New Word Wall Words

Today is Monday which means...new spelling words (yay!)
This week's word wall words are:
1) up
2) it
3) him
4) I
5) for
6) or
7) four
8) we
9) man
10) men
We talked about how some of the words on our list are homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things. The homophones for this week include:
I and eye
for and four
or and oar
we and wii
We talked about how important our listening skills will be this week because we will need to hear the sentence given to figure out the correct word to use based on its meaning. This would be a good skill to practice this week at home.

We continued to work on our stacked paper art today to create our Oompa Loompas. Today we had to trace our body and hands on white paper to create the overalls and gloves our Oompa Loompas will wear. We did a much better job with listening and following instructions.

Today we started a new concept in math to help us with our work when Mrs. Stables, the artist in residence, comes to our classroom. We talked about measurement. We brainstormed reasons why we measure things like: to figure out how big or small something is, to make discoveries if you are a scientist, to make sure your furniture fits in a room or your house and to cook. Ms. Binks showed us a square of paper and we had to figure out objects we could use to measure it. Some of our ideas included: a ruler, a measuring tape, our hand, a pencil and popsicle sticks. We described the size of the square by comparing it to objects it was the same size as, bigger than and smaller than. Our square is as big as a: book, iPad, clock, shoe and water bottle. It is bigger than: a finger, a marker, the donut magnet, a ladybug and a pencil. It is smaller than: the SMARTboard, the Earth, a chair and the country of Canada. We talked about one type of unit we can used in measurement called non-standard units. These include objects and items that can be used to measure with. We had to use the units of books and markers to measure objects are the classroom. It was very interesting that very few of us found the same results. We talked about how this is because we all used different sizes of books and markers. Non-standard units of measurement can be helpful, but they may result in finding different answers. Tomorrow we will continue our work around measurement with a focus on standard units of measurement.

In science today, some of us began to build our machines for Willy Wonka based on our blueprints. We were very excited to get started. It was interesting to see all of the different materials and how differently each group was using the materials in their creations. We will continue to build and test our inventions throughout the week.

Reminders:
- No school on Friday or Monday for students
- Practice your spelling words...our test will be on Thursday this week
- Please return swimming forms
- Book orders are due back by Thursday