October Rustlings

The leaves are such beautiful colours these days, and it inspired my choice for our latest art project. Look for pictures to come soon. I just need time to get the bulletin board cleared off so I can put the new projects up. Our focus in the first two art projects was composition and value. This project also introduced perspective. We used oil pastels to draw a tree from the ground level looking up, added a blue wash for the sky, and then sponge painted tempera paint for the fall leaves.

As we are approaching Halloween, I also chose to focus our writing lesson on creative story writing where students craft a story where their character attempts a trick or a treat. The writing focus for this particular piece was using a variety of transition words to start sentences. Here are just a few snippets of some really great sentences:

• At first it felt odd.
• Ordinarily, like any night, Matt and Mieco would go all around the town collecting those yummy treats from houses.
• Once Morgan heard about what candy would be in the haunted house, he sprinted up to his bedroom to tell his brother Bergen what he heard.
• At last, it was Halloween night.
• Rob and Fred would normally be not within five blocks of here, but tonight they somehow got here and his brother had dared him to go inside!

We are getting to the climax of our exciting read aloud, Seven Dead Pirates. This book is a great example of how the author builds up to the most exciting part of the story, then slows the action down to really build up the tension. We hope to finish this book by the end of the week.

Today we watched the video for week three of the BE ACTIVE EVERYDAY challenge. Students created a personal list of five ways to get active play (body moving, pulse rising, possibly sweating) in place of screen time. You can view the video on the website (click here). 

I want to say thanks to Katelyn's dad who spent an hour with us on Monday afternoon explaining how the respiratory system works. Students got to listen to their heart and lungs with a stethoscope and see their oxygen saturation levels and pulse using a pulse oximeter. Hopefully, your child can explain how this system brings in oxygen and disposes of carbon dioxide using their model of the lung.  

Reminders:

• If you haven't yet done so, please send in your goal-setting conference time requests. 
• No school on Friday. I will be attending the PITA conference for intermediate teachers.