It was "Pink Shirt Day" this week! And Madame doesn't have any photos to show for it because she was home with her sick child that day. (*insert crying emoji here*) There's an old Instagram-generation adage... "picture, or it didn't happen!" But in this case, Madame promises it happened. She found the evidence in the form of an abandoned pink t-shirt under the bench in the cubby area the next day. Rather than focusing on "anti-bullying", Wednesday's "Pink Shirt Day" was focused on kindness. We had a virtual assembly where we learned about the history behind Pink Shirt Day, listened to fellow students read poems about kindness, and watched several cute videos about the impact that being kind can have on those around us. Video links, in case you want to check them out yourself: Story of Pink Shirt Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noxd3pFXfNA Kindness Boomerang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU Dog and Bird short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqRpNjbWCp4 We have spent a great deal of time this week reading books and talking about kindness in the classroom. What does it look like? How can we show kindness in small (and big) ways? Today we did a collaborative art piece to demonstrate that each of us is an important part of a large picture. "Let's be friends." - watercolors on photocopy paper, by Division 23 If we're being honest, most of us didn't understand the "large picture" metaphor that Madame was getting at with this piece of art (she gets a little too philosophical sometimes, but we love her anyway)... Still, working on a large project together always serves as a perfect stage for practicing kindness: taking turns, being gracious about others' contributions, speaking kindly even when we disagree, trying not to get upset when someone does something unexpected, etc. It is as they say - everything I need to know, I learned in Kindergarten (*cough*...or Grade 1). In Math, we continue to work on subtraction. We played a fun game this week where we dumped a pre-determined number of lava rocks out of a flower pot. Any that landed outside of the hoop on the ground were subtracted from our total. In this way, we continually practiced creating, writing, and solving subtraction equations. We also began an inquiry project in Social Studies. It's kind of on trend during the winter to study an Arctic animal in the primary grades. But everyone does penguins and polar bears. So instead, we decided to go with narwhals! Madame told us a secret... even into her adult life (though she refused to say how recently), she believed that narwhals were mythical creatures. They're the unicorns of the sea!...And everyone knows that unicorns aren't real! Imagine her surprise when she spotted a National Geographic magazine with a picture of a boy in Nunavut standing near a narwhal. "Wait... they're real?" And so, like any good teacher, Madame was determined that we should not grow up to follow in her ignorant footsteps. And a unit was born. We generated a bunch of questions that we had about narwhals while Madame quickly translated and wrote them into a web on the board. The web has stayed up all week as we slowly discover and add more answers to our questions. We have been learning about using different sources of information when we are researching. One student suggested, "Why don't we just Google it?" But then we thought about all of the other places that we could ALSO find information... ancient texts called "books", modern sources of information like YouTube, and yeah... Googling it. We were surprised to hear, though, that not everything on the Internet gives you REAL information! So we were careful with our Internet sources and checked out National Geographic Kids and the World Wildlife Fund for information. We are really enjoying this inquiry and Jackson even went home and found a book on his own with some information that he was able to share with us! Oh yeah, and we did some forest stuff this week in the snow... This is "Bob", the green bug...(he's in there somewhere)... ...we made him an apartment fit for a king...and then we lost him. Don't let your eyes deceive you. This is not Logan. It's a stick-eating dinosaur. He's fierce. We're pretty pumped because the "big kids" have been letting us play soccer with them at recess. So Madame brought a ball and let us practice some skills on our own in the forest.
Another week, another theme day! Happy 100s day! For those of you unfamiliar with this elementary school tradition, every year primary classes across the continent celebrate the 100th day of school. Why? Because 100 is a very special number. If you can count to 100, you can basically count to 999 and beyond. In French Immersion, this is an especially big milestone. Can we all ACTUALLY count to 100 in French yet? ...nope. But many of us are getting very close! And celebrating the number affords us the exciting mathematical opportunity to notice how 10 days (pennies) can be traded for a dime, and then 10 dimes can finally be traded for... ...a loonie! We enjoyed many celebratory activities today, including getting a sneak peak into what we will look like when we are 100 years old. For some of us, it ain't pretty. Let's hope nature is kinder to us than Madame's aging app predicts. We enjoyed singing some counting songs that got us all the way to 100 in French, and Madame also taught us a sneaky shortcut way - count by 10s! We learned her "Hollaback Girl"-inspired song and then used the tune to have a rap battle. In our short 3-day week, we have cheated and read some English books. Normally Madame likes to try to stick to French-only, but sometimes concepts are a little deeper and it's important that we fully grasp them and are able to have discussions that can touch our emotions in a way that is difficult in our 2nd (or 3rd, for some) language. Since February is "Black History Month", we have spent some time reading about the colour of our skin. We learned that our skin is just like "wrapping paper". Just like we don't know what's beneath the wrapping paper until we open up the present, we can't know what a person is like just by looking at the colour of their skin. We have to get to know them first! We took a look at the different shades of skin in our class. We noticed that even though there's not a lot of variety in our classroom compared to other classrooms where Madame has taught, we can still see subtle differences in our paler colours. Every shade is beautiful in its own way! We also learned about a very special person on our Canadian $10 bill named Viola Desmond. Madame brought in a $10 bill for us to touch and observe, and we learned about who this special woman is whose picture adorns our money. We were so surprised to hear that somebody would be told that they couldn't do something, just because of how they looked! In French class, we have continued to work on our special art books with a new picture for each sound. We can't wait to complete them and bring them home to share with you! With each drawing, Madame is noticing our confidence improving. We used to panic when we couldn't follow the directed drawing directions right away but now we are getting so much better at being patient, allowing ourselves to make mistakes, putting our own special spin on our art, and appreciating what we have done rather than comparing it with others. Our walk to the forest this week was a wet one. But in the words of our literary friend, Pete the Cat, did we cry? "Goodness, no!" We just kept walking along and singing our song. Even after all this time, it never ceases to amaze Madame how our imaginations come to life in the outdoors. Large sticks become canons in a serious territorial battle, we build fires to keep warm, we find bombs (oh no!), and even discover special treasures hidden in concrete! Thank you to Heather Patry for many of the photos below. All of the best ones are hers! ;-) But seriously, what is this thing...?
It's mismatch day! Aaaand...Happy Valentine's Day! "You are cool". (Also, a "chouette" is a kind of owl, so this is a French play on words). "Kisses my owl". Today we got to exchange all of our paper cards with each other. There were lots of smiles and laughter as we discovered our treasure troves of happy notes. It goes to show that as nice as all of the extra little gifts can be on V-Day (stickers, chocolates, cupcakes, etc), we really don't need a lot to be happy. Even the RCMP stopped by unexpectedly to introduce themselves and give us some valentines! They wanted us to know what they look like and to not be afraid to say "hi" when we see them on the street. In sticking with the Valentine's theme this week, we did a science experiment to create lava lamps using heart-shaped glitter. It turned out to be an excellent lesson in density and mathematics, as well. Madame filled 3 jars with oil: 1/4 full, 1/2 full, and 2/3 full. We discussed what these fractions meant and some of us seemed to begin grasping the concept. Next, Madame poured in an equal (or almost equal) amount of water in each jar. We were fascinated to see that the water sunk beneath the oil to the bottom! It turns out that water is heavier than oil because the molecules in water are closer together. Even more fascinating was that when we added the glitter and food coloring, they sunk beneath the oil, but got stuck between the water and oil layers. But the "pièce de résistance" was when we added in the alka seltzer tablets. The oil and water bubbled and mixed, causing the glitter and food coloring to float around like in a lava lamp. Also fitting in with our V-day theme, we completed our hearts this week to add to the growing collection on the school fence! (Scroll to the end of this post to see more individual pics with hearts). And brrrr...! It was a cold one this week! Some of our planned outdoor learning was relegated to indoors, just because we were taken a little off guard by the biting temperatures at the beginning of the week. But we still managed to get outside for some silent reading, some digraph relays, and some forest fun! Back indoors, we have been practicing counting backwards with a fun little song that we recorded ourselves singing. When we can count backwards, we are better equipped to perform subtraction operations. We've been enjoying making subtraction questions by hiding rocks under flower pots with our friends. Some other indoor fun... (I promise they're not playing Poker...) And, for your viewing pleasure, more hearts...
Who knew February was such a busy month of celebrations? First up, Groundhog Day. We learned all about the famous “marmottes”. Bad news from the US... it looks like their groundhog is predicting 6 more weeks of winter. Good news for Canada, our groundhogs are more optimistic and are predicting an early Spring. Yay! (Fingers crossed!) We had fun playing with a flashlight as the “sun” and seeing how it made shadows on the groundhog and how clouds blocked the sun and cut off those shadows. The next holiday we are looking towards is Chinese New Year (Feb 12). We have been tracking the moon’s cycle this month and learned that the Chinese celebrate their new year based on the lunar calendar. The first new moon of 2021 is on Feb. 11, thus the holiday is a celebration of the new moon, signaling a new year, new beginnings, and the coming of Spring. 2021 is the "year of the ox" so we made paper lanterns this week to look like oxen. Next up is Valentine’s Day. It needs no explanation. And while there will be more V-Day fun to follow, we decided to kick off the month of February by painting hearts to add to the growing collection on the fence in front of the school. Stay tuned throughout the month for more holiday themes. You can’t wait. Admit it. In non-holiday news, we have been continuing our weekly study of digraphs with directed draws, word scavenger hunts, and relay races. In Math, we are doing some cross-curricular learning, turning our discussions of family vocab into graphing opportunities. We have been looking at who has 0 sisters, for example, or who has 1 sister or 2 sisters and then talking about which category has the most people, which has the least, etc. There are always lots of cheers while doing our graphs as we all want to be part of the “winning” category! Addition continues to be a curricular goal too. We’ve had fun adding up the dots on dominos this week and turning that into equations. Wednesday was such a beautiful day that we simply HAD to get out for a snack picnic. We suggested it to Madame and, being a lover of sunshine and spontaneity, she couldn’t resist. Armed with hand sanitizer and all the necessities, we set up camp in the field where we were able to eat and watch the intermediate students play California kick ball. Bonus pics... We love playing with the fake snow in the sensory bin... even when it ends up all over our faces. Rainy outdoor fun in the garden
|
Archives
June 2024
Categories |