What We're Up To This Week - December 8th-12th

Language 
-we filled in our "How Do You Feel Today?" surveys at the beginning of the day and looked at our results in a Wordle and drew conclusions based on the size of words (the bigger the word, the more times we repeated it)
-we will be writing "12 Days of Giving" lists, using descriptive words, based on the song, "12 Days of Christmas" and the book "A Porcupine in a Pine Tree"
-we read letters from our Book Buddies about what they have learned from us and in their practicum classrooms
-we wrote letters to our Book Buddies about what we do to celebrate winter holidays and gave them tips on how to be great teachers

Math
-we finished our independent Math review of measurement, fractions and reading time tables
-students are working in small groups to go over any questions or problems they had and to help each other to solve them
-we learned about computer programming and got excited for our Hour of Code this week! We practiced by writing four lines of code together on code.org
-we are going to wait and do our Hour of Code next week!
-we are practicing accurately using rulers and metre sticks and measuring length and perimeter in centimetres
-students will work in pairs to estimate the perimeter and then check their estimates by measuring at least four rectangular or square objects in our classroom

Science 
-we discussed how to make the conditions in our classroom Science Lab optimal for the babies we study and experiment on
-Baby Leo is now seven months old, he came in for his third visit and we used our new planning and organization system to take detailed, organized notes
-Baby Alice is coming in on Thursday and we will be to see what is new for her at 8 months!
-Alison from Maker Junior brought Hitchbot Jr back to our class. He was a hit at the Toronto Mini Maker Faire! Parades of kids followed him everywhere he went on Alison's son's back! We were excited to see that he came back with a badge and an LED name tag! She had some advice about how we could change his arms to make him fit better in crowds and how we can use his GPS. We have to work on our next iteration (version) of Hitchbot Jr by taking her ideas into account. We hope he'll start travelling soon. If you'd like to take him home for the holidays, or better yet, take him ON holidays somewhere you're going, let us know!
-we reflected on the design process and how it has felt to take Hitchbot Jr from an idea to a real robot

Phys Ed
-we are playing one of our favourite games, World Domination
-we are dancing and singing with wacky videos on Go Noodle

Art
-we will be making drawings to show what our 12 Days of Giving look like

Music
-students work with Andrew on Tuesday afternoons in Music

Learning Skills
-we had 15 minutes of Free Time left from last week. Students built with blocks, played school and played with the Kinetic Sand

Tree Families
-our theme this month is acceptance. Our big idea is to respect and celebrate others' preferences and ideas.
-on Wednesday, we will be joining our Tree Families to practice holiday songs that we'll be singing as a school next week