Welcome to Grades 1/2! The first day with us all together was a little bit nerve-wracking for some of us and Madame decided to acknowledge it by reading a book with us called "First Day Jitters". We talked about the different emotions we may be feeling after having been placed in our new classes and we gave Madame some suggestions of words to write on the whiteboard. Then we wrote our name on a sticky note and placed it by the word that described our feelings: "nervous", "excited", "sad", "happy". Some us were sad because we missed our mom, or because we wished another friend was with us, and some of us had contrasting feelings and put our sticky notes in between two categories. We talked about how all of these feelings are okay and normal on the first day! ...and THEN... we got to drink some "jitter juice". Just like the bubbly Sprite, our stomachs might feel kind of bubbly, but kind of magical, too, like the sprinkles inside. We also enjoyed a fun game of "Rock, Paper, Scissor" tag to get to know some new friends. Madame just finished reading the entire Harry Potter series with her daughter so she was inspired to divide our class into 4 "house" groups. Unlike Harry Potter, however, these groups are based on local animals and the First Nations' interpretation of their meaning. We have... - Bears: powerful and strong, but humble - Frogs: adaptable and successful - Beavers: work well in groups and value everyone's talents - Crows: intelligent and creative Now in the Harry Potter books, there was a sorting hat that chose which house students belonged to. We obviously don't have a magical hat so we used the next best thing... a cheese hat. Because the French love cheese. And Madame loves the Green Bay Packers (or she is required to by marriage, anyway)...and they love cheese. So clearly, cheese was the obvious choice for a magical decision-making hat. Each of us donned the cheese hat and then spun a digital spinner that determined our house placement. Madame taught us chants to go with our houses and we practiced them in our groups and then began performing them with actions. We are still working on the chants and the actions, but Madame says that's okay because they're tricky and it's something that we will work on throughout the year. She cited some boring reasons like the fact that it builds our French vocabulary, helps us think positively about ourselves, and blah, blah, blah... that's where we tuned out. We coloured some First Nations' art that corresponded with our houses and then Madame turned our art into our very own buttons! Today we worked in our house groups to make boats out of tinfoil and various other materials. The goal was to see whose boat could hold the most nickels before sinking. We drew out our plans ahead of time and then set to work. There were so many creative designs, but the winning boat held a whopping 51 nickels!! Our groups were all awarded 5 points for trying, but the "ours" group got a big 10 points on the board! We've also been reviewing our Math skills this week with a "Math About Me" page. There are so many ways that numbers are incorporated into our lives! Something we've started doing this week is "Show-and-Tell". The special bag will be going home with us periodically throughout the year and we can bring in any special item we want to present. Madame modelled the two different ways of presenting for Grade 1s and 2s and brought in one of her marathon medals as her show-and-tell item. We asked her: "Did you win??" And she told us that the great thing about a marathon is that hardly anyone expects to win, but everyone gets a medal just for not giving up, even when it's hard. That is something she wants us all to keep in mind as we are learning to read, write and put numbers together... It's not important what the kids around us are doing. The important thing is that even when it's hard and even if we want to give up, we keep on trying no matter what. Extra pics...
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