There's been a buzz of excitement around the class this week as we have finally launched our classroom economy! Think Monopoly... but lived out in real time. When Madame told us that we would all have our own "houses" and that we would have to pay rent on them (..."just like some of your moms and dads have to pay to live in your house!"), one poor student was in tears because she thought this meant that she would have to move out of her real home. Thankfully we got this clarified right away and we are all now very happy with our "living arrangements". Our "homes" are recognisable places from around our Pitt Meadows community that we each got to pick and stick to our cubby boxes. We all have assigned jobs (which rotate from week to week) and when we do our jobs well, we are rewarded with a nickel for our efforts. We can earn nickels in other ways, too - by having Madame catch us being helpful and by speaking in French. Madame keeps track of how often we make an effort to speak in French by moving our beads on the class rekenreks. At the end of the day, we are paid out in nickels for all of the beads we have moved. There has been so much French-speaking going on this week!... it's been glorious! We collect our nickels in our personal money boxes and at the end of the week, we get to use our money to purchase something from the class store... to keep... like, forever! #mindsblown! We have been counting down the days until store day ("le magasin") ever since. But here's the catch... we can't make any purchases until we have done two things first: 1. paid rent on our home 2. donated a nickel to charity (because it is just as important to learn about giving as it is to learn about spending and saving) As a class, we really wanted to help some "lonely kids" so we decided to donate our money to a charity that helps foster children. Madame has heard great things about the SOS Children's Village , so in June, we will add up all of the coins that we have collected and then Madame will match our donation and we will send a cheque to them and have a little celebration! (Your children do not need to bring in any money from home for this venture. They are using the nickels provided in class. But if you would like to make an added donation, you're welcome to do so.) But circling back to our "homes", here's the thing... not everyone wants to rent their home for the rest of their life. Some of us would prefer to OWN our home and get rid of those pesky rent payments. So, if we save up 5X our rent ($0.25), we can PURCHASE our home and never have to pay a nickel to Madame again! We love this idea in theory, but it's much harder to fork over the $0.25 on store day when we would rather spend our hard-earned nickels on the frivolous items in front of us. Nevertheless, some of us mustered our will power and are now official home-owners after just one week. (If only real life worked that fast!) We can even continue to save our nickels and buy up other properties so that other people have to pay rent to US!! Cha-ching! We are catching on amazingly well to all of these adult concepts. Of course, adding up all of our nickels requires an ability to count by 5s. We have been hitting that concept hard in Math this week and have learned a new song to help us. We took advantage of the gorgeous day on Wednesday to draw out some number lines to represent our learning. And in Science news, we've been learning all about solids, liquids and gases this week. We went on a scavenger hunt outside for each of the different states of matter, and learned that water can exist in all 3 states! We didn't delve too deep into molecular theory, but we touched on it just enough to understand how the molecules behave differently in solids, liquids and gases. We loved playing a game where we WERE the molecules and we moved around differently depending on whether Madame yelled out "solide", "liquide", or "gaz"! And on Friday, we had fun making ice towers! We learned that when we pour salt on the ice, it melts it just enough to be able to stick another ice cube on top! And some fun extra pictures... They grow up so fast... At Eagle Park...
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