A Week of Music and a big welcome to Elana in Div 2!

Before we look back on our week, we would like to welcome Elana into Division 2.  She will be Karen's job share partner for the duration of Jen's medical leave.  For those of you who were not with us last year, Elana was our student teacher from UBC.  She was such a great fit for our team that we had to have her back!

This week we continued our learning about Beethoven.  Did you know that Beethoven was deaf by the time he was 50 years old? In order to continue composing his music, he removed the legs from his piano so he could feel the sound vibrations through the floor.  The children have become quite fascinated with Beethoven and have especially enjoyed his beautiful music.

One of our Choosing activities involved exploration with sound.  The children shook small containers and listened to the sound produced by the contents inside.  The challenge was to find another container that had the matching sound!

More dancing was in store for us as well.  Racquel came to Dickens to lead us through some dances in preparation for our Dance-A-Thon.  We are learning a variety of dances such as The Electric Slide and Sha-La-La.

On Thursday, all of the primary students went to the Orpheum Theatre to see and hear a real symphony!  Many of the students wore fancy clothes for the occasion.  We travelled by school bus and arrived in rainy downtown.  It was grey and wet and cold.

But then we entered the Orpheum and we suddenly forgot about the inclement weather.  Wow!

The students kept talking about the gold and how fancy the theatre was.  Noah said, "This is just as fancy as in my dreams!"

The show was very entertaining.  The conductor and some of the musicians acted out a skit and really connected with the audience by talking about and demonstrating their instruments.  They were also very funny!  The finale was Ode to Joy and at one point, the entire audience became the choir and sang along with the orchestra.  It was amazing!

In Math this week, students in Karen and Elana's group explored Place Value up to 100 using base ten blocks.  This is a great way to develop an understanding of tens and ones in a concrete way.

Wendy and Jenny's Math group worked on making doubles.  This is such an important skill to have and involves memorizing doubles facts. We decided to put things to music to make it a bit easier and a lot more fun!  Then, we performed our song for the other Math group.

News Flash!!

Rahel and Ethan's baby girl arrived yesterday at 6:53 last night.  Her name is Milani Love Hildebrand and she is beautiful and healthy!  Everyone is doing well.

We will hopefully have pictures to follow next week.


Reminders:
-Dance-A-Thon this Thursday from 9:00 until recess.
-Purdy's Chocolate orders due to Wendy by March 7th.

Thanks for visiting :)