Designing with Geometry!

I was so glad all of you enjoyed reading If You Look Around You by Fulvio Testa. To refresh your memory, the book was about geometric shapes in scenes of children in- and out-of-doors.  After we read the book we headed outside and I hope all of you had fun on our nature walk! I also hope you were able to find many shapes in the neighbourhood just like in the story. All of you are really great at identifying and describing various two-dimensional shapes! You can test your knowledge with this fun guessing game.

This weekend for homework I would like you to create a picture by combining several two-dimentional shapes just like we did in class today. Have a look at the picture below, how many shapes can you find?

If you think you know your shapes really well then why not try out this fun activity where you are given a picture and you must fill in the correct shapes to make the picture complete!

Happy hunting!

Ms. Fletcher

Animal Research

Students, I just want you to know how proud I am of all of you! Your research skills are very impressive and I especially liked how well all of you worked today in the library. I hope the books and magazines were useful in your research. Remember, you are to choose two animals and describe their physical characteristics and they're behavioural characteristics. You can either draw a picture of your animals or you can find a picture in a magazine or online. You must write at least 5 sentences about each animal to go along with the picture. I will give you more time in class this week to work on your projects but I really hope you will try to do more research on your own at home. Kids Planet lets you find out more about animals in any part of the world.

This project will help develop your investigation skills as well as to help you understand that animals have distinct characteristics.

I was just reading about the Atlantic puffin online and I thought I would share with you some of my findings! Atlantic puffins are birds that live at sea most of their lives. They fly through the air like most birds, but they also "fly" through the water, using their wings as paddles. As they swim, they use their webbed feet to steer, much as a boat uses a rudder. Isn't that fascinating! Why not check out more animals and cool facts about them in the National Geographic Kids page. 

I look forward to learning about all of your animals!

Ms. Fletcher

Measurement

First of all I want to congratulate all of you for a fantastic job this week! We have been working together to estimate and measure length, height and distance using standard units and non-standard units of measurement. So far we have been measuring objects found in the classroom and over the Easter break I would like all of you to continue improving your measuring skills at home. Please find five objects in your house that you can measure. Remember to first estimate the length or the height of the object and then measure the object. To measure the object you can use either a ruler or a non-standard form of measurement such as a paperclip. During today’s class we measured with rulers and blocks. When we used the blocks we all seemed to get different answers; however, when we used the rulers our answers were a lot more similar. The ruler is a standard form of measurement and the blocks are a form of non-standard measurement. I can't wait to see what you measure in your home and how you measure it!

Why not also try a few online games to help practice your measuring skills? These websites can help you decide which measuring tool to use or to help you estimate an objects length.

Good luck and happy measuring!