There were many exclamations of "best day EVER!" during our field trip to the high school this week. We had so much fun with the big kids making pancake art, chilling in the library, and creating fairy houses! Here's a photo dump... This was seconds before Jameson sneezed and sent all of the chocolate chips and blueberries flying off his plate... We also really enjoyed watching siblings and friends perform this week in the school's Lunchbox Theatre production of "The Little Mermaid". Back in the classroom, some of us have taken it upon ourselves to make a little "store" to sell our creations and earn money for the foster children's charity that we have been donating to all year long. Each week, before we're able to purchase anything for ourselves with our hard-earned classroom money, we are expected to give some of that money to this charity that we all voted to support. The money that these students are earning with their creations is raising extra funds for the charity! So thoughtful and entrepreneurial! Our "painted lady" caterpillars have all formed their chrysalises and we even had our first one emerge this afternoon! So exciting!! Many of us kindly shared a piece of the fruit from our snacks so that the butterflies will have something sugary to eat. Extra photos... A tutorial on how to tie shoes Sanding wood for the perfect smoothness...
It was "anything but a backpack day"! And we went on a bus adventure! For at least half of us, this was our very first time riding the city bus! We were very excited!! (Madame apologizes for cutting some people off in this photo... the sun and oncoming traffic while she was standing in the road made it difficult to see what she was doing!) It was so great to have this opportunity to see kids performing in the "Frozen Jr" show, some of whom were about the same age as us! The performance was really outstanding! And speaking of performing, we have been preparing for a performance of our own called "Où est mon chien?" (Where is my dog?) All of us will have individual speaking parts in this play, but at the moment, we are all working on memorizing the WHOLE play. Madame says that this helps us to create French story and conversation patterns in our brains. To help us/test us on the memorization of the play, Madame introduced us to a coding app this week called Scratch Jr. The idea is that we are re-creating the various scenes of the play in the app, like a digital storybook. On each page, we add the characters and can use coding tools to make the characters move and interact. It's amazing how adept we have gotten at the program in such a short time! We are already teaching Madame about features she didn't know existed! In the end, we will each record our voices retelling the entire play as a voice-over for our projects. Madame is thrilled with all the cross-curricular learning that is happening with this one project - coding, story elements (characters, setting, plot), oral language, etc. Hopefully we will be able to take screen captures of the projects in the end to share with our parents. As we have been memorizing these different story patterns, many of us have begun transferring that oral language to written form, creating our own completely unique variations of the story. We are so proud to be writing 2-, 3- and even 4-page stories! In Math, we are continuing to deepen our knowledge of measurement, focusing on centimetres and millimetres, and how to convert between the two. We enjoyed measuring a variety of objects outside and sketching them in our Math journals. And we have some new insect friends in the classroom - caterpillars! We have been slowly watching them grow over this last week and we can't believe how huge they are compared to when we first got them! Many of them have already started forming their chrysalis (...chrysalises, chrysalides...??) Extra photos... "I want to acknowledge that I am currently on the unceded territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm First Nation... Typically, we begin our week at school by acknowledging that we are on the unceded territory of the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations. But since our fishing trip today took us to new lands, we decided to do our land acknowledgment when we arrived, recognizing that we are learning and playing on land belonging to the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm Nation. And, hey!... guess what!... that's how "Coquitlam" got its name! And what a picture perfect day we had in Coquitlam... We brought along our homemade poles, created with sticks that we found in the forest and other materials from around the classroom. But in the end, the "real" poles were definitely more fun to use! We learned how to cast and loved reeling our lines back in. We had some artificial trout bait for the more squeamish among us, but also had some "night crawlers" (worms) for baiting hooks. Some of us learned how to cut the worms into small, still-very-wriggly pieces that were a more appropriate size for the trout. Those of us who didn't erupt into screams of horror at the process were fascinated by the fact that cutting the worm did not kill them. In the end, we didn't catch anything. Although we did have a few bites! But we got to see some fish that a man managed to catch after being there since 6:30am. And a big thanks to Lily's grandpa who also introduced us to some of the mechanics and differences of fly fishing. We also had fun doing a scavenger hunt around the lake, identifying different plants and animals, playing on the playground, and of course, going for ice cream! Purchasing the ice cream was a great opportunity for us to practice placing an order on our own, mostly without the help of a grown-up, and making a purchase with REAL money and receiving change in return. (But if you ask us, the most important part was eating the ice cream). Huge shout-out again to our incredible drivers! As well as the parents that took time out of their busy schedules to race over during a work break, etc even just to meet up with us for a short time. It meant so much to us! When we got back to class, we wanted to play with the pretend fishing gear to relive our experiences. We definitely caught more magnetic fish than real fish! Also... Happy Mother's Day to all our moms! We have a special surprise coming for you this weekend! Don't open until Sunday! ;-)
Friday's ceremony at Spirit Square for missing and murdered Indigenous women initially struck a very serious and sombre tone and left Madame questioning her life's choices about bringing us youngins. But we did so incredibly well and once the music started, we really seemed to enjoy the experience. Madame showed us the appropriate way to clap to the Indigenous drum beat - with palms up, ready to receive - and some of us got so into the music (in a perfectly appropriate way) that some of the city officials turned their cell phone cameras from the dancers to take pictures of US! We were intrigued by how the Indigenous people kept referring to the music as "medicine". Madame explained afterwards that music really can be medicine for our souls when we are sad or are hurting, or even when we're feeling good! Music washes over us, just like the smoke from the smudging (sacred herbs that were burned and wafted over various people in the audience). Madame said she was so incredibly proud of how well we did with this whole experience! Indigenous Women's Song: 9-year-old PowWow dancer: Young Indigenous boy dancing: In other news, it was Star Wars day this week... The force was with us. We have been working on our fishing prep for next Friday by making our own rods! First, we went to the forest to collect sticks. Next, we made a plan and had to solve 3 problems: (1) how would we attach the fishing line to the stick WITHOUT tape, (2) what could we use to make a bobber, and (3) what could we use to weigh down the hook so that it doesn't float on the surface of the water? We brainstormed in groups and gathered materials. Next week we will put them altogether and then try out our rods for real (or "reel"... ba-dum-ch!) on Friday. We said a sad "goodbye" to our chicks on Friday afternoon. We were so privileged to have had this experience and Farmer Crystal told us that we can come by her farm any time to visit them. Extra photos...
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