Joyeux Noël! We had some special visitors at the school today! (More pictures of each of the kids with Santa will be coming soon! There was a photographer present, but Madame just snapped a few photos on her own). A huge "merci" to the PAC and all of the volunteers for making this happen for the kids! We also got to exchange Christmas cards with our Grade 6/7 buddies this morning! It's been a week full of Christmas cheer, as we also walked to the high school to make Christmas ornaments with some of the Grade 9 art students. It was exciting to see many former PME students among the group! The principal even stopped by to say "hello" and to give us Smarties! We've definitely gotten our steps in this week, because we also did another Thursday forest walk! It's amazing how we create our own learning experiences while we're there - practicing our writing, learning about teamwork, discovering bugs, strategizing for fort building, creating make-believe scenarios, etc. Many of the Grade 1s even took it upon themselves to assess the Kindergarten students' French counting abilities while we were there, proudly showing Madame where they had written down the numbers that their little buddies were able to count. Christmas made its way into our classroom Science this week with a candy cane experiment. Which candy cane would dissolve the quickest - in cold water, hot water, vinegar, or oil? We had a number of different hypotheses and charted both our guesses and our actual observations. ![]() In the end, we noticed that the hot water dissolved the candy cane the fastest! Vinegar was next in line, and then cold water. The oil didn't dissolve it at all! Extra pics...
We did it! We finally succeeded in going on a "forest" walk! And we even managed to find a sliver of sunshine for it. A huge "merci" once again to our volunteers for making this happen! Coming on the first big walk with a K/1 class requires a certain amount of bravery. ;-) And since snow (la neige) appeared on the ground this week, it also appeared in our classroom. We found that our class tree had finally lost all its leaves and had gotten a dusting of white, and snow even showed up in the sensory bin! The Christmas season has been spreading even more of its cheer around the classroom, too, with our felt Christmas tree. We love moving the ornaments around throughout the day. We got our hands nice and messy with our big buddies this week as we formed our handprints into clay for our upcoming trip to the high school. We really do need to give a shout-out to our big buddies for being so incredibly awesome! They come and read with the Grade 1s every morning (and sometimes play alphabet games with the Ks), they are our lunch monitors, they do art projects and activities with us, and they even helped us rollerblade this week...twice! One thing that Madame learned from doing conferences with us is that there are a whole lot of us that love the Science experiments. So we decided to pull out an old classic this week... Mentos and Coke. It did not disappoint. We tried putting Mentos in water and many predicted that it would have the same reaction. We were surprised when it didn't. Even when we shook it in a bag full of water, nothing happened other than the water getting cloudy. We learned that soda has carbonation in it, which is made from carbon dioxide. As the Mentos fall into the soda, more and more carbon dioxide bubbles are formed, causing an eruption of bubbles. Madame is constantly amazed at how much we learn, just through playing. We learn to be good humans - how to share, care, and speak nicely to one another. But we also make all kinds of discoveries. This week's discovery theme, completely lead by the students' own play, was all about magnets. Many of us learned that magnets have two ends - a north pole and a south pole. When we tried to put two like poles together (two norths or two souths), they repelled each other. But when we put opposite ends together, they grabbed onto each other! We had a great time testing out how the magnets reacted to one another, and also trying to find magnetic surfaces around the classroom. We even discovered some magnetic cars that could "drive" along the metal bathtub and race down the whiteboard. No children were harmed in the making of this photo. Extra photos...
Happy holidays! We ended November by learning how to play the real dreidel game with our big buddies. These authentic dreidels are close to Madame's heart because when she was searching the Facebook world last year for a place to buy real dreidels, an amazing Jewish stranger dropped these off at her doorstep and wouldn't accept any money for them. 'Twas a Hannukah miracle that keeps on giving every year! And it turns out that the dreidel game is a lot of fun, especially for the more competitive among us! We also completed the creation of our own dreidels, made out of clay! Our big buddies were super heroes, as usual, and even drew the symbols onto all of our dreidels for us so they're ready to use! Instructions were sent home in our backpacks in case families want to try playing the game together. You can use items like cheerios, raisins, etc while playing, instead of actual coins. And sticking with the Hannukah theme, we worked hard on a directed draw of menorahs. And then along came December 1st, and it's now beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We had fun decorating our door and really taking charge of the project. Madame put up a paper tree and let us do all of the designing from that point on. It wasn't long before glittery ornaments appeared, as well as a trunk and a homemade star! We have started something new in our class called "the kindness cape" (la cape de gentillesse). If Madame catches us doing something kind (without looking for acknowledgment), we get to wear the kindness cape. We've had several friends already get to wear it this week! Bon travail! Extra pics...
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