships, in math, this week. The children love this activity and are so good at it! Try it out at home if you have time. Assign everyone in your family a number and see if your little ones can impress you with their abilities to explain how these different numbers may be related. We have also been working with math problems, in particular number line math problems. Questions like the following are always good brain exercisers: I am a number on the number line. I am greater than 29 and less than 41. You land on me when you count by 5's. One number bigger than me has a 6 in the ones place. What number am I?
As a final note, the children are reflecting on their citizenship, character and professional development at school. As always, if the occasion arises, please continue these conversations at home.
I hope you all have a fun and restful weekend. I'll sign off with Ms. Thomas' weekly music message:
It was great to see so many of you coming together to enjoy family movie night last night. The children were very excited; what a wonderful social event. It is so important that the school is a part of the wider community so thank you so much for making that happen! I can't wait to hear all about it in the "over the weekend" reflections Monday morning :)
I hope the children have been sharing their painting experiences with you. As you probably know, we have been learning about colour in science, so for our Thursday art the children created a colour wheel. Here's the thing, they were given only the three primary colours (tempera paint), 1 paint brush, a bowl of water, a napkin, a cleaning cloth to share with 2 friends and a colour wheel template. They had to create all of the secondary and tertiary colours by blending with only those materials. I thought that this was going to be extremely challenging (it was for me when I made the exemplar); once again the children completely surprised me. Everyone followed the instructions perfectly, no one needed to start over, or get a new paint brush and everyone was able to blend to make secondary and tertiary colours. The wheels are beautiful. They were still drying on the rack after school Thursday, but I will add pictures next week. I am sure the children will be very excited to share their experiences with you.
We have been continuing our conversations about the connection of "who we are" to "where we are from." Where we are from is very difficult, of course, because there are so many layers, and we are trying to look at it from as many perspectives as possible. We are talking about clothes, as related to climate, social practices as related to cultural traditions (things such as eye contact, expression and greetings) and we looked at the naming practices of Lakota First Nations. We learned, through the story of Sitting Bull, that in Lakota tradition children are named for their unique characteristics, and that those characteristics may not always appear to be flattering. It was most important that they were reflective of that particular child. Sitting Bull's childhood name was "slow," another was "runny nose." We are learning that these children had to earn their adult names through acts of bravery or contributions to the community. There are very rich lessons in this, and we will continue to reflect and work with these questions over the next few weeks.
The children put all of their recent paragraph writing work and practice together for their first big writing "assignment" this week. They brainstormed, planned and then composed responses to the prompt "if you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go?" They were extremely focused and took this task seriously. It is hard to believe that such strong, thoughtful and creative writing, can be produced only 3 months into grade 2!
We spent a lot of time working on number relationships, in math, this week. The children love this activity and are so good at it! Try it out at home if you have time. Assign everyone in your family a number and see if your little ones can impress you with their abilities to explain how these different numbers may be related. We have also been working with math problems, in particular number line math problems. Questions like the following are always good brain exercisers: I am a number on the number line. I am greater than 29 and less than 41. You land on me when you count by 5's. One number bigger than me has a 6 in the ones place. What number am I?
As a final note, the children are reflecting on their citizenship, character and professional development at school. As always, if the occasion arises, please continue these conversations at home.
I hope you all have a fun and restful weekend. I'll sign off with Ms. Thomas' weekly music message:
Artist of the Week
Spice Girls:
Following on the heals of the great girl groups of the 60s and 70s, the Spice Girls emerged as a global girl power phenomenon, decades later. Promoting a culture of positive self-image, they created unique stage personas and embraced collaboration and team work. Their music was upbeat and positive, inciting dance parties across the world.
All the best
Mrs McArthur
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