Somewhat unintentionally, this week became focused on the outdoors. The beautiful (but cold!) weather beckoned us to Nature's classroom and we could not dismiss the call. There is so much to learn outside of the walls of our building! - names of plants and animals - distinguishing between male and female ducks based on colours - the fact that you can cut a worm in half and...have two living worms! - the beauty and danger of mushrooms/fungus - conflict resolution - teamwork - creativity and imagination - an abundance of French vocabulary - managing disappointment - using tools safely (pocket knife and fish hooks) ... Our fishing trip today all started with a plan. Madame brought in a real fishing rod and we examined the anatomy. What are the important parts and how can we recreate them? We noticed, for example, that the fishing line runs the length of the rod. We guessed that this would be important because if we just tied the fishing line on the end of the stick, it might snap in half if we caught a big fish. Winding the line along the entire length of the stick helps the pressure to stay even along the entire rod. A legitimate fishing rod needs a good bobber so we looked at the supplies that we have in our classroom to try to figure out how we could fashion one of our own. Max suggested that we could take two applesauce cups and glue them together to make a bobber that would float. This seemed like an excellent idea, but we didn't have enough cups and we were worried that the glue wouldn't hold when it got wet. Instead, we found a whole basket of corks that Rosie's family donated for crafts. We had lots of those! And they float! We found that when we put the fishing line through them, we could even slide the cork up and down the line to change the position of the bobber. We drew out our plans. ![]() We spent some time this week building and beautifying the rods and bobbers. And then today was the big day when we got to try out our fishing rods for real! We only caught one fish, but we all decided that it was still a really fun day! Not to be forgotten, we also had our first walking trip to Hoffman Park this week. We found a perfect place to sit for class meetings, as if someone knew we would be using the forest as our outdoor classroom and had set it up in advance just for us. We built forts, played tag and hide-and-go-seek, looked for bugs and worms, and made all kinds of interesting discoveries. We were princesses in castles, and our sticks became spears and even food. We also spent some time outside this week with our Big Buddies, and in the garden with the French Immersion Kindergarten classes. Believe it or not, we were actually indoors for part of the week, as well. We began a new rotation system for our literacy stations that everyone seems to enjoy, and many of us are beginning to speed through our coloured home reading flashcards! Hooray!
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