Hello everyone,
Last blog of the year!
Take a look at all the activities you could ask your child to do with you over the next 2 weeks of holidays just in case your child says there is nothing to do and turns to you for advice.....

 Multiplication and division fact families

Dice are needed for this game to create multiplication and division sentences.

 Practise using the multiplication chart.

 Practise skip counting.

 Practise spelling the word wall words we've done so far.

Our class made slime thanks to some classroom experts on slime making. This was a great real life example of following instructions to make something. We encountered 1 little "glitch." The slime was a little too sticky for me to feel comfortable to send home but........you can make it at home yourselves. Your child has seen it already so they can walk you through the steps.
Materials: Glue (we used about a cup per group)
                 Glitter
                 Foaming shaving cream (about 3 squirts per bowl)
                 Activator (we used liquid Tide detergent)
                 Bowl
                 Wooden spoon

 1. Pour the glue in a bowl.

 2. Shake as much sprinkles as you want to see in your slime.

 3. Put white foamy shaving cream in with the sprinkles and the glue.

 4. Stir everything together will a sturdy spoon. (We used a plastic spoon which broke for most of us)

5. Add a teaspoon at a time of an activator and stir again.

6. Keep adding a teaspoon of an activator and keep stirring until you have the right texture.

This easy activity is so quick to do but will give you and your child hours of enjoyment.

A FEW THINGS TO REMEMBER.......

I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous New Year. See you all back on January 6th.

Hello everyone,
Another busy week to ask your child lots of questions about.

 The grade 3's gospel value that we are concentrating on is LOVE. Here, the grade 3s spent a block together creating beautiful homemade Christmas cards to be distributed at a local nursing home. Ask your child to explain the many ways LOVE can be seen, heard, acted upon and shared.

 In Math, our class learned about division in two ways. The first, knowing how many people are sharing things and the second, knowing how much things can go into each equal group.

Much time was spent to uncover major concepts such as why, how and when to divide and how division is related to multiplication. Now what is needed is lots of practice to master those facts as efficiently as possible.

 Our class is still working on PROCEDURAL WRITING in Language. Together, we wrote an example of procedural text about how to visit our class blog. We all followed another example of PROCEDURAL text by attempting to build a paper airplane. A fun time was had by all after we all successfully built one according to the steps and diagrams given to us.

 Monday December 16th to the 20th is Spirit Week.

A FEW THINGS TO REMEMBER......

• Our school's Christmas concert is this coming Thursday December 19th. Every grade performs one song to accompany the pageant put on by the Drama Club. If your child in our class is the oldest and only in the school you will be receiving yellow tickets to the morning performance at 9:30 am in the gym. If you have an older child in the junior grades, you will be receiving green tickets for the exact same performance but it is at 1:00 pm. Each family will only receive a sheet with 4 whether you have yellow am tickets or green pm tickets.
• There will be no homework given out this coming week but as usual you are always encouraged to use the student portal to practice skills and concepts we've been exploring in the classroom. Skip counting is always a necessary skill that can practised anywhere and for any amounts of time. 
• Please check back for one more post on Friday December 20th.

Hello everyone,
Take a look at a week in review in photos!

 We are in the Advent season that leads us to Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas,  you are cordially invited to the St. Rita Christmas Pageant. Please look in your child's agenda. They received this note on Friday.

I am glad to see that some of our students visited the blog to practice our Christmas song. I was told that there was a glitch. I think I might have fixed the glitch (with some help from my daughter).

Division was the order of the day for our math lessons.

 Ask your child to explain how division and sharing are related

We have moved on to PROCEDURAL text in our language lessons.

Some students have already made connections to what they already knew about procedural text and spent some time trying to convince me that our class should make slime. They were very convincing!

We have also wrapped up our Science unit on Strong and Stable Structures. The students were challenged to construct a basketball holder using only newspaper and masking tape. The groups encountered some glitches but with that, good peer feedback was given in order for improvements to be made...and we also ran out of time which was another glitch!

Mrs. Sherwin introduced the class to music through coding.

Hello everyone,
Take a look. Ask your child questions to EXPLAIN what our goals were for the lesson or activity in any of the photos.
In Math, our class has had a smooth transition from skip counting to MULTIPLICATION.

We learned that there are many ways to get to the other side of the = sign in a multiplication sentence.

 We discussed the important math vocabulary words that we needed to feel comfortable using.

 We looked at what truly makes a math sentence a multiplication sentence.

By the end of the week many of us mastered using many strategies to find the PRODUCT of any 2 FACTORS. 

Here is a link to our Math Up unit on multiplication.
https://www.mathup.ca/share?code=eyJHcmFkZUlkIjoiNCIsIlRvcGljSWQiOiIxMTgiLCJMZXNzb25JZCI6IjY0NSIsIlBhdGhJZCI6Ii0xNSIsIlBhcnQiOiJNaW5pIExlc3NvbiIsIlNlY3Rpb24iOjEsIlNlY3Rpb25UaXRsZSI6IlN1bSBJdCBVUCIsIlVzZXIiOiI5NjUyOkxpc2EgUGlldHJhbnRvbmlvIiwiRGF0ZSI6IjExLzMwLzIwMTkiLCJBbGxvd05hdiI6dHJ1ZX0

In the Arts, we have moved on from Visual Arts to Music. Ask your child how relates music relates to this photo below.

Here is the link if you want to know more or if your child wants to show you the 4 instrument families in an orchestra.
http://www.sfskids.org/classic/templates/home.asp?pageid=1

Thanks to our wonderful School Council at St. Rita, our students had the opportunity to participate in St. Rita's annual Cake Walk.

A FEW THINGS TO REMEMBER.........

• White Elephant Sale is this coming Friday. Please bring in any items that you are willing to donate. See last week's blog for more information.
• Try your best to ensure your child has small denominations of money if you want your child to purchase items on Friday at the sale.

           

• St. Rita School is proud to announce its continued involvement in the Angel Tree initiative.  The angels on the tree support students from our school exclusively. If your family is interested in participating in this worthy cause, please instruct your child to take an angel off the tree. The angels are organized by gender and age for those who already have a special gift in mind. We ask that the gifts be returned back to the school by Friday December 13th. Please wrap the gift and return the angel attached to the gift. Thank you for your support during this blessed Christmas season.  
• We are still in need of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper for our last Science experiment in Strong and Stable Structures. Have your child bring them in ASAP if you are willing to donate them.

Have a good week. I know we will!