Our Math lessons this week have been brought to you by the number "5"... skip-counting by 5s, that is. It's all part of Madame's master plan to slowly introduce us to (or review, for those who have been in her class before) how to identify and count nickels, dimes, etc. so that we can soon have our own class store up and running. We have been singing Madame's skip-counting parody, inspired by Pink's famous song "So what"... Madame also had us work with our big buddies at the beginning of the week to do an assessment of our knowledge of Canadian coins and their values. Many of us will repeat this assessment in June to see how much our knowledge has improved. We've been learning a fun game with coins, too, which helps us practice "trading up" from coins with smaller values to larger ones. We can't forget about patterns, though! We discovered that they're not just in the clapping rhythms we practiced last week, but also in the actual songs we sing and listen to. In fact, one of the things that makes a great song is having repeated elements. And hey, why not dance to those songs while we work on identifying the patterns?? We had such a special visit this week from an author named Wendy Maxwell! She wrote the play that Madame's class performed last year, as well as a play that we will all begin learning in the New Year. She also inspired Madame's use of gestures for teaching a second language. And she came to visit US!!! Madame was easily the most excited of anyone to have her in our classroom. Mme Wendy insisted that we speak in French exclusively the entire time she was with us - either speak in French or don't speak at all. We also had to respond to questions in full sentences only. This was a difficult exercise for some of us but it's amazing how we can push ourselves to do hard things when we really try. And a big "congratulations" to Kennedy! Madame has been teaching for about 10 years and every year, she challenges the class to find a word without a vowel. She always promises that she'll give $10 to anyone who can actually find a word that doesn't contain one. (Abbreviations, onomatopoeia, and words with only a 'y' - like dry or why - don't count. The 'y' in those words acts like a vowel with the sound 'i'). Madame was convinced this was an impossible task, but Kennedy and her dad actually managed to find a word. Who has heard of a crwth?? It is apparently a Welsh instrument. Thank you, Kennedy and Kennedy's dad, for inspiring a geography lesson about Wales! Madame is nothing if not true to her word... On our forest walk this week, we were thrilled when we noticed that the big Douglas Fir tree in Spirit Square has started to be decorated for Christmas. We sang Christmas songs the whole rest of the way to the park. Extra photos...
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