Happy Hannukah! The Jewish celebration begins on Sunday so we spent some time learning about it in class through stories and song. The song was, of course, the catchy "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, they made it out of clay" and after listening it, we decided to do just that!... we began the process of making our own dreidels out of clay. Next week we will paint them and learn how to play the dreidel game. In French, we've been learning some new games to help us reinforce our letter sounds, as well as practicing whichever word list we happen to be working through at home at the moment. We took our quiet reading outside this week on one of the clearer days and also enjoyed entertaining some local daycare kids with our French singing as Madame played the ukulele. The outdoors proved to be a good venue for practicing some vocabulary about shapes, as well. We built shapes with our bodies and then tried drawing them in the dirt or making them with sticks. We've begun including some counting games and card games (number and colour recognition) in our morning play time, too. We love counting and comparing the number of dog bones we have, and playing UNO and Go Fish. These also happen to be great games for building our vocabulary and helping us learn to accept defeat and be a gracious winner. You may have heard us talking at home about the "animals in our brains". We have been reading a book all about it. (Yes, unfortunately it's in English, but these are important concepts that Madame feels are worth teaching even if they are in English!) The animals in our brains represent different parts of the brain, helping us to learn about how our brains work and how we can have better control over our reactions. We spent an especially large amount of time learning about "Anthony the Ape" - the fight, flight or freeze response. Anthony is there to protect us, but sometimes he gets confused and he thinks he needs to fight, run or freeze when we're arguing with our brother and sister, when we get upset with a friend, etc. We need to practice telling Anthony to chill out and use some strategies to help calm him down, like taking several deep belly breaths. If we can start to control the animals in our brain, we gain so much power for regulating our emotions! Together in class, we did a directed draw of Anthony the Ape. It may have been pouring rain on Thursday, but that didn't stop us from getting outside to the garden again and getting...very wet. And muddy. Extra pics...
While we almost never have "inside recess", Monday's conditions warranted it. Still, our little bodies need to MOVE so Madame took us outside anyway for a while. We measured the depth of a big puddle just outside our door (5cm!) and played a rousing game of "Est-ce que ça flotte??" (Does it float?) using random objects from around the classroom, including Madame's coffee cup. ;-) And alas, our grand plans to have our first forest walk this week ended up being nixed after Madame discovered that all of her favourite forest spots had been closed by the city. Instead, we went to the school garden for the first time and were delighted to discover a little playhouse village made possible by some parent donations. Our garden is a magical place with huge potential, but after years of deterioration, it needs a massive overhaul to make it a more inspiring and useful space. Madame is working closely with the PAC to try to bring about some visions and hopefully we will get to be a part of that this year! We made some other fun discoveries in the garden, too... ladybugs, worms, and even mint while making our mud pies! It smelled so wonderful when we crushed it between our fingers. We continued our focus on empathy and conflict resolution this week with another presentation from "The Family Education & Support Centre". She spoke with us about strategies we can use for resolving conflict when someone or something is bugging us. We had lots of great ideas to share! In Math, we continue to look at shapes - learning their names and features, and practicing sorting them with different "rules" (by colour, by shape, by number of sides). We also had fun using shapes to create things that we might find in the forest (trees, flowers, bees, etc.) In French, we have begun a fun alphabet review that gets us picking mystery items from Madame's "boîte a mystères" every day, with each item beginning with the letter of the day. We've been practicing the vocab associated with the items and then make our own little letter books to go along with the vocab. We've enjoyed "reading" the little books by ourselves, in partners, and as a class. Extra pics...
This week, we remembered those who have sacrificed so much to keep our country free. We enjoyed decorating and making our own special poppy pins, thanks to some help from our friends at Pitt Meadows Secondary and their button-making machine. We practiced singing "Oh Canada" in both French and English, participated in a school-wide Zoom assembly, reflected on what "peace" means to us, and made our own peace plates. (Special thanks to Madame's TTOC for following through with this activity and taking a picture for us!) We also took a walk to the cenotaph and noticed the names on there of people who had died to keep us safe. We were very intrigued by this and wanted Madame to read out every name inscription for us. A special presenter came to our class this week to talk to us about the word "empathy". She was very impressed with how much we already seemed to understand about the word and we came up with all kinds of real-life examples of how we can be empathetic with the people around us. In Math, we have been learning more about shapes and how to identify them. We had so much fun going on a shape scavenger hunt outside! We couldn't believe how many shapes were all around us that we don't even normally think about! Madame even introduced us to her own version of "Mambo No. 5" to help us learn the names of the shapes. Thanks, Lou Bega, for the inspiration! ;-) And one more random picture, because it's adorable...
We've started something new in Math called "Counting Collections". The idea is that we have a wide selection of little collections to choose from and quite simply...we count them! But here's the beautiful thing... some of us count small numbers, others count large numbers. Some of us skip count, others count each item individually. Eventually we could even use our collections to arrange items and multiply. Everyone can work at the level they're at! We had the big buddies help us kick off this new activity and had a great time discovering all the mini collections, finding the numbers on 100s charts and number lines, and then building the numbers out of play-doh. And the best part - Madame is letting us keep the play-doh! She even let us mix the colours. Who is this crazy lady??! We've been continuing our inquiry on squirrels by doing some active research. How do squirrels jump? Do they jump in the same way as us? We decided to examine the differences by jumping in some leaf piles. Even Madame got in on the jumping, which we thought was HILARIOUS! We realized that we jump feet first while squirrels jump head first. While their head is pointing towards the ground, they are able to make split second calculations that enable them to always land on their feet. We also went on a squirrel hunt with some homemade telescopes. The squirrels were tough to find in the rain, but we "supposedly" saw 6 or 7 of them. ;-) We found some other cool things and places along the way, as Madame navigates our ability to follow along on walking trips and listen to directions when outside of school grounds. And Happy Diwali! We have a couple of students in our class that celebrate this festival of lights, originating from India. We enjoyed watching an episode of Mira on Disney+ that taught us about the festival, then played around with Google Earth to find India and compare it with our own position in the world. We even made our own diyas (lanterns)! We also had the privilege of having an amazing presenter this week called "Release the Rhythm". He brought rhythms to us from all around the world and got us involved in playing a wide variety of authentic instruments from different cultures. We are an incredibly active group so Madame has begun inviting us to just run out our energy during afternoon play time. She stands in the doorway while some of us do laps to the end of the building and back. Rain? We don't care! And now you know why some of us come out of school with our hair dripping wet. Extra pics...
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