We danced our way into the week with a visiting hip-hop group called "Metaphor". Their performance on Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Day helped us to learn more about the origins of hip-hop and the difficulties that many people of colour experienced. They were very entertaining, even offering some students the chance to learn breakdancing moves and assist with improv. But the best part was at the end of the show when we got to watch all of our teachers bust a move at the front of the gym! We did a lot of our own reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as well. We read a book about his life and had lots of questions! Then we talked about what OUR dream would be to make the world a better place. We had some great ideas! "I have a dream that people will take care of the Earth." "I have a dream that there will be no more wars." "I have a dream that everyone will be equal and that they will take care of the Earth." We also geared up for Chinese New Year today with a special directed draw, inspired by the Year of the Rabbit. And we got EXTRA lucky because both Madame and the PAC gave us lucky red envelopes! Madame's contained extra nickels for us to spend at the class store (woohoo!) and the PAC's was a thoughtful gift of candy. We even got a fortune cookie! Madame also shared with us her authentic Chinese kimono, which was purchased by her former travel-loving grandmother one time on a tour in China. We marvelled at all of the intricate details! Continuing on our space theme, our team challenge this week was to create paper rockets. Madame constructed a DIY stomp rocket contraption with PVC piping and a 2-litre pop bottle, and our task was to create the highest-flying rocket. We hypothesized about the design... what would fly best?... just a paper tube?... a paper tube with fins?... a paper tube with fins AND a nose? The "ours" (bears) won this challenge with their rocket that reached an astounding height, about as high as one of the tallest trees at the front of our school! But "castors" (beavers) also got bonus points for the best trick rocket, which flew fairly high and with all kinds of loop-dee-loops. Every one of our rockets got some decent height and we should all be proud. 10 points for everyone! In the end, we were all winners because we collectively wracked up enough points for our ultimate group goal of having a group Minecraft-playing session! Madame has reserved the iPad cart for next week. We'll see how this goes... heh... Thanks to some Christmas gift cards, Madame was able to buy a collection of new games for the classroom! Our favourite by far has been chess. Madame has been teaching us a new chess-piece move each day through stories. The "Story Time Chess" game comes equipped with a storybook that gives personalities to each chess piece to help cement in our minds what each of their moves should be. We have also begun a series of musical workshops with a young member of the Katzie First Nation who will be teaching us songs and drumming patterns over the next 6 weeks. We even learned some words in the Katzie First Nations' language of "Halkomelem". In academic pursuits, we've begun learning about parts of speech, namely "nouns" (les noms) - common and proper. Little did we know that Madame has actually been prepping us for this ALL year with our daily show-and-tell questions. At the beginning of every show-and-tell, we ask in French: "Is it a person, an animal, a place, or a thing?" So we have just finally given a name to that question... all of those items are NOUNS! Minds blown. (Ok, maybe we weren't as excited about this as Madame was.)
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