As you know, I spent my break in South Africa. My husband and I had a great time and did lots of fun things.
We went white water rafting in a flooded river, quad bike riding in a game park, we rode horses, went mountain biking and mountain climbing, Mr DB went off-road motorbiking while my sister and I took a drive through the fruit filled valley,
and we even played with two 5 year old and two 11 month old Cheetah. So Cool!
I hope you all received the postcards I sent you all from South Africa. I chose pictures showing some of the native people who live in South Africa. (I am sorry if you have not received yours perhaps they got lost in the post or hopefully you will still receive them soon.)
Happy Birthday to Justin, Victor, and Joshua who celebrated their birthdays during the winter break.
Last semester we spent many weeks reading the book "Kabuka" about a monkey which saves the world from drought. Each student was given a different chapter to summarize and Illustrate. They all did a tremendous job. Here are some of the pictures drawn by the students.
In math we have started looking at geometry and have learned about polygons (which have 3 or more sides, are flat and closed), quadrilaterals (which are special polygons with 4 sides), and triangles (which are polygons with 3 sides).
In English we read the story "Lon Po Po" which is similar to the western story "Little Red Riding Hood". The grammar focus was adjectives. In phonics we looked at the "or" sound which can be spelled in a number of ways including: ore (core), our (four), ar (warm), or (story). We also worked on an article comparing and contrasting two things.
In Social Studies we looked at people of the world and how we are different but also have many of the same needs. We also read a few different kinds of stories such as myths, tall tales, and legends.
In Science we have been looking at water and the water cycle.
Although 2/3 of the world is water, much of it is in the ocean and is salty so we can't drink it, some water is frozen in glaciers and so we can't drink it, some is under ground and we can't reach it. We discovered that only 3% of the worlds water is potable which means it is safe to drink... so we need to protect our water from pollution and conserve by not using too much.
In preparation for looking more closely at the water cycle next week, we looked at how rain forms in the sky. The air is full of water vapor which is like the single drops on the plastic lid. When we turned the lid over the drops did not fall down but when we joined 2 or more drops they fell from the lid. This is how rain forms too.
We also set up an evaporation experiment to see if what happens to salt water and fresh water when left outside uncovered.
During the last lesson on Friday afternoon we played the water-cycle game. Each student was a water drop and had to move between the various water stations (such as ocean, clouds, ground water, soil etc) by rolling a dice and record each station they went to. Often there was a long line at the ocean and cloud stations. At the end we counted up the number of times each student went to each station and we discovered that they went to the ocean the most. This concluded the activity very well since most water in the world, as we have learned, is found in the oceans.
On Wednesday we allocated class jobs. Congratulations to Joshua and Ricky who are our new Class President and Vice President,
and Jolene who is our new discipline monitor.
During Quiet Time this semester we are all going to work hard on our reading. Congratulations to Victor and Nicole who are the first students to finish reading 5 books and recording them in their reading journals. To receive their certificates and items for the community wall they also needed to write a short summary of one of the books they read. Keep up the good reading and lets see how many books we can all read this semester.
Some students have not brought in their second set of time capsule papers. Please remember to bring to school two pages from each subject to add to the time capsule.
I hope you have all enjoyed your first week back. Have a great weekend.
See you on Monday
Mrs DB
