January 11

Our First Week Back

Welcome back, Grade 3s! Did you have a nice holiday? What kept you busy over Christmas?

It’s been a wonderful week back together. The weather has been…wintery! We’ve had plenty of snow to keep us busy at recess. We even tried snowshoeing! 

We are continuing to write our rough copies of our stories about being trapped in a snowglobe. So, stay tuned for the finished products coming soon! We have launched into our reading unit all about nonfiction.  Our math unit is in learning all about shapes, in particular 3D shapes. We’ve been investigating how prisms and pyramids are different from each other. We looked at nets of various shapes and sometimes were quite surprised at what the net looked like when the shape was “unfolded”.

How many different 3D shapes can you find around your home?

In Social Studies, we have been learning from different perspectives of European peoples leaving their home country in search of a new way of life in Canada. As well, we’ve been gaining an understanding how the Indigenous peoples and newcomers interacted with one another.

Recently, we learned about the buffalo and how important they were to the Cree people. We listened to a read aloud online called Honouring the Buffalo by Judith Silverthorne. We were amazed at how many ways the Cree used the buffalo parts.

In art, we were working with warm or cool colours to create a background for our snowy scene. Our next stage is to paint some birch trees with shadows. Stay tuned for our final products! We can’t wait to share them with you.

Category: Math, Reading Workshop, Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk, The Arts, Writing Workshop | LEAVE A COMMENT
December 22

Merry Christmas!

It’s a most holy and special time of year! The 4th Advent candle (another purple candle) will be lit this Sunday which means that Jesus’ birthday is right around the corner! On December 25, we celebrate the birth of our King.

Our Grade 3s and myself wish you and your families a blessed, beautiful, and wonderful Christmas! Gather with the ones you love, and remember the true reason for the season.

God Bless and have a Happy New Year!

Mrs. Sullivan

 

Here is a video we watched in class and had good discussion around the term “gift” and how rich are lives really all simply with the things we already have and most importantly the people in our lives who love us.

Category: Religion & Family Life, Teacher Talk, The Arts | LEAVE A COMMENT
December 15

December Musings

December is always a busy month, full of festive feelings, art projects, and excitement.

So, what are some things we’ve been doing this month?

We welcomed Mr. Downes into our classroom last Monday. He is an expert in technology and in how to use our Chromebooks effectively. He focused a lot on Google Read & Write and gave us some great suggestions. We have been using our Google Drive a fair amount this year and Google Read & Write can be a wonderful tool to help us read online and also write all sorts of things. Thank you, Mr. D for coming in and spending time with us.

In math, a small project we completed was our very own bead pattern. We selected several beads as part of the “core” of our pattern. We had to repeat our pattern. We needed to include at least 3 attributes. We drew our pattern, described it, and completed other criteria. 

We’ve been busy completing 3 Christmas art tasks. We have been painting a background for our Nativity scene art. We also brought in a Pringles can to create our very own nutcracker.  Stay tuned for an updated post on our completed projects!

Category: Math, Teacher Talk, Tech Talk, The Arts | 1 Comment on December Musings
December 5

Christmas Concert

Bravo to all of you who attended our school’s Christmas concert! The gym was full of excited family members ready to snap photos and videos of your performance.

You looked smashing in your festive colours, outfits, and accessories. You sang beautifully and made us all proud. Great work!

Category: Teacher Talk, The Arts | 1 Comment on Christmas Concert
November 18

Advent Concert Practice

Hi Grade 3s,

To practice your songs, Ms. Young has requested we post them and you can sing along. The concert is on Dec. 4 @ 6pm in the gym.

Please note that more details will be sent out to parents in the coming weeks through the school weekly email. (You will also be receiving further information about your class’s participation in the coming weeks, as well!)

Prince of Peace (Song without Vocals) – Instrumental Track)
Gonna Catch That Santa (**This song includes the vocals…we are working on finding a track that is only instruemntal but for now students have been singing along with this track.)
Free Sing Clipart Black And White, Download Free Sing Clipart Black And White png images, Free ClipArts on Clipart Library

 

 

Category: Teacher Talk, The Arts | 2 Comments on Advent Concert Practice
November 11

We are Peacemakers

Today is Remembrance Day. After the school assembly, we discussed what is a peacemaker? What is a peace breaker? We brainstormed how we can be peacemakers in our school, at home, in the community. 

What is peace? Recently, we read a book the students were already familiar with called “The Peace Book” by Todd Parr. It’s such a colourful book and looks at different ways to think about what peace means. Its ideas are simple and very relatable. This book inspired us to write our own Peace Book that will stay in our class library. 

The Peace Book eBook : Parr, Todd: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

In art class we learned about artist Georgia O’Keefe. We used her famous flower paintings as inspiration for our own poppy art.

If you don’t know about Georgia O’Keefe, have a look at this short video!

First we used pencil to draw a large poppy on square black paper. We noticed Georgia’s flowers often went off the page so we tried to do that as well.

Next, we outlined our flower with white glue to create texture. After it dried, we used oil pastels to colour in our flower. What do you think?

Have you ever seen a real poppy?

What does peace mean to you?

 

 

Category: Religion & Family Life, Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk, The Arts | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 8

The Dawn Truce

As a culminating activity to our read aloud, The Wild Robot, we held our very own Dawn Truce. If you’re not familiar with what that is, in the book, the animals and Roz the robot gather in the great meadow at dawn to share ideas, problems, and so on. They promise each other that predators and prey will behave themselves and not hunt one another. 

Each student selected an animal or character from the novel and came prepared with an “issue” they needed to discuss at the Dawn Truce. They all did a really fantastic job and seemed to enjoy playing “in role” as the activity required. Our Roz the robot amazed us all with his robot costume he prepared. Many other students also put a lot of time into their costume or accessory. Well done everyone! 

We learned about tableau and that it means a frozen picture. We learned the rules of tableau and in groups, we re-created key scenes from the book using frozen pictures. If you know the book, can you tell which scenes we have captured with tableau?  

We enjoyed going to the movies as a class and seeing how the book differed from the film. Afterwards, we debriefed and did a compare and contrast. We noticed some characters we came to love were omitted from the movie such as Chitchat and Nettle and Thorn. I think we all agreed that the book came out on top and was favoured to the movie. There was no question the movie was exciting, fun, and made us a little teary-eyed at parts. 

We think you should go see it if you haven’t yet!

A big thank you to Mrs. D for joining us on our trip.

 

 

Category: Reading Workshop, Teacher Talk, The Arts | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 27

Autumn In All Its Glory

One of my favourite seasons…Fall! The colours this time of year are outstanding. Ruby reds, outrageous orange, yummy yellow…the colours can really take your breath away!

I think there is even a ‘smell’ to Fall, don’t you agree?

We were inspired to paint some trees recently and we wanted to share them with you. We used paint and torn strips of magazines. We first painted our sky and grass and learned the word “horizon”. The horizon line is where the earth seems to meet the sky. 

What do you like the LEAST about Fall?

 

Category: Teacher Talk, The Arts | 2 Comments on Autumn In All Its Glory
October 24

Picasso Inspired Art

We’d like to share with you our Picasso-inspired artwork. We used oil pastels and pictures of picasso’s art as inspiration.

Here are some facts about Picasso:

  • In all his life Picasso produced about 147,800 pieces, consisting of: 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics and 34,000 illustrations
  • At the age of 9, Picasso completed his first painting of a man riding a horse in a bullfight
  • Picasso is buried in the grounds of a château that he bought in 1958 in the south of France

We hope you like it!

Category: Teacher Talk, The Arts | 2 Comments on Picasso Inspired Art
September 29

Picasso Inspired Art

Our first official art lesson focused on the abstract style of Picasso. We studied several of his paintings and noticed he enjoyed using shapes and different face perspectives when showing people. 

We are still working on our finished pieces but have a look at us hard at work. 

What kind of art do you most like to do? Painting? Drawing? Sculpting? Or something else?

Category: The Arts | LEAVE A COMMENT