January 7th was Orthodox Christmas for Ukrainians and we were here for it! (...just a couple of days late). ;-) Lots of amazing questions and reflections arose about the current political situation in Ukraine, and Madame tried to answer all of our inquiries as best she could in kid-friendly language. Madame's son, Miles, was invited to perform a piece on the piano for us called "Ukrainian Girl". We were a great audience! We also enjoyed making and sharing a Ukrainian meal together (borscht and perogies). The borscht had mixed reviews but the perogies were generally a hit! Cooking is always such a great way to explore mathematical concepts like fractions, volume and capacity, as well as "every day" French vocabulary. We were very fortunate this week to have an Indigenous friend named JJ come to lead us in some drumming. Before we began, we enthusiastically shared our French land acknowledgment with him and the other classes present there, and he expressed how touched he was that Indigenous education has become so much more prevalent in our regular curriculum. One of our favourite songs was one that JJ wrote, himself, all about his beautiful young daughter. All of the girls danced in the middle of the circle while the boys drummed around them. In class, we have been enjoying earning and spending our nickels! Our French-speaking efforts have improved noticeably since we are paid bonus money for being brave and attempting to speak in French - not for our accuracy. Some of our Grade 2 students have also begun rotating the job of "banker" in the mornings, giving students the chance to "trade up" their nickels for other coins. We love comparing and counting our coins. In Science, we continue to learn about Outer Space with oh, so many questions. The librarian kindly gathered a box of books for us all about our solar system and we loved diving deep into different facts about the planets, sun and moon. Did you know that on Neptune it rains diamonds?? Or that you can fit 1400 Earths into the planet Jupiter? Madame is also learning all kinds of things as we go. Many of the books are in English, but the language is not as important as the follow-up discussions, especially because most of us can't read at this level yet. We mostly love looking at the pictures, making inferences, and then asking Madame about what we have found. And an extra photo, just because it's cute...
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