Today was our final "goodbye" to our froggies as they head for an animal shelter on Saturday. It has been a fascinating process for all of us to watch them grow from eggs...to aquatic, herbivorous tadpoles...then to terrestrial, carnivorous little beings that are only about the size of Madame's thumbnail. But we learned a very important lesson from all of this - we aren't actually allowed to scoop up tadpoles from their homes. In fact, it's illegal! Oops! Madame didn't even know this! So the motto we practiced saying this week was: "Wild stays wild." We should leave wild things in their wild homes. Lesson learned! But on the topic of wild things, we are now getting ready to witness another animal transformation, and this one is not illegal...Madame has double-checked! ;-) About a week and a half ago, we welcomed tiny caterpillars into our class. (These caterpillars are bred for this so they are not taken from the wild.) They became big and fat over the last week or so, and have now spun themselves into chrysalis, beginning the process of soon becoming butterflies! We love checking on their progress each morning and were so fascinated to watch the caterpillars shake as they spun their silk buttons around themselves. Yesterday we began learning about maps by trying out some geocaching. First we studied the map and all of its elements, and then we worked in pairs to try to find the best route from our school to where the geocache was hidden. There were certain things we had to take into account - we had to draw our route by staying on the roads, and we had to avoid the most direct, but busiest road. It was interesting to look at all of the many route ideas that we came up with. In the end, we picked the shortest one - a route that Madame had never taken before either - and decided to try it! A true adventure! Armed with our maps, we set out in the torrential rain to find our "treasure". Madame stopped at every intersection to have us read the street signs and direct her, based on our maps: Should we go à gauche ("left"), à droite ("right"), or tout droit ("straight")? Parker's excellent map-reading skills brought us right to the area where our geocache was hidden, and Kayden's skillful eyes were the first to spot it. Madame was so impressed that there were hardly any complaints about the weather! We all just pretended that we were at an outdoor spray park. Thank you, parents, for sending us all in good rain gear! It makes all the difference! We used the pen hidden with the geocache to make our lasting mark on the spot. Just as exciting as the geocache were the ripening salmon berries that we found along the way! They turned out to be a very sought-out treasure in and of themselves. We did an excellent job of asking Madame's permission before eating the berries. Other fun photos from the week:
After all of our talk about First Nations last week, we got the chance to hold our own drumming celebration in our class. There was singing, dancing, and drumming! We learned that we actually shouldn't refer to it as as "pow wow" because pow wows are huge celebrations that take months of planning, and they tend to be private festivals held on reservations (although sometimes they will hold them publicly on Indigenous Peoples' Day). So... ours was just a celebration instead as we learned to appreciate the First Nations culture and language, practiced doing the traditional male and female dance moves, and even learned to say hay čxʷ q̓ə ("thank you" in the Katzie language). This was a special experience for Madame because she actually got to be taught by a Katzie elder on the reserve here in Pitt Meadows how to make a drum. That drum was among the ones that we used during our celebration. Madame from 2 years ago... Madame was so touched by the experience back then that she wrote a blurb about it on Facebook. Here's what she said back in 2019: I live about 5 minutes from the Katzie First Nations reserve but I’ve always felt it was off limits. It’s Katzie land and I wanted to respect that. But I was invited today to take part in a drum making workshop at their community centre (a building that they fought for 30 years to have built and that is now such a central part of their community). It was such an eye-opening and wonderful experience. And just in case I’m the only one in Pitt Meadows who didn’t know this, you actually CAN go for a stroll through their land. Everyone I spoke with was super open and welcoming and they even have a gift shop. 😊 A big thank you to the Elders and the other volunteers for opening their lives to us and sharing their stories and songs. I feel like my life was enriched today. A stop sign on the Katzie reserve. Another special experience this week was having Ms. Kwan come lead us in some outdoor resiliency games. The games were meant to stimulate discussion around "self-awareness, mindfulness, optimism, empathy, building positive relationships, coping with feelings and motivation", etc. We were very engaged in this active workshop and had such a great time learning more about ourselves and our own limits. A partner trust activity... using words to lead our "blind" partners through an obstacle course. Math class this week took place in the sand pit as we worked in partners to compare the capacity of various containers. Which container did we estimate to be the biggest? Which one would be the smallest? We checked our estimations by pouring sand from one container into the other. And then... we just built sandcastles, because why not?? ;-) Our little tadpole babies are growing so big! And by big, we just mean slightly bigger than before...they're really only about the size of Madame's thumbnail. This photo was taken a few days ago, but two of them are now pretty much full-on frogs with no tails remaining. They're kind of a big deal around here. We all marvelled at them climbing the sticks in their aquarium. Other fun pics from the week... Madame's neighbour gave us a bunch of flower cut-offs from the nursery where she works. We had fun sorting them by colour, feeling their soft centres, smelling them, etc. We explored the pond by City Hall on our forest walk. We noticed a lily pad but didn't see any frogs or fish. Thank you to Andi for these forest photos!
The excitement was palpable... “The tadpoles have 4 legs!!!" We noticed right away yesterday when we peered into the aquarium at drop off, and kept running to Madame to tell her over and over again just in case she hadn’t fully grasped the magnificence of this news the first several times. We were so excited, in fact, that Madame dropped our other morning plans to spend some time observing them more closely as a class. We drew pictures of our tadpoles and wrote down our special observations. Later, Madame taught us about First Nations communities and how frogs are really important to them. We learned that the people that live in the Katzie reserve in Pitt Meadows have their own language and traditions, but they’re regular people just like us who, despite having traditional clothing that they may wear for pow wow ceremonies, probably buy their everyday clothes at Walmart or H&M. Some of the kids from the Katzie reserve even attend our school! We were so excited to listen to Madame read a First Nations-inspired story called “Frog Girl”...but unfortunately most of the really good local First Nations materials don't exist in French. The story reminded us of how precious the animals are and how it’s our responsibility to take good care of them. Madame even had some frog coloring pages from Coast Salish artists for us to complete. Some of us were really motivated by everything we had heard and were intent on using exclusively traditional Coast Salish colours for our art. It’s always so much fun to incorporate what we’ve been learning into our play time. When we went to the forest, Madame was so impressed to see us take it upon ourselves to start a pow wow dance, which really turned into more of a march. ;-) Some of us went hunting with crossbows while the wives and mothers stayed home and prepared food for us. Madame isn’t sure how closely this sticks to actual Katzie tradition, but she was thrilled to see the initiative we were taking from our lessons this week! And on another note, we are now busily practicing and preparing to film the French play we’ve been practicing. Roles have been assigned and props are being created. We can’t wait to show you the finished product! In Math, our measurement unit shifted focus from measuring straight lines to measuring surface area. We worked on estimating the surface area of 2 different objects, checking our estimations, and then comparing the results. We found some interesting things to measure! And it was "hat day" this week! Beckett channelled his inner teenager... And THERE's a smile! Other fun pics from the week... The "smelling tunnel"... We always love taking a deep breath as we pass through here because the flowers smell so wonderful!... Some first-time "bunny ears knot"-tiers... Woohoo!
Well, that escalated quickly... Our bean plants were barely beginning to sprout on Friday and by Monday morning, we arrived to find them looking like the photo above! We were so excited to take them home mid-week! It's amazing what you can grow from a little seed. Flowers and plants have continued to be a theme throughout our week. We enjoyed taking a closer investigative look at some different kinds of flowers, as well as one of the bean plants that Madame dug up. In Math, the measurement theme continues... this week with paper airplanes! We couldn't believe Madame was actually teaching us how to make paper airplanes in class! The folding part was a little bit tricky, but we persevered. Then we took the planes outdoors and did throwing contests with a partner, measuring the distance between our planes with our feet. We carefully recorded our measurements using 10-frames and numerals. Our Kindergarten students have come so far with their numeracy skills that they have started doing their own version of problem solving questions in their journals along with the Grade 1s! French was fast-paced, with relay races to get all the pieces for assembling our dictée words. While the Ks don't have to do the weekly dictée assessments with the Grade 1s, they are still benefiting from practicing with us and learning how to sound out the different parts of each word. We had a special surprise in class this week! A chick came to visit! A student in Madame Towne's class lives on a farm and brought some chicks in as special guests for the day. And in other animal news, our tadpoles are beginning to sprout legs! And yes, these are REAL legs this time... not the poop that we previously THOUGHT was legs before...heh. We are excited to have begun a new column on our tally sheets! In the forest, we continue to work on our knot-tying and even have some Ks who are beginning to do the bunny-ears knots! We worked so well as a team on all kinds of projects that we invented for ourselves this week! We built forts, chopped wood to build a fire for the king and queen of the Arctic, "painted" trees with red bark, forged swords, made potions, and much more... Ms. Angela from Stardom continues to send us weekly photo updates of the garden that we helped to plant! And we got so busy on Friday that Madame forgot to show these to us this week!! We will look at them next week, but here they are for everyone to see for the first time. We hope to go back in June to see the progress for ourselves. In her walk by the garden, Ms. Angela also saw some fun animals! Who knew there were beavers living just steps away from the community garden?! |
Archives
June 2024
Categories |