Superflex and Social Thinking

Reminders

• No school tomorrow (PD Day) - Enjoy the long weekend!
• Math extension work was sent home today for extra practice with the addition strategy of stacking - please complete what you can and return for Monday
• Look for sticks and rocks in your yard or outside at a park and bring them in :)
• we will be using the sticks to hang the weavings up when they are complete
• we are collecting the sticks and rocks in class as "loose parts" for story making
• Soapstone carving on Tuesday, Feb.4 with Teacher's Pet -- if you can volunteer please sign up: https://volunteersignup.org/events/summary/283126 
• Please remember to return any library books or home reading books next week

Learning Highlights

• This week we learned a lot about being a responsible and caring citizens in our classroom. We are learning about how we can use "Flexible Thinking" to help us achieve this goal. We having been reading a lot of social stories and discussing strategies on productive and positive communication. Superflex, has been one of our favorite stories! He is a "Social Thinking" hero who helps to teach us about different ways of thinking. Ask us about some of the "villains" in this story and what we can do to make sure they do not invade our brains! We are all trying to be like Superflex and think and act in positive ways to ensure that EVERYONE in our classroom community feels welcome, accepted and safe! Ask us about some of the strategies we are trying out to make sure we can be like Superflex.

• We learned that the Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis, is not just seen in the north pole - it can also be seen in the south pole areas. 
• the Auroras are colored lights that move in the sky
• they occur because the sun gives off some electricity through the hot gases that are released. This hits the top layers of the air on Earth and zaps it! Then, we can see the lights from the surface of the Earth. 
• Ask us:
•  "why do the north and south poles get zapped by this electricity? - in other words, why do the auroras happen in the north and south poles?"
• "If auroras are caused by zapping air with electricity, can we make our own auroras? If so, what are some examples?"

• We also started on our weavings. First we studied images of auroras and then created a blueprint of what we wanted to weave based on the colors and patterns that we found. Then, we started weaving with various colors of yarn to match our blueprints.
• A huge thank you to Ms. K for making the looms and coming each day to help us start off our weaving projects!!

• In Math we shared our findings and strategies from the t-shirt factory task from last week. We realized the most efficient way to add multiple digit numbers was through stacking, but it is important to understand why and how to re-group numbers. We will be moving on to learning the procedure of regrouping through the stacking method.