Bathed in the Light of Christ

This young lady received her First Holy Communion this evening.  What an exciting milestone!  May Our Lord continue to keep her in the palm of His hand.

Haiku

The students are entering a contest sponsored by Scholastic Books.  They are writing Haiku.  This is a three line Japanese poem, with 5 beats in the first line, 7 beats in the second and 5 again in the third.  It's challenging!

The Tiger Lily

is coming out of the ground.

It has two colours.

Growing underground

a carrot is delicious.

It's really healthy.

Goodness in my mouth

tastes so delicious, yummy

Applepear so sweet.

A daisy is white,

as a fluffy soft pillow

that you can jump in.

Jumping for Joy!

Why do these sweeties look so happy?!?!?  It might be because they can see the sun and could take off their many layers of clothes for a little while!  It might be because God answered their prayers and it didn't rain today!  The real reason that they are so happy is that they are at the Strathcona Athletic Park and it's TRACK AND FIELD DAY!

Look at this jump!

I tried to get photos of everyone, but it's tough to use a camera and keep track of the children's scores at the same time.   Look at the sky in this photo and know that it got shivery cold as the day progressed.  The kids were troopers and didn't complain!

Here's a few of the girls showing off their spoils!  (Love how the little one who is not allowed to have her photo on the blog figured out a way to be in with the group...but not be seen!)

Here's a couple of the boys ready to go home and tell stories of how they won each and every ribbon!

Three Dimensional Geometric Objects

All of the photographs in this post were taken by the Grade 2 students.   We were looking at real world objects that look like geometric shapes that we are studying in class.  We know that what we learn in math class is important to use in the real world.  We can see geometric shapes all around us.

The basketball, globe and lanterns reminded us of spheres.  Spheres are almost like a ball but they don't bounce. This shape has no vertices or faces or edges.

We looked at the traffic cone and the sharpened end of a pencil.  This 3-D object has one face, one vertex and one edge.  3-D means that you can measure the object three ways:  side to side, top to bottom and front to back.  We are three dimensional!

The gluestick, the water bottle and the pencil sharpener are all cylinders.  Cylinders have two faces, two edges and zero vertices.  They remind us of a can.

The box and the VHS/CD player remind us of rectangular  prism.  It has 6 faces, 8 edges and 12 vertices.

Guess what!  A cube also has 6 faces, 12 vertices and 8 edges!

Here is a rectangular pyramid.  We couldn't find a triangular pyramid in our classroom.  This one has 5 faces, 8 edges, and 5 vertices.  Do you know where to find faces, edges and vertices?  Here's a hint:

Faces are flat and they are usually 2-D shapes like a square or triangle.

Edges are the sides that join the faces together.

Vertices are the pointy corners where all the edges meet.

If you only have one vertice, it is called a vertex.

The Grade Two students were the ones who told the teacher what to keyboard into the blog today! Aren't they smart?

A Little Bit of Everything.....

In small groups, the students explored three dimensional objects.  An excellent question to ask would be What is the difference between two dimensional shapes and three dimensional objects?  There are so many important vocabulary words to understand in the area of geometry.  Sometimes the students can be confused because the words begin with the same letter, or because the words have similar endings.

The students were challenged to come up with ways that they would sort these objects and then defend their reasons that the sorting rules worked.

Three dimensional objects are classified using the number of faces, edges and vertices that they possess.  What is the singular of vertices? (Hint:  answer is above!!)  I am challenged to keep the terms correct when I speak as well.  For example, if I were talking about a square I might ask "How many sides does this shape have?" but if I held up a cube, I would ask "How many edges does this object have?" instead.

The supper table homework for this evening was to ask an adult the following "How many faces does a sphere have?"  It will be interesting to find out what answers the students will report they received on Monday!

It's almost time to take down our 'tooth' work display but I did want to share the students' work about the Tooth Fairy.  Each student filled out an application in case the tooth fairy retired and they needed a replacement.  They then wrote a letter to the Tooth Fairy, exchanged letters with a classmate and finally, wrote a letter back to their friend, as if they were writing the letter as the Tooth Fairy.  Each child looked their work over and completed a rubric, self evaluating their ability to write a letter properly.

There are male Tooth Fairies, by the way!

Last night, our school held their Open House.  We are working hard to entice more Catholic children to attend our school.  These sweeties told our visitors about our Character Education program.  Isn't it amazing that there just happened to be six pillars in our hallway that I could paint to match the six pillars of character in our program?  God works in such amazing ways!

Somehow the purple (citizenship) pillar is not in the photo, but the others are, as follows:

red(caring), orange (fairness), green (responsibility), yellow (respect) and blue (trust).  I love that I was able to convince the school administration that our students needed to have a T-shirt to wear on spirit days.  The front says "JV Pride" and the back says "JV A Great Place to Be  Where Character Counts!"

These darlings worked in the library, allowing visitors to make "Cat in the Hat" treats using cookies, icing and gummy lifesavers!  I've known the sweetie with the long hair since she was a preschooler, coming in to my classroom when her older brother was in Grade Three.  Can't believe how our little ones all grow up!

Important Information

We found out yesterday that all of our plans for Track meet need to revamped because our actual date is now WEDNESDAY, MAY 2nd, 2012. We appreciate all the forms that have already been filled out and returned, but for legal reasons, if the date is incorrect the note is void.  For those who are coming to our Open House here at the school tonight, Wednesday, April 25, 2012, please drop by and change the date on the form and initial.  Those who have not ordered lunch for your child yet, tomorrow is the LAST day to do so because of the need to let the Knights of Columbus know how much food to order and prepare.  Thanks for getting all of the forms back to us.  Because of the change of date, please confirm that you are able to still come and volunteer for the day.  The Track Meet cannot run without our dedicated parent volunteers.  We thank you for your continued support and involvement!

Learning the "tooth"

Sometimes it is the simple things that make the greatest impact.  The students marveled at our model of a tooth, which was simply a hard boiled egg. The shell of the egg related to the enamel on our teeth, which we want to keep clean. We even tried to brush it!

How did it get to be so dirty?  The egg on the left was left in juice for about 12 hours, the middle egg in coca cola and the last one on the right is just a simple hard

boiled egg.  The students were amazed that the coca cola would stain the egg so quickly.  They learned that if they did not brush their teeth, the germ would attach themselves and create plaque that could lead to cavities.  We could not really get that egg clean even with toothpaste!  

In the second 'eggs'periment, a hard boiled egg was left in a bowl with vinegar overnight.

The students again were amazed that the vinegar broke down the shell enough that they could 'squish' it with their fingers.  Vinegar is acidic and this reminds the students that acidic foods must be brushed off our teeth just like sugary foods.  They learned that the enamel on our teeth is the hardest substance in our bodies, even harder than our bones, but that the enamel still needs our help to keep it clean and healthy so that we can keep our teeth for our lifetime!