Our first ice skating trip was a great success! We had some more "guest presenters" come in on Tuesday! Fun fact... they're triplets! They are outstanding perler-bead creators and come up with designs all on their own. They showed us how they build each piece of their creations like a puzzle piece that they can then snap together and join with toothpicks. The toothpicks slip easily into the holes and allow joints to actually move. We were all fascinated by what they were able to make! But we also talked about how their creations took many hours to build and LOTS of patience... and even some tears. Most of the time, things didn't go exactly as they had planned, especially when they first started making more complex puzzle pieces. And then they would have to start all over again. But they kept trying and never gave up! Anyone can become good at anything with that attitude! Here are some pics from a couple of their amazing creations last year when they were in Madame's class. They didn't have these ones with them for their presentation, but Madame thought they were definitely worth sharing... They took some of their creations apart and took photos of the pieces so that we could try to recreate them. They even leant us some perler bead boards to use! Merci, Callen, Nathan et Skya! Another big event of the week was that we officially launched our classroom economy! Think a variation of Monopoly... but lived out in real time. We all have our own "houses" and have to pay rent to live in them (..."just like some of your moms and dads have to pay to live in your house!"). Our "homes" are recognizable places from around our Pitt Meadows community that we each got to pick and stick to our cubby boxes - the library, a sushi place, the Rec Centre, a dentist... We all have assigned jobs (which will 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 or extra kind, and by speaking in French without prompting. 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. ...and unfortunately it had to be cancelled due to snow days! But we will try again for next week. Here's the catch... we can't make any purchases until we have done two things first: 1. Paid rent on our home (a nickel paid into the house piggy bank) 2. Donated at least one nickel to charity (because it is just as important to learn about giving and being generous with what we have, as it is to learn about spending and saving). As a class, we really wanted to help animals so we voted to donate our money to the SPCA. 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 15X our rent ($0.75), 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 $0.75 on store day when we would rather spend our hard-earned nickels on the frivolous items in front of us. Sidenote: This is an old photo of the store because Madame hasn't been at school to take a new picture. Items are not available anymore as pictured here, but have been replaced with new ones. Also, the organization of the boxes here is driving me batty. Incremental order from left to right makes way more sense! What was I thinking several years ago?! *Deep breaths, Madame. Deep breaths.* ![]() 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 and some of us are already making big plans and dreams. We are also quickly learning how many nickels are in a dime, a quarter, a loonie, and a toonie as we excitedly count the coins in our banks. Soon we will get to start exchanging our nickels for larger coins as we begin to get the hang of counting and sorting.
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