We have finally done the full launch of our classroom economy! Think Monopoly... but lived out in real time...earning money, owning property, buying other people's property... So what are our properties? We each got to choose a recognizable place from around Pitt Meadows as our own and laid claim to that property on our cubby baskets. We call it our "house", even though we clearly will not be taking up residence in these places. In order to continue living in our "houses", we need to pay rent for them every week, just like grown-ups do! 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. vWe 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 have been so many more attempts at 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 decided that we really wanted to do something to help animals. So we will donate our nickels every week and in June, we will add up all of the coins that we have collected and Madame will match our donation and send a cheque to the SPCA! (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 10X our rent ($0.50), 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 $0.50 on store day when we would rather spend our hard-earned nickels on the frivolous items in front of us. 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! You will be amazed at how we begin to catch on to all of these adult concepts through play. In other news, we have begun learning about a special festival in Quebec called "Carnaval". We located Quebec on Google Earth and were super excited to find out that we would probably be going there for REAL when we're in Grade 7... an airplane field trip with the class! "Carnaval" is a huge winter party with dog sledding, ice sculptures, tubing, toboganning, ice buildings, and so much more. The mascot for Carnaval is a snowman called "Bonhomme Carnaval". We decided to try making our very own "Bonhommes Carnavals" with the fake snow from our classroom. The Bonhomme Carnaval wears a special belt called a "ceinture fléchée". These belts were often worn by French Canadians and the Métis and tell a story about the culture of the person who created it. The patterns and styles were passed down as part of a family's heritage and identity. So in class, we made our own paper versions of "les ceintures fléchées" by weaving colourful strips of paper, representing each of our family members' favourite colours. We also watched a video about the amazing ice sculptures that are made every year for Carnaval and we tried our hand at making our own sculptures out of sugar cubes. This was as much a cultural lesson as it was a learning experience on how to work together as a team to create a plan, communicate our intentions, and resolve conflict. We learned about the art of compromise and about how to adapt when things don't go as you planned. Other exciting news of the week... we got a trampoline! It has been very helpful for getting out some "wiggles" and for improving our French counting. (We need to count to 20 in French and then it's the next person's turn). But apparently it's not just good for bouncing... we've also enjoyed just hanging out on it. Extra pics... Thank you to Michelle for coming to the forest with us this week and for taking some of these pictures. :-)
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