Well hello, sunshine! It DOES still exist! We were more than happy to have the sun shining for our nature walk this week. Due to Spring Break and our Rocky Point field trip, it had been about a month since we had been to Hoffman Park so the students were eager to see if their forts were still standing. Unsurprisingly, the forts had been stripped to the bare bones, but the kids were more than happy to pick up the reins and start again. In fact, the forced restart saw new groups of builders intermingling. Where it was once largely divided into a boys' camp and a girls' camp, the whole class seemed to be mixing more, both during and post-construction, and during their epic fortress battles. In the spirit of Spring, we welcomed a new addition to our classroom - caterpillars! We love watching them try to climb the edges of their containers and we are excited to see them form their cocoons and sprout their wings in several weeks! (Edit, because this is bothering me: the word on the wall behind Graison is supposed to say "je suiS"...apparently an 's' has been erased. I can't handle looking at that. I'm leaving my computer right now to add the "s" back on...) And we can now return to our regularly scheduled blog post. We also got to spend some time with baby chicks! Mme Towne had chicken eggs in her classroom and they have now hatched into adorable, fluffy yellow babies. Today was their last day at school and they are now off to a special sanctuary where they will get to live out the rest of their lives. And it's not just chickens and caterpillars that have been growing around here... our grass heads have also started to sprout! It won't be long before they have full fledged hair-dos. In other exciting academic news, we attempted a Science experiment this week to show how rain is formed, and why it falls from the clouds. If you asked the students, their favourite part of the process was when Mme yelled, "Get back!" and had everyone rush to the back of the room. Alas, mason jars should not be substituted for beakers when placed on a bunsen burner. Thankfully, nothing too exciting actually happened, other than the bottom of the mason jar falling off and watching Mme Van Sickle eat some humble pie. But we learned a valuable lesson...and then brought in our good friend "YouTube" to show us what was supposed to happen. We also got to see blue food colouring fall through shaving cream, demonstrating how rain is heavier than clouds and when the water droplets inside the cloud become too heavy, they eventually fall to Earth. To end another great week, we joined with the other Kindergarten and K/1 classes for a great, raucous play time in the gym.
What a day, what a day!... There were weird hats... ...there was a cow... ...and most importantly, there was our field trip to Rocky Point! ...in the pouring rain! But the rain didn't get us down! We were all troopers (the parent drivers included!) and we got to see all kinds of cool things! ...from sea stars, to crabs, to seals and cranes... We found all kinds of treasures on the tidal sand and in the trails. We learned that barnacles are alive, that sea shells litter the path because of birds who drop them after eating the clams, and that wild mushrooms are not safe to eat. (...thankfully we didn't learn that last one through experience.) We also had a great time doing our photo scavenger hunt. We got very excited whenever we found something on our lists! But the tastiest find was the ice cream shop! We returned to school very wet, but very happy. We all feel very lucky to live so close to the ocean!
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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