Week of May 2-6 Recap

Happy Belated Mother's Day! I hope all of you mothers' out there took some time to relax and enjoy the sunshine on Saturday before the windy Mother's Day weather we had :)

Week at a Glance
Monday, May 9 - Library Day
                          - School Council Meeting
Tuesday, May 10 - Fire Safety Presentation (Grade 3)
Thursday, May 12 - Kindergarten Information Night 7:00pm
Friday, May 13 - Yoga Workshop
                        - DRESS FANCY DAY!
                        - Pizza Day
                        - Jump Rope for Heart Assembly


We've been exploring 3D solids in both grade 2 and grade 3 over the past week, looking at the properties of 3D solids (faces, arêtes, sommets), whether they slide or roll, and how 3D solids look when they are deconstructed into their 2D shapes components. 

 

         

The structure is finally open for business! Hooray!

We hope you loved our Mother's Day art as much as we loved creating them!

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Grade 6 Tech Expo last week. The Grade 6 EFI students had been working on self-directed tech-related projects these days, inspired by the concept of Genius Hour. We saw some pretty awesome demos, including drones, 3D printers, Ollies, and green screen pictures.

Week of April 25 - 29 Recap

Hello everyone! We're getting to that crazy busy time of year where there are a million things going on, so hold onto to your hats!

Week at a Glance
Monday, May 2 - Book Fair (Runs all week!)
                       - Music Monday
Wednesday, May 4 - Adventures in Engineering Science Workshops (Grade 2 and 3)
                             - Hot Dog Day
Thursday, May 5 - Scientists in School (Grade 3 only)
Friday, May 6 - Pizza Day
                     - Freezie Friday (2nd recess)



Last week, we started discussing how to make our writing more exciting and engaging for the reader. The students decided that using diverse words and exciting words helped make our writing stronger and more interesting. We then did a lesson about adjectives to describe popcorn - words that POP - les mots qui éclatent! From there, the students chose an animal, place or thing and tried to find 10-12 interesting adjectives to describe their object and make their descriptive writing pop!

We've still been discussing the colonisation of Upper Canada in the 1800s (grade 3) and the differences and similarities between children's lives in different countries around the world (grade 2).

In Visual Art, we are doing some mixed media spring art, using paint and tissue paper to create a flower landscape. They are still works in progress, but here's some pictures of the beginning steps.

April Update

Week at a Glance

Monday, April 18 - Library Day

Wednesday, April 20 - Used Book Sale (see information below)

                                - Subway Day

Friday, April 22 - Twin Day

                        - Pizza Day

A.C.E.S. Annual Used Children’s Book Sale

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

All books will cost $0.50. We will also be drawing for several baskets full of Spring gardening goodies. Tickets will be available at the sale at a cost of 3 tickets for $1.00.

Kindergarten students will be escorted to the book sale by their Grade 5/6 buddies. The book sale will be open to students accompanied by parents from 3:00 – 3:30 after school. Proceeds from this sale will be used to support the maintenance of existing and future greening initiatives.

We are still in need of gently used books and will gladly be accepting donations until the morning of Wednesday, April 20.

Math

Both the grade 2 and 3 students have been exploring measurement using non-standard (pencils, paper clips) and standard (cm, m) units. The students learned a few tricks for estimating length (e.g. the width of the index finger is approximately 1cm while the width of a child's hand from index to baby finger is about 10 cm). We have also been working on perimeter and area. Some fun activities we completed to keep in fun included our perimeter zoo where the students designed an enclosure for a specific animal and then had to measure the enclosure's perimeter, and a name area activity. Check out some pictures below!

Science

The grade 3s have been hard at work completing their research projects on famous structures around the world. Stay tuned for some pictures of the finished products in an upcoming post! The grade 2s have finished up their simple machines unit and have started exploring and discovering states of matter (états de matière - solide, liquide et gaz). We discovered the 3 different states of matter with an introductory experiment using Jello. We have also done two other experiments - one exploring solids that are waterproof and another exploring how liquids and solids interact.

Social Studies

The grade 2s have begun a new unit learning about the world around us - hemispheres, continents, and their differing climates. The grade 3s have begun their new unit learning about life in Upper Canada in the early 1800s. Up until now, we've discussed how the Europeans began to immigrate to Canada and what life was like when they first arrived.

Congratulations to our 2 class representatives for the Storytelling Finals - Brandon and Erica!

Thank you too all the parents who contributed to allow us to present the Corpus dance presentation of Camping Royale!

March Update

Happy Spring everyone!

Hopefully the weather will stay nice and we'll have no more snowy surprises!! A couple of quick photo updates on our busy, very busy, past few weeks and some upcoming events.

Week at a Glance
Monday, March 28 - Easter Monday (no school)
Tuesday, March 29 - Corpus dance presentation - Camping Royale
Thursday, March 31 - Storytelling Finals in the gym
Friday, April 1 - Pizza Day
                         - Spirit Day: Wear your ACES colours!!
                         - WE Club Bake Sale for the Breakfast Program (see below for details)

ACES WeSchool Bake Sale

When: Friday, April 1

What: Nut-free, homemade baked goods for $1 (exact change is appreciated) *

Why: To raise funds for the Breakfast for Learning, a national charity that educates, and empowers communities to deliver school based nutrition programs, helping children and youth realize their full potential in life.

* Limit one item per student, while supplies last!

Our weekly handstand challenge - we're up to 30 seconds without stopping!

TIC TAC TOE - phys ed style! Ask your children to explain the game to you!

St. Patrick's Day Art

Saidat Assembly

Hopefully your children explained a little bit about this AMAZING and inspiring speaker we were lucky enough to see last week. Saidat has a show on YTV and shares some amazing messages with the students about how to cope when encountering obstacles and developing resilient coping strategies.

The main messages that we took away from this assembly:

1) When you encounter an obstacle or difficult question, you should:

         LISTEN to the instructions or your friend

        ASK for help (teachers are here to help you!)

        TRY and TRY again if it doesn't work right away

        YOUR MIND IS GROWING ALL THE TIME!!!

2) When you're negative self-talking, don't forget to use the power of YET!

           I can't do it! VS I can't do it YET

           I don't know how to do it VS I don't know how to do it YET

Then we got to participate in an awesome hip hop workshop run by Saidat herself :)

Grade 3 Science - Stable Structures

Here are our grade 3 students building and testing their stable structure, designed to hold 5 CD cases. The students discovered that their original building plans didn't always work and then had to find alternate building methods. We discovered that triangles and pyramids were more stable than squares and cubes.