It was "store day" today! (le magasin) We finally got the chance to spend all of our hard-earned nickels. And some of us even became first-time home buyers, having earned enough cash to scoop up our properties and end our pesky weekly rent payments to Madame. Others of us chose to continue renting for now, in favour of spending more on tangible items we wanted in the moment. We may come to regret this decision later, but this is all part of practicing and living out real-life scenarios in a safe environment. After all, the best way to learn is through experience. And at least for now, we were all thrilled with our choices. In gearing up for "Black History Month" in February, we have been learning about all kinds of famous people of colour who have made a huge impact on our society, whether through political action, art, music, science... you name it! From Martin Luther King Jr, to Viola Davis on our Canadian $10 bill, we have spent almost every day focusing on a different black hero. We were reminded continously that our skin is "just the wrapping paper" and had fun comparing our colouring. We have also enjoyed bopping in our seats during work time to a varied playlist of the greats like Arethra Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, and Stevie Wonder... to Pharrell Williams, Beyoncé and Black Eyed Peas. (...as well as some famous black French singers!) And our team challenge this week was based on a famous black astronaut named Mae Armstrong. She was told that she would never achieve her dream of going into space and should become a nurse, instead. But she defied the odds. "If you can dream it, if you believe it and work hard for it, anything is possible." - from the book "Mae Among the Stars" In Mae's honour, we decided to make stomp rockets! Madame cooked up an interesting contraption with PVC piping and a 2-litre pop bottle, and we set to work. We made modifications along the way as we played with optimal designs. There was a whole lot of fun chaos in the classroom as we tested our models, but the best part was when we took it all outside. Those things could FLY! And Callum even figured out how to modify the design into a blow-rocket! Bravo, Callum! Amazing out-of-the-box thinking! We have been learning a new song! You may have heard some of us singing it around the house... the "Nations of the World," where we attempt to sing the names of almost all of the countries on Earth. How does this fit into the French curriculum? Madame says, "Don't ask... But we teach students first and the curriculum second." And Madame is trying to set us up to be killer trivia players in our later years, which is a critical skill for Tuesday nights at Foamer's, not to mention an awesome party trick. (And who says you don't learn anything in school?!) But in all seriousness, Madame has loved hearing us randomly break into song during play time. One of us will start singing the names of the countries, then another will join in, and soon the majority of the class is singing while building with blocks, sculpting putty, or delicately placing perler beads. We're not sure if we'll be able to learn the entire song before the end of the school year, but it will be a fun challenge just to see how far we get! Extra photos...
Our first ice skating trip was a great success! We had some more "guest presenters" come in on Tuesday! Fun fact... they're triplets! They are outstanding perler-bead creators and come up with designs all on their own. They showed us how they build each piece of their creations like a puzzle piece that they can then snap together and join with toothpicks. The toothpicks slip easily into the holes and allow joints to actually move. We were all fascinated by what they were able to make! But we also talked about how their creations took many hours to build and LOTS of patience... and even some tears. Most of the time, things didn't go exactly as they had planned, especially when they first started making more complex puzzle pieces. And then they would have to start all over again. But they kept trying and never gave up! Anyone can become good at anything with that attitude! Here are some pics from a couple of their amazing creations last year when they were in Madame's class. They didn't have these ones with them for their presentation, but Madame thought they were definitely worth sharing... They took some of their creations apart and took photos of the pieces so that we could try to recreate them. They even leant us some perler bead boards to use! Merci, Callen, Nathan et Skya! Another big event of the week was that we officially launched our classroom economy! Think a variation of Monopoly... but lived out in real time. We all have our own "houses" and have to pay rent to live in them (..."just like some of your moms and dads have to pay to live in your house!"). Our "homes" are recognizable places from around our Pitt Meadows community that we each got to pick and stick to our cubby boxes - the library, a sushi place, the Rec Centre, a dentist... We all have assigned jobs (which will rotate from week to week) and when we do our jobs well, we are rewarded with a nickel for our efforts. We can earn nickels in other ways, too - by having Madame catch us being helpful or extra kind, and by speaking in French without prompting. We collect our nickels in our personal money boxes and at the end of the week, we get to use our money to purchase something from the class store... to keep... like, forever! #mindsblown! We have been counting down the days until store day ("le magasin") ever since. ...and unfortunately it had to be cancelled due to snow days! But we will try again for next week. Here's the catch... we can't make any purchases until we have done two things first: 1. Paid rent on our home (a nickel paid into the house piggy bank) 2. Donated at least one nickel to charity (because it is just as important to learn about giving and being generous with what we have, as it is to learn about spending and saving). As a class, we really wanted to help animals so we voted to donate our money to the SPCA. In June, we will add up all of the coins that we have collected and then Madame will match our donation and we will send a cheque to them and have a little celebration! (Your children do not need to bring in any money from home for this venture. They are using the nickels provided in class. But if you would like to make an added donation, you're welcome to do so.) But circling back to our "homes", here's the thing... not everyone wants to rent their home for the rest of their life. Some of us would prefer to OWN our home and get rid of those pesky rent payments. So, if we save up 15X our rent ($0.75), we can PURCHASE our home and never have to pay a nickel to Madame again! We love this idea in theory, but it's much harder to fork over the $0.75 on store day when we would rather spend our hard-earned nickels on the frivolous items in front of us. Sidenote: This is an old photo of the store because Madame hasn't been at school to take a new picture. Items are not available anymore as pictured here, but have been replaced with new ones. Also, the organization of the boxes here is driving me batty. Incremental order from left to right makes way more sense! What was I thinking several years ago?! *Deep breaths, Madame. Deep breaths.* We can even continue to save our nickels and buy up other properties so that other people have to pay rent to US!! Cha-ching! We are catching on amazingly well to all of these adult concepts and some of us are already making big plans and dreams. We are also quickly learning how many nickels are in a dime, a quarter, a loonie, and a toonie as we excitedly count the coins in our banks. Soon we will get to start exchanging our nickels for larger coins as we begin to get the hang of counting and sorting.
We kicked off 2024 with a “bang”!… literally. Madame had balloons hung up and we got to pop them throughout the day, revealing surprise fun activities - watch a French show, play a game, and our favourite: have a dance party. We enjoyed watching the replay of the New Year’s countdown and fireworks show from France at the Arc de Triomphe, and were also amazed by a Guinness Book of World Records-breaking drone show - 15,000 drones reenacting the story of “The Nutcracker”. New Year's is a special holiday because it's the most widely celebrated in countries all around the world! We decided after much discussion about New Year's resolutions that it would be a good idea to make some resolutions of our own. Did you know that Monday is "Black Excellence Day?" This is a special day to celebrate Black history, and learn more about Black stories, art, and achievements leading up to Black History Month in February. We kicked off our learning by reading stories about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. We were shocked to hear that they were treated differently by people (and even by the government!) just because of the colour of their skin. But we loved the message from the book about Martin Luther King Jr - instead of fighting hate with hate, it is so much more powerful to fight hate with love. We talked about how our skin is really just "the wrapping paper" for the amazing person we are inside. (La peau ce n'est que l'emballage.) We have begun learning about money, money, money! Next week will be the big launch of our classroom economic system so to prepare, we took a deep dive into nickels. And clearly, we needed to practice counting by 5s if we're going to be counting nickels! There's a song for that... (Thank you, P!nk, for the inspiration!...and Madame's children for the execution.) ;-) And while pennies are virtually obsolete, they are ever so helpful from a mathematical perspective for understanding the building blocks. So we played a little game that had us trading our pennies for nickels, our nickels for dimes, and... for the few lucky ones who managed to "win" the game... our dimes for a loonie! (Sidenote: there is a French name for these various coins, but it's a mouthful: "une pièce de 5 sous", for example. So because we live in a predominantly English-speaking community and this is such a real world topic, we're focusing on the English terms instead... while speaking French, of course!) ;-) This week we had the first of what Madame is calling our "guest presenters"... former students of Madame's that have a great skill to share with us! It was Lincoln and Alex this time, who showed us how to make working bow and arrows with K'nex! Merci, grands amis! Extra photos... snooooow!
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