Today's Homework

Journey's Workbook pg. 97: Choose the correct high frequency word to fill in the blank.

Have students make sentences using each high-frequency word (Her, Would, She, Today, Our, Now).

An Interesting Article I'd Like to Share:

A Healthy Brain Needs a Healthy Heart

by SANDRA AAMODT

FEBRUARY 17, 2014, 7:00 AM

Children need exercise.  Parents often worry that making time for athletics or even for just playing on the Jungle Jim is going to take away from their kids’ academic achievement.  But actually, the opposite is true.  There have been analyses of huge numbers of studies that all show that kids who are fit are better in school, get better grades, and have higher intelligence scores than kids who are sedentary.  And that is probably because across the lifespan, even into old age, there’s a strong correlation between a healthy heart and a healthy brain.  

The brain is the most demanding organ that your circulatory system has to feed.  It takes up a lot of the body’s oxygen and a lot of the body’s energy.  And unlike most of your tissues, your brain can’t live very long without that blood supply.  You cut blood supply off for about five minutes and parts of the brain start dying.  So clogged arteries and little clots that cut off blood flow to the brain in older people are a significant source of cognitive difficulty and cognitive deterioration with age.  And even in little kids, being physically fit clearly enhances intellectual performance.  

The other thing parents should be thinking about is that in childhood your kid needs about 90 minutes a day of active moving around, and parents should really focus, I think, on making sure that that’s fun, first of all.  You don’t want to institute exercise as punishment.  And you also, I think, want to have them doing something that could potentially continue into adulthood.  However much your kids like climbing trees, they’re not going to be doing that when they’re 40, not most of us anyway. 

And if you give them a sport or a taste for hiking or a taste for yoga, something that grownups do, you greatly reduce the chance that they’re going to be one of the large numbers of people who are active children who grow into sedentary adults.  Usually that transition happens around the age of 13 or so.

http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/a-healthy-brain-needs-a-healthy-heart

Sandra Aamodt is a neuroscientist and science writer, who takes the complexities of neuroscience research and whips them into fun reads that give people a better understanding of their minds and behavior. Her books Welcome to Your Brain andWelcome to Your Child's Brain (both written with Sam Wang) are designed to bring neuroscience to a general audience, and they've both been widely translated. Aamodt's science writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, El Mundo and the Times of London.

From 2003 to 2008, Aamodt was the editor-in-chief of Nature Neuroscience, a leading scientific journal in the field of brain research. She brings a significant scientific background to the task of explaining new research without creating neurobunk. During her career, she has read over five thousand neuroscience papers, and written many editorials on science policy.

Today's Homework

Phonics page 117-118

Page 117: Blend the individual letter sounds together to sound out the short vowel words. Read each word 3 times. Colour the picture that the word names.

Page 118: Blend the individual letter sounds together to sound out the short vowel words. Read each word 3 times. Draw a line from the word to the picture it names.

Please return tomorrow!

Show & Tell: Victoria

Thanks for Victoria for sharing her stuffed rabbit with us for Show & Tell last week! Excellent clues and good presentation! 

Clarification

This Friday, March 21st will NOT be a half day. We will have a regular school day.

Next Friday, March 28th WILL be a half day, with Parent-Teacher interviews taking place in the afternoon.

Sorry for any confusion!

Finally, please arrive at school by 8:25 a.m. tomorrow as we will be leaving promptly at 8:30 a.m.!
See you then :)

Today's Homework

Journey's Practice Book pg. 99-100

Read from the Journey's Reader "How Animals Communicate" 2 times.

Aquarium Field Trip

Here is a list of things to bring on our field trip to the Kenting Aquarium this Thursday, March 20th:

-National Health Insurance card (please send this to school with student Thursday morning)
-full Water bottle
-snack (fresh fruit)
-a hat
-sunscreen
-sunglasses
-jacket
-an extra uniform (shirt, shorts, underwear, socks)
-a towel

Students will be required to wear their PE uniforms to school on Thursday. We ask that you send an extra uniform and towel as there is a small wading pool that students may play in and get a little wet. Please ensure you are punctual, arriving at school no later than 8:25am.

I am looking forward to exploring the underwater world with K2!