Spring has sprung, and so has our sensory table! The snow has been plowed and replaced with Spring "grass". There are plenty of eggs with baby chicks inside, as well as butterflies, frogs, and bumblebees to discover. The kids have enjoyed searching for all the little wildlife, and sorting them into categories. They've also tried spelling words using the letters written on the backs of each of the critters. Continuing with the Spring theme, the students planted some grass of their own this week. With the help of our big buddies, and a little inspiration from the YouTube channel "Mister Maker", we created our own grass heads. We put grass in the toe of a nylon stocking, stuffed it with cotton, and turned it into a loveable character. Our characters are sitting in our school garden and will soon begin sprouting grass "hair". We are all very excited to see the results! We had the opportunity to play in the garden last Friday afternoon when it was a bit wet and dreary outside. But the weather didn't scare us off from making mud pies and even setting up a little mud pie café. We also had fun creating lakes and rivers in the dirt. In class, we used the bottom of a pop bottle, our thumbs, and some straws to create beautiful flower art. In Social Studies and Science, we have been learning about mountains, valleys, hills, and lakes. This week we got to try to create some of these geological features on our own, using sand. We worked in small teams to design a plan of how we wanted to create our sand structures, assigned roles to each team member, and then got to the important work of building and molding. It turns out that creating a lake in a sandbox is a bit of a tricky proposition, but through the process we came to a much better understanding of what is a valley and how to place it BETWEEN mountains. We added some nice beach umbrellas around our lakes for effect. Learning about the different features of our planet also leads into the important discussion of how to protect our planet. A French theatre group came to the school this week to perform a fabulous play about protecting our environment. Since the play was an hour long and in French, it was a little hard for many of us to understand, but the actors were so dynamic that we enjoyed watching them, and we did a lot of debriefing with Mme Van Sickle after the event. We will continue to talk more about protecting our planet in the coming weeks. We had another exciting guest presentation in class today, with a visit from the SPCA and a special dog named Jasper. We learned about how to ask an owner if their dog is friendly before approaching the dog, how to ask permission to pet it, and how to reach out our hand to let the dog smell it before petting it. We also learned that the best and least intimidating place to pet a dog that we don't know is under its chin. The woman from the SPCA also spoke to us about being kind to animals, which lead us into a great class discussion later about being kind to our peers, as well. We read a book called "Purplicious" in which the main character gets teased because she likes the colour pink, and all the other girls say that it's a colour for babies. We shared stories of times when other people have made us feel sad because they tease us for liking something that they don't. We all agreed that it hurts our feelings when people do that, but instead of letting them hurt our feelings, we need to hold our heads high and say, "It's not just for babies. I like it! And I'm not a baby." Mme Van Sickle talked about how she still has her baby blankey in her bedroom and how it even travelled with her all the way to France when she was a teacher there. Mme also dreams of getting an adult pogo stick to jump on around the neighborhood. Should she be embarrassed to do that because she's a grown up?! NO! It's okay to like "baby things", even when you're an adult! And hey, you don't have to be 6 months old to enjoy a tasty fruit pouch! Do what you like, and love the things you love. It's what makes you...you!
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