Semester 2 Week 2

Hi Everyone, I hope you are having a good weekend. The sun is shining so I hope you are able to take advantage of the good weather.

We have had a good week and I hope you will enjoy sharing the things we have done.

It was Grade 1 to 6 flag ceremony on Wednesday and Nicole, Victor, and Sonia received certificates for their academic achievements during the end of semester exams. Well-done!Riki was away in Singapore for 3 days and brought back some delicious Merlion chocolates for us to share. Thank you Riki and I am glad you are back safely.

Some students are really doing great work with their reading logs .. well done to Victor, Alica, Nicole, Jolene, and Yao for your achievements this week in reading.
In English this week we read about how two bears got into trouble because they disobeyed their mother. In phonics we learned about other r control vowels for the sound /ur/ which are spelt ir, ur, er, or, and ear. In grammar we looked at adjectives that compare using the word endings -er and -est, or using the words more and most. Remember to review all these rules and your spelling and vocabulary from this week for monday's test.

In Math we learned about Perimeter (the distance around a figure) and Area (all the square units in a figure). Next week we will look at Volume.

In Social Studies we looked at some American Heros as well as some international heros such as Nelson Mandela and Christiaan Barnard. We also looked at some famous places in the US and where they are. The students have a homework assignment to find out where some famous places are in the world, such as The Great Sphinx and Table Mountain. Good luck finding out this information.

In Science we continued looking at water, the water cycle, and weather.

We made a model of the water cycle using hot water in a glass jar and a metal pan filled with ice on top. We saw how rain drops can form when water vapor touches a cold surface.
We saw how air takes up space and has pressure. To do this we put a tissue inside a paper cup and then pushed the cup into water. The air was taking up space in the cup and so the tissue did not get wet.Finally, on friday afternoon we made our own anemometers to measure wind speed. Hopefully we can try them out next week.
On Friday we were all given toothbrushes from Mr. William. The school would like the students to get into the habit of brushing their teeth after lunch each day. Please will you all bring toothpaste with you so we can start this routine. Thanks.
Next friday we will be celebrating Pi day. The first few digits of pi are 3.14159 and so some teachers like to celebrate pi on March (3) the 14th at 1:59pm but because this day is a sunday I would like to celebrate it on the previous friday 12th March. We will learn all about pi on that day and will have a competition during the last period of the day to see which student can memorize the most digits of pi.

In a couple of weeks time on 24th March the school will be celebrating its anniversary. Grades 1 to 3 will be doing a performance since we did not participate in the Christmas performances this year. We will be "kicking off" the flea market at about 9am and we hope that you will all be able to join us and watch us do the "diski" dance in honor of this year's world cup soccer in South Africa in June. (students need to wear their class Tshir, short pants (blue, black, or green), and sneakers).

So, we have a fun and busy time ahead .. I hope you all have a great weekend.

See you on Monday 3b
Mrs DB

Semester 2 Week 1

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you had a wonderful long winter break and that you enjoyed your Chinese New year.
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

End of Semester

Christmas is over, exams are over, all the end of semester tasks and parties are over.
Now it is time for a well-deserved Winter Break.
Have a great time everyone.
Here are some pictures from the past week.
Jolene, Victor, and Ricky did a great job mopping the floor outside.

Alica made sure her chair was really clean.
Nicole and Richard cleaned their cubbies really well.
Jason and Elijah were very inventive when it came to cleaning desks.
Sarah taught us some fun games - like bump and another fun game.
Playing bump was lots of fun.
Alica and Sarah had fun exchanging glasses for a while.
Sarah tried to learn how to play cards using Grade 3 rules.
Happy Birthday Nick
Happy Birthday Jolene
Happy Birthday Alica
Happy Birthday Sandra

Happy Birthday Ricky
Happy Birthday Richard
Happy Birthday Jasmine
Happy Birthday Nicole
Happy Birthday JC
Designing a village using only recyclable materials was quite a challenge but Nicole and Jasmine did a great job.
Victor and Elijah were very creative with their farm.
Great work Sonia and Wesley.
This is a great project Jolene and Nina.
Good creative thoughts Jason and Joshua
Well done 3b on getting 2nd place in the clean up competition for week 20.
Good Citizens - Jolene, Nicole, and Elijah. Well done!!
Model Student Alica. Congratulations.
Yippee we past our clean up test.
Yay ... time for Winter Break.

Happy New Year Everyone .. see you on the 22nd.