Oh, hey there!... Just hanging out, living our best life here in K/1. We had some fun in Science this week, hypothesizing about what would happen if we left a ziplock bag enclosed around the leaves of a tree for several days. We had all kinds of interesting guesses. ...In the end, one of the hypotheses that got the least votes as a plausible outcome was the one that turned out to be correct: the bag collected water! But, why? It didn't even rain this week! Maybe the leaves were wet when we put the bag on them? No...they were dry! We thought about it for a while and realized that the roots collected moisture from the soil, and that moisture travelled up through the trunk of the tree, down into the branches, and then finally into the leaves. The moisture dripped off the leaves every day into our bag, creating the little puddle of water that we found. Isn't nature amazing?! We've been having fun learning about shapes in Math and Mme Van Sickle made her own YouTube shapes song for us to sing and learn the vocabulary. Today she brought out some instruments for us to play while singing along. We are definitely enjoying our shapes dance parties and we're getting very good at recognizing the pentagons, octagons, semi-circles, etc that are all around us. Sometimes we even stop playing during centre time to point out the shapes that we recognize in our toys! Charlotte brought in a bee hive that she found at home (sans bees, thank goodness!) and we noticed that the entire thing was made up of hexagons! We've also been stretching ourselves lately with our numeracy work. We've even begun learning some Grade 3 Math - figuring out how to multiply. We're getting quite good at it when we do it in steps! Our kindergarteners are supposed to be able to count to 10 by the end of the year but the smart cookie in this photo decided to put off snack time so that she could casually do some complicated subtraction. ...you know, no biggie... We capped off the week by crashing the Intermediate students' "Colour Run Party". We were dying to participate, ourselves, but alas, we will have to wait... We still really enjoyed watching the chaos and were overjoyed when one of our regular lunch-time monitors came running over, throwing powder in our direction. (...at a safe enough distance to keep our clothes clean) ;-)
Despite the short school week, our last 3 days have been full of activities! In Math, we have been continuing our unit on measurement but have moved on from length and surface area to looking at capacity and mass. Mme Van Sickle brought in a bunch of different objects to fill with water and we had fun trying to hypothesize which items would hold the most. We measured the water in mL to test our hypotheses and cheered very enthusiastically whenever we guessed correctly! We also got to use classroom scales to weigh and compare various objects from around the classroom. One of the highlights of the week was having the Science Alive group come to teach us all about our beautiful province of British Columbia! We learned about our local animals and their habitats, and what animal and plant fossils look like. We even got to make some fossils of our own to bring home! We also got to use our imaginations to invent our own animals that live in the tundra, keeping in mind all of the adaptations they would need to survive in the frigid weather. Some of us were very clever and took out books and atlases to help us with our animal-creations. The Science Alive group also taught us how to distinguish between several of our most popular local trees. We got to practice using something called a "dichotomous key" to identify various features of the trees in order to determine what kind they were. We even got to paint cedar, hemlock and douglas fir branches to make art. Mme Van Sickle was very impressed when we went to Hoffman Park later and some of us announced while climbing in the trees, "Hey, isn't this a cedar tree?!" (Our teacher gets very excited when we retain information that we learned! She's a little nerdy that way, but we still love her.) ;-) She even whipped out a dichotomous key so that we could check over the features, ourselves, to confirm our hypothesis. Today was another special afternoon with the city's "Touch a Truck" event. We went to Spirit Square and got to touch, sit in, and stand on various city worker trucks. It all fit very well with our Social Studies unit on our community.
The class was a buzz with excitement today as we witnessed 4 new butterflies emerge from their cocoons. One of our 8 butterflies made its appearance just yesterday, but Mme Van Sickle was beginning to worry that the rest would stay warm and cozy until the long weekend when nobody would be here to witness their transformation. But by the time the afternoon came around, we had 5 beautiful butterflies to release into the wild. Our classroom economy has taken on a life of its own, with every student in the class now having purchased at least one "property". For some, this just means that they no longer have to pay rent on their homes. For others, it means that they have been able to COLLECT rent money each week on their additional investment properties. Thursdays are our favourites because it means "le magasin" when we can use our hard-earned cash to purchase things at the class store. Many of us have begun learning the important lesson of delayed gratification - "If I save my money this week instead of spending it all, I can get something BETTER in a couple of weeks". We excitedly empty our wallets and count out our nickels, dimes, quarters and loonies, and many of us have learned how to quickly convert a handful of nickels (without the teacher's help) into the appropriate amounts to exchange for a dime, a quarter, or a loonie. We are beginning to understand that if I have two quarters, I can get something from the 50 cent box...if I have four quarters, I can get something from the $1 box. Thursdays are also one of our favourite days of the week because it usually means a walk to Hoffman Park. We are becoming experts on the tree-climbing rules, and this week we also had fun searching for bugs in and under logs. In Math, we have been continuing our unit on measurement. With our big buddies, we went outside (and braved the rain!) to have car races. Our big buddies helped us use measuring tapes to see how many centimetres and how many inches each car travelled, and then to assess which cars went the farthest distance, which ones went the shortest distance, and what could we change to make them go even farther? We had so many great ideas! Happy extra long weekend to everyone!
As the song goes, we were “feeling hot, hot, hot” this week! With the weather getting increasingly beautiful and sunny, we’re taking every opportunity to get outside. Our Math lessons this week have been focused on measurement. It’s easy to measure something straight, but what about things that are strange shapes? Mme Van Sickle showed us how we could use string to measure something, then hold that piece of string up to a ruler to see how long it actually is. We measured the head circumference of a number of our friends and then tried to think of other things we could measure with string. Luca excitedly suggested that we could measure the school building if we walked around it with string. Mme Van Sickle thought about it for a second, shrugged her shoulders, threw out the rest of the lesson plan, and said, “Hey, why not?!” We weren’t able to make it all the way around because our string kept getting knotted at the end, but we all thought Mme was ca-raaaaaazy for actually trying this and it was giggles galore. We also got outside this week for a presentation about chickens. We got to see how the chickens look in various stages of life, and we learned about the different layers in an egg and that they need a rooster to fertilize them to create a baby chick. We were also very intrigued by the tidbit that red is a chicken’s favourite colour. In fact, in chicken coops things like their water and food sources are often painted red because it ensures that they will gravitate towards them. Some other outside highlights from this week were mailing our super secret letters, and playing with big buddies on the big kids playground. In French, we went on some phonics scavenger hunts, trying to find as many words around the classroom as we could that contained the blends that we have been working on. We’re also learning about how to write more detailed sentences. Instead of just saying, “Le lapin saute” (the rabbit jumps), we can say, “Le grand lapin blanc saute dehors avec son ami” (the big white rabbit jumps outside with his friend). We are quite excited about trying out some more complex sentences next week! Today was a big day for us because we participated in the French primary poetry recital. We’ve been secretly practicing our Mother’s Day poem and finally had the chance to perform it. We were very proud of our performance but, being the youngest in the room, we found it tough to sit and listen to the rest of the poems. Nevertheless, we were very patient, and got to enjoy a special treat as soon as we got back to the classroom, courtesy of Emily who turns 7 tomorrow! (Happy birthday, Emily!) Popsicles made life very happy again.
In Math this week, we began our new unit on measurement. There was lots of enthusiasm about the concept of measuring with non-standard units. We discussed things we could use to measure - shoes, hands, a long piece of hair... And when someone suggested that we could use people, we just HAD to put that to the test. We decided to see how many people it would take, laying end to end, to make it from one end of the room to the other. The answer, for curious minds, was 7. But!...how would this change if we used grown-ups to go from one end to the other? What about babies? While we were at Hoffman Park yesterday we each got to choose a special stick to bring back with us, and today we got to use them as measuring tools. We took them outside to measure the slide, the monkey bars, and a whole host of other interesting things on the playground. In the end, we've realized that in order to measure something in a way that we can describe to other people, we need to use objects whose size doesn't change. We tried measuring a list of things in our classroom using standard unifix cubes and paperclips. In Science this week, we felt pretty special because we got to use TEST TUBES! (Everyone knows only "real" scientists use test tubes.) We filled the tubes with different coloured water and put flowers in each of them. Our hypothesis is that the colour of the flower petals will change, depending on where the stems have been placed. We are now anxiously waiting to see the results. Some of the flowers have already begun to turn turquoise and blue. Our trip to Hoffman Park was extra special this week because Mme Van Sickle gave us the green light to climb trees. With some strict safety rules in place, we enjoyed testing our limits. We finished off our Friday with a blast from the past (hello 1980s!) toy from Mme Van Sickle... a pogo ball! Why have these things gone out of style?! They are ridiculously fun!
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