A Week Full of Trees and Dancing

Hello again wonderful Dickens families.

The children in Divisions 1 and 2 had another busy week studying trees and learning a dance for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

On Monday, we headed back outside to identify the four life stages of trees.  Within seconds, our tree experts located the first stage - the seed.

Soon thereafter, the third stage was spied by keen observers - the sapling.

As we continued our quest for the second and fourth stage, the children located a seedling in Sunnyside Park.

The students had no trouble finding the fourth stage: the mature tree.

Tuesday was a day about apples.  Darcette, who is a farmer from the Okanagan, visited the primary students at Dickens. 

She talked about the different varieties of apples grown on her farm and also told us about growing season and harvesting season.  The pouch on the front of her body is her apple picking bag.

Next, Darcette taught the children how to make apple sauce.  She had some nifty apple peelers that the students loved!

The apple sauce was yummy.
The recipe is:
shredded apples
brown sugar
cinnamon

On Wednesday, we created beautiful tree art!

Each Thursday, our UBC teacher candidates come to Dickens as part of their practicum experience. Olivia has expertise in dance and she taught us a Chinese Lunar New Year ribbon dance.  It was a lot of fun.  Our parent volunteers had fun too!

Dance moves included water, volcano, rainbow, snake and dragon. 

Then Olivia gave us a brief dance demonstration.  Fantastic!

Later in the day, our parental tree expert Mark Boyland came to visit.  He brought with him many samples of tree branches and cones for the children to learn about.

During Mark's presentation, Divisions 1 and 2 developed a Venn diagram to illustrate the similarities and differences between deciduous and coniferous trees.

Mark was a captivating speaker and the students really enjoyed his stories and tree facts.

He passed branches and cones into the audience and told us about a type of wasp that burrows into tree cones. We pulled apart the cones to find the larva inside.  We also learned that sap can be thought of as a band aid as it protects trees from injury and insect invasion.

Suddenly, we hurtled back in time to our spiders unit as several baby spiders decided to make quick exits from the tree cones!  Chaos quickly ensued as spider rescue attempts were rapidly put into action.  We are happy to report that we think that all spiders were saved!

Here is a glance at this week's poem:

Friday afternoon Buddy Reading.  If you look closely, you'll see they are reading a book about...trees!

In Jen and Karen's Math group, the students are learning about addition and subtraction. In this activity, the children had to figure out how many cubes were hidden under the cup using Math strategies.

In Wendy and Jenny's Math group, the students were practicing "counting on and counting back" from the larger of two numbers in preparation for more complicated addition and subtraction activities.  This activity involved rolling two dice, counting on from the larger number, then moving their counter along the Race to 100 sheet.

Enjoy your long weekend everyone and we will see you on Tuesday.

Next week at a glance:

• the students will be performing the ribbon dance at the assembly on Tuesday morning.  Join us if you can!
• on Thursday, Divisions 1,2,3,and 4 will be making and delivering Valentines to neighbours.  We will also be having a Valentine's Day celebration.
• Hip Hop dance sessions start this week.  Our time slots will be on Thursday and Friday so please dress to move!

Thanks for checking in :)