We are trying out a new way of sharing our Week’s activities. There isn’t space to tell “everything”, so each table of students chose one topic to talk about.

Table 5 is getting the first turn to choose the blog writing of the week!

Table 5 was excited to tell about the BEAR we saw at Nestor Park! Yes! A real, live, wild black bear! Mr. Della Vedova, our principal, came in through our classroom door after his Running Club practice to say that something REALLY ex citing was happening and that he was on his way to make an announcement to say that everyone had to come inside. We took turns to look through the window, because OF COURSE it is not safe or responsible to interfere with a wild animal. We were SO EXCITED though! Mrs. Boekhout did a hand count, and one-third of the class (one out of every three students) had NEVER seen a bear before! The bear was sitting in the park, just like a great big teddy bear (only WE KNOW that wild bears are dangerous!) He sat there for at least 10 minutes until he finally got up and walked slowly away through the park. Our school Custodians and noon-hour supervisors watched safely from the parking lot to make sure that all students were safely inside. Our visiting teachers from Switzerland were even MORE excited than we were, because they were SO HOPING to see a real Canadian bear before they went back home. Mrs. Deyle, who visited in our classroom, gave us her photos of the bear. How lucky we are, at Nestor School, to be in a neighbourhood that has nature so close at hand!

Table 6 wanted to tell about our latest addition to our class pets… tropical fish! Mrs. B. went to Roberto’s Pet Habitat at lunch and brought back our fish in plastic bags. The bags had to float in the fish tank for a long time until the water in the bags was the same temperature as the water in the fish tank. The next day we got to see them swimming in the fish tank… they looked happy! There were bright neon tetras that glow in the dark, colourful orange platies that were short and fat, fire phoenix guppies with fancy yellow and red tails that look like fire, a bronze catfish with funny little whiskers, and a very fast golden algae eater that is long and thin. We hope they like the pirate ship and the castle with the moving drawbridge in our classroom fish tank.

Table 1 liked all the learning we have been doing with Math Patterns. We have been making patterns with blocks, drawing patterns, and figuring out how to make the same pattern in lots of different ways. We liked doing pattern making activities on the computer. We played pattern making games and we also made our own patterns using KidPix stamps. At calendar time we have figured out that the pattern is “pumpkin, pumpkin, ghost” but Mrs. Boekhout is challenging us to see if the patterns also go DOWN the calendar. Now we are looking for patterns on the hundreds chart too!

Table 2 wanted to talk about our Spelling work this week. We did Scholastic Spelling Lesson #3 and practiced by writing down the words in a Pretest, by writing the words in our Spelling books, by doing a worksheet asking questions about the words, and by going to SpellingCity.com to play some spelling games online! The games were the MOST FUN way to practice! On Fridays we have a spelling test to see what new words we have learned to spell. Then we fill in a Spelling Graph to show how many words we knew at the beginning of the week, and how many MORE words we can spell at the end of the week! We also learn 5 “Word Wall Doozers” at our “Oral Language Skills” time before Calendar. We practice by saying the words out loud, by writing them in the air, and by writing them on our arms. Mrs. Boekhout calls that “kinesthetic learning”. Some people learn best by looking, some by hearing the words, and some by writing with a body movement. On Fridays we have a “Word Wall Quiz” where we have to call out the spellings. Then the 5 words go up on the Word Wall… and we are NEVER allowed to spell them wrong again… because we can SEE THEM right on the wall!!!

Table 3 enjoyed our first two Buddy times. Our “Big Buddies” are in Mrs. Torres’ Grade 5 class. The first time we met, we drew pictures of each other! Some of the pictures were pretty funny, but we are learning to find ways to encourage each other about our drawings. The next time we met we worked on turkey pictures. The big buddies helped us color in the feathers and cut out the pieces. It was fun talking with our buddies while we worked. At the end of our time, Mrs. Boekhout had us make “Gobble, Gobble” good-byes to each other… that was funny!

Table 4 talked about our special event coming up… Thanksgiving Weekend! We learned about turkeys this week. We read a book about wild and domestic turkeys. We shared our “Turkey homework” and learned lots of turkey facts, for example, the Tom Turkey is the male and he has the fancy tail feathers and is the one that says “gobble”. We did a worksheet on turkey anatomy (Do you know what these are: Wattle? Beard? Spur? Caruncle?) We made turkey pictures (the tail feathers had turkey words in alphabetic order) with our Gr. 5 buddies. It was really fun doing the Turkey Trot on the top field. The whole school participated. Riley was the lucky one to win the Turkey Trot prize! 

Mrs. Boekhout’s “Pick of the Week” is our story “The Golden Rule”. This beautiful story told us how every religion of the world has its own way of expressing a wonderful rule to live by. That rule is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It doesn’t matter how you express it, the meaning is the same! If you wouldn’t like someone to do something to you… then don’t do it to someone else! As the little boy in the story says to his Grandpa, wouldn’t it be wonderful if people, countries, and the whole world lived by this rule! However, we can only be accountable for ourselves, so let’s just see if WE can live by this rule OURSELVES!