Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

We had beautiful weather for our field trip to Ukrainian Village. The kids were all so well behaved and really enjoyed the day. We started off in the Russia School, doing a private Pioneer Classroom session. Our teacher took us back to May 22, 1927.

Then we had a picnic lunch, followed by a guided tour of some of the other buildings on site. We started out at a Burdei (the home to newly arrived immigrants in 1900). Then we went to the Slemko settlement (1918-1919) where we saw the house, pigsty and farm equipment. We hopped on a horse and buggy that took us to the Townsite (1925-1930) where we toured the Wostok Hardware Store, Demchuk Blacksmith Shop, Bellis Home Grain Company Elevator, Hilliard Hotel and St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church. It was a GREAT day filled with a lot of learning!

We also served the students a Ukrainian lunch this week, which consisted of perogies, kubasa and cabbage rolls. THANK YOU so much to our parent volunteers who came in to prep all of the food for the Grade 3 classes!

We finalized our study of Ukraine by stamping our passports. 

This week in Language Arts, we continued writing paragraphs and started illustrating our "All About Me" project. 

We have also been working on daily review sheets. Sentence structure, grammar, spelling and conventions are all included in this review.  

In Math, we compared units of measurement. The students had to decide on the best unit of measurement (centimeters, meters, and kilometers) to use when finding the lengths of different objects or the distance between two specific reference points. They learned how to convert units of measurement. For example, 100 cm = 1 m, 769 cm = 7 m and 68 cm., 2 m and 34 cm = 234 cm. They also started working on problem solving questions. We also began lessons on perimeter. The students used centimeters to find the perimeter of different shapes. 

In Science, we continued to work through the Life Cycle unit. The students have been observing the changes that have been taking place and we have been working through a Butterfly Life Cycle booklet to learn about each stage.

 In Art this week, we learned about pointillism which is a series of small dots that makes a picture. The students started with the black sections of their butterfly this week and will fill in the colour next week.

Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!

Bike Safety Week!

Throughout the week, the students took part in a number of activities to help them with their biking skills. They kids improved their balancing, turning and stopping. They also learned proper hand signals for a left turn, right turn and stopping. They finished the week with a "Bike Rodeo" so they could demonstrate the skills they had been working on. The following stations were set up in the arena and each student had the opportunity to participate...Figure Eight, Skinny Track, Slow Race, Paper Boy and Slalom.

In Language Arts this week, we started with Journal writing. The kids worked on a "Free Write" about any topic they wished to write about. Most of the students enjoy telling us about their weekend, some wrote about Spring sports and others are working on short stories.

We used a few minutes each day to review some writing skills that we have been reinforcing throughout the year such as, making complete sentences, using adjectives, having proper conventions and capitalization and changing words into plural form. 

We read some stories as a class from our "Collections" series. The students have become more confident in reading aloud to the class and continue to work on their fluency and expression.

We also completed a Making Words activity. Students were given the following letters, u, s, n, w, o, f, r, e, l, and asked to make 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 letter words. They had five minutes to work on their own and then another five to work with a partner. We worked as a class to compile a final list of words. The mystery word was SUNFLOWER! 

We also completed another handwriting letter - Bb.

In Math, we continued to work through our Measurement unit. The students worked on measuring using centimeters and meters. They also estimated the lengths of different objects. 

They also learned about a kilometre and how it is 1000 metres. 

The students have been working on brochures for the country of Ukraine. The brochure is divided into six different topics. Using their "jot" notes, they picked out a few key points for each topic and put them into sentences. Then they illustrated the pages in their brochure. 

We will be starting our new science unit on Life Cycles next week. To kick off the unit, we had an exciting surprise show up at the end of the week. We will be watching the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies in our classroom!!

Life Cycle books were a popular choice during Read to Self!!

Congratulations to our super star readers for the week!

Thanks to our Student of the Week for the yummy treat and reading us your favourite book!