Merry Christmas!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of my students, 

their families, and my loyal blog followers (HI Mom!)

a very Merry Christmas!

Don't forget that Jesus is the reason for the season, and as Father Roche has said: "Oh, Oh, Oh! Not: Ho, Ho, Ho!"

See you in church!

Volleyball and Enjoy the Christmas Break!

Our class went and watched the staff versus student volleyball game in the gym.  Here are a few pictures.

             

As performed by the Holy Names High School Concert Band in our gym last week, "We Wish You  Merry Christmas"!

Blog Math and BINGO!

Please notice that a new "Blog Math" question was not assigned this week.  Therefore, there will not be a question due the first Tuesday back after the holidays (Jan 10).  There will be a question assigned on January 11 that will be due the following week.  Enjoy a break from this weekly task.

The answer to last week's question was that the rate was 9 km/L of fuel can be travelled, so if 12 L was consumed, 132 km would be travelled at that rate. 

We had a great time playing school-wide BINGO on Wednesday afternoon.

We had many winners and even one multiple-time winner!

Little Picassos - Literally

For our latest art project, the students have learned about Picasso and how he invented the style of painting know as cubism - an original abstract concept.  In addition, we reviewed the colour wheel (primary, secondary, intermediate/tertiary colours) and I taught them a new concept:  analogous colours.  Ask them about it! Check out our work as it progresses.

Practice using primary colours to make secondary and tertiary colours.  We also added black to make shades and white to make tints.

Next we used our rulers to draw Christmas trees and add the cubism effect.

Finally, we used paper plates as paint palettes and created our own sets of analogous colours to paint our abstract art.

 

 

 

HNHS Band Performance and Math

Singing Performers

Concert Band

Piano/Guitar Performers

We were fortunate enough to get to enjoy performances by many talented students from Holy Names High School on Friday afternoon, in our gym.  There were quite a few alumni of St. Gabriel School as well!

As our warm-up activity in math yesterday,  I posed the question that you see here.  The students were told that they could work alone, with a partner, or in a group.  We brainstormed the tools that they could use to reasonably and accurately display this before they came up with math calculations that would describe this.  They worked for almost 45 minutes and it was interesting to see the transition in thinking.  Since many students had no idea of the correct answer, they thought that they needed a lot less tools than they did.  Once they realized this, I watched groups pool their resources to complete the task.  In the end two models were successfully made:  one of paper and one of a combination of base 10 blocks and centicubes.  Check out the photo gallery.

Initial small groups:

 

After realizing how many tools were needed and the amount of time and space required to complete the task, Check out how some students migrated to other groups and pooled their supplies.  Some students were stubborn about this and required much coaxing.
New groupings:

...and the final products!  Be sure to check out the anchor chart and reinforce with your child that converting between linear units is not even close to the same as converting between square units!

One square metre using Base 10 and centicubes.

One square metre using centimetre grid paper.

Good News and Great News!

Congratulations to the following students who won the Good News ticket draw on Friday:  Carlo, Molly, and Averi.  Keep up the good work!

Congratulations to one of our grade sevens who was awarded with his Black Belt at the Black Belt Promotion that was held on Thursday at Mr. Kersey's Karate School.

The grand total is in!  Our class contributed a whopping 163 toiletry items to the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Corpus Christi Church!  Thank you so much to all of you who so generously donated to a great cause!  Way to go Guardians!

Here is our latest collection of vocabulary words.  Keep them coming!

'Tis the Season

Beginning today and continuing for most of next week, there will be many special activities going on in the school to mark the Christmas Season and to reward students for their efforts in our fall fundraiser. Here is the itinerary as it stands today:

This afternoon we will be entertained by the Holy Names High School Band in the gym (our gym time has to be cancelled as a result, but we get extra art time instead!).

Tuesday afternoon, the grade 4 to 8 students will be treated to the movie "Prancer" and free popcorn, in the gym.

Wednesday afternoon the whole school will participate in a BINGO game.

Thursday afternoon there will be a staff/student volleyball game in the gym - we will attend only if our art projects are complete. We will have a math test in the morning.

Friday morning we will attend an assembly and be entertained by our rock bands and choir - I anticipate a Christmas show of sorts. 

 In our class, we will also enjoy our pizza party lunch that we earned for collecting so many pledges for the read-a-thon.  Each student will receive three pieces of pizza and one beverage.  If anyone would like to bring in treats/dessert for the class, you may.  Please remember that all treats must be nut/peanut free, and if there is dairy in them, please clearly label them as such so that we may respect those who have special dietary requirements.

Some students remind me on a regular basis about our time in the snow in Curry Park that we also earned.  I have not forgotten, but it will be delayed until after Christmas.  The cold and snow have come up quickly and this week it was too cold.  Secondly, I think it is better to complete units of study before Christmas rather than continue them after Christmas, so we are completing work in a timely manner.