- Don't forget to send the library books back by Tuesday next week and your child will put it in the Library Box on their way in. All library books will be due to the library on Monday, Dec. 12 for inventory.
- Due to Fresh Air Friday, our Home Box items and folders did not go home today but will be sent Tuesday.
- Monday, Dec. 5 is an NI Day so while I will be at school, Team Awesome gets to stay home and recuperate from their various illnesses.
- Report cards will go home on Tuesday, Dec. 6. Please keep the report and sign and return the envelope so it can be used for the next report card in the spring.
- Our December Spirit Assembly and first community groups activity will be the afternoon of Wednesday, Dec. 7.
- B.E.S.T PAC will be having a Christmas Gift Shop at the school December 7 – 9 for students to buy Christmas gifts for their families. More information was sent out yesterday in a blog post.
- Your donations of Arts and Crafts items to put into the PAC raffle basket are very much appreciated and due Friday, Dec. 9. You can leave them with me.
- December Family Projects are due whenever they are completed.
- Zipped up coat weather is here and a number of the children cannot do them up themselves. Please practice zipping at home and putting on snowpants/ boots/gloves/mittens too.
- December sight words are: but, friend, give, good, in, look, up, want. If a word comes up repeatedly in our studies we will sometimes add it to our words for the month. Please feel free to practice them at home.
Mrs. Phillips started practicing the Winter Concert performance with Team Awesome last week and they were so excited. Excited that they would dance. Excited that they would be on stage. Excited to use the scarves. Excited their families would see them. I have done this for many years and know that this excitement will wear off fairly quickly. Like, by yesterday for most of them. And as they continue to practice boredom will begin to set in and rehearsals will gradually deteriorate to a few students doing what they are supposed to and the rest doing various other things. And the whole thing will look a mess which will raise the anxiety levels of those adults involved, And the dress rehearsal the day before the actual performances won't go much better (further elevating adult stress levels). But the children will pull it together and the special performances for our families will come off without a hitch. Or maybe with a few hitches but we have our secret weapon tucked into our back pockets. The Cuteness Factor. Thank goodness for The Cuteness Factor.
As part of our pumpkin unit, we adopted two pumpkins- a short dark orange one and a taller thinner one that we picked up at the pumpkin patch during our field trip. The children spent time running their hands over them, comparing them, studying them with magnifying glasses and generally observing them. We used both the pumpkins in our many investigations. They were weighed in our hands to determine which was heaviest and we measured their circumference using string. We guessed and made a graph about whether or not we thought pumpkins would float and then got out a large tub, filled it with water and threw them in. You can watch that experiment in the video titled "Pumpkin Investigations". We also opened one up to look inside and counted the seeds.
But then came the day, after they had been on the science table for about a month, that someone noticed a soft spot on the one we had opened. And then another one. And then a bit of...ugh!..mold! There was black mold on the inside and some around the top as well as a speck growing on the soft spot. We were amazed to see the mold grow quickly. There was some black mold and some thick white/gray fuzzy kind. But why was it getting moldy? How did mold grow? We made some hypotheses (scientific guesses), we put it back under the knife and chopped it into pieces. Parts of it were put into two jars. We made sure that each jar had mold. One jar we poked holes into the lid and labeled Aerobic (with air) and the other we put a lit candle into and screwed the lid on real tight so the flame would use up all the air and we labeled it Anaerobic (without air). We predicted, remembering that we had earlier guessed mold needed air, water and 'food' to grow, which jar would grow the most mold. Then we left the pumpkin to do its thing. We will watch the two jars for the rest of the year and compare and contrast what is happening in each. Team Awesome is making plans to help grow some mold on some other things. Hmmm.... sounds like another experiment. |
Mrs. Bowden &
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