Fantastic, Foxy, Feast-y Week!

A Few Reminders:

ELA:
We have been all about Fantastic Mr. Fox! Students worked on both a book review and a movie review this week.

Before we started our book review, we discussed the different points of view a story can be written in.

First Person is when the story is told from his/her perspective. Much like the Dork Diaries series.

Second Person is when the reader is placed in the story, which is how the Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure book are written.  

Third Person is when the story is told from an outside view, by a narrator. 

As a class, we discovered that Fantastic Mr. Fox was most definitely told in the Third Person Point of View. 

Students then got busy writing their book reviews! We discussed things we liked, or did not like, and what we thought of the book. 

Students then designed their own cover for the novel. I allowed them to use how to draw videos to create their own version of Mr. Fox and his Family. 

As I am sure you heard, on Wednesday we had our own Feast! I was a bit behind on some classroom rewards so I treated the class to pizza & ice cream! 

Students completed a Venn Diagram, comparing the characters, plot and setting of the book to the movie. 

Then, since we wrote out our book review I thought it would be fun to do a video review of our movie! 

And finally, students wrote an opinion paragraph on whether they enjoyed the movie or the book more. 

Overall, we had a great time exploring this book!

Author Focus: 

This month we are going to take some time to read various books from Jon Sciezska. He is a hilarious children's author and was the focus of our WeSearch Wednesday this week! Ask your child what they learned about him! 

We are currently reading from Squids Will Be Squids, which has 1 page fables with off the beaten path morals. As we read each fable and moral, we are making connections to self and world. We discuss which moral we know that is reminds us of, and how we think of it. 

The moral: "Squids will be Squids" reminds us of the common saying, "Kids will be Kids". We talked about how we can relate to this moral, and if we have had a personal experience similar to this. 

SPELL OFF!

To practice our Spell-A-Thon words, we did a spell off! Students from each grade/Hogwarts House competed in a raise against time to spell their words!

Science 4 

Our wall web of simple machines turned out great! 

We started off this week by taking a closer look at a few different types of simple machines. The first being the roller. It is thought that the roller came before the wheel - and even was used by Egyptians to move rocks while making the pyramids! Students got to test out/demonstrate how rollers make some work easier! 

Next in history comes the Wheel and Axle. This simple machine can be found in many different items in our world! Wheel and Axle often help us make work easier by moving objects and reducing the friction between the object and the ground. 

A wheel and axle you can find in your home would be a door handle! The handle acts as a wheel, and when it is moved the axle is moved a small distance. 

Another example would be on the wheel of a dirt bike. Here the axle is moved a small distance to make the wheel cover a larger distance. 

Next we looked at Levers! There are 3 different types of Levers and they differ depending where the effort, load and fulcrum are. 

Ask you child if they know their three different levers! Just remind them, the word lever comes the levier the French word meaning "to raise". 

See if your child can point out the effort, load and fulcrum on each photo. 

First Class - EFL (Like Eiffel Tower)

The fulcrum is always between the effort and the load. The effort and load will travel in opposite directions. 

Second Class - ELF 

The fulcrum is at the opposite end of the effort and load, and the effort and load move in the same direction. 

Third Class - FEL

This last lever is when the load is at the end, and can be seen for a lot of these kiddos on the rink! 

Some key terms we discussed this week were: friction, force, effort, load, fulcrum and work. See if your child can explain which each means!

Then students set off around the school looking to find, label and describe some simple machines we can see! 

Science 3

Students have been working with their instruments this week to create their very own music videos! 

Coming Soon!

Social 4

We are starting to look into the country Tunisia! Students spent some time this week learning about Tunisia and it's capital city, Tunis. We looked at how life in Tunis is different from our own and what types of services they have. 

Tunis is a large city on the coast with beautiful beach resorts. They also are home to large souks, which are covered markets that sells many different goods, spices and glassware. 

We also learned some fun facts! Did you know some Star Wars Films were made in Tunisia? In Matmata, there are Berber homes. These are homes that people dig out and live underground. 

Does this set look familiar to you?

Next week we will start to look more into the culture and daily life of Tunisia. 

Art

We have begun to work on our Celebration of Arts pieces! We looked at the works of various artists in history to observe how texture can be made with paintings. 

Next, we took to make the background for our upcoming masterpieces! Using forks as our tool, we created textured backgrounds using our knowledge about different types of lines and directions.