Today was an exciting day for the Super Kids! We went to the Assiniboine Zoo here in Winnipeg. It was a bit chilly this morning with the temperature around -26C with the wind chill, but we put on our ski pants and hopped on the bus. We went to learn more about rainforest animals by participating in a zoo classroom program. We saw an ocelot, squirrel monkeys, poison dart frogs, toucans, and even a family of gibbons. I think we surprised our zoo leader with how much we already knew!
After our rainforest adventure at Toucan Ridge, we heading for lunch in the indoor play park. Of course, once the kids had their lunches, it was time to have some fun in the play park. I even climbed up the structure with the kids and slid down the slides. I’m still surprised I fit!
We explored the zoo a bit on our own before heading back to school. We saw snow leopards, a tiger, polar bears, wolves, and seals! Thanks you to the two volunteers that joined us on our adventure!
Check our the future zoologists in the video below.
At the end of February our school celebrated “Festival Du Voyageur”. In Winnipeg, French culture and history is celebrated for 2 weeks each February with a festival. Our school recognizes this event by celebrating the French culture in many ways. We had an indoor and outdoor activities organized by our Phys Ed staff, a pancake lunch, classroom activities, and a concert to wrap up the week. Mme. Chantal, an education assistant, that works in our classroom, volunteered to read some of our favourite Piggy and Elephant books to us in French.
Our school’s exhibition is coming up really fast! The Super Kids are so excited to share what they have learned with their families. Our rainforest inquiry study has completely taken over our classroom! We have rainforest plant terrariums, drums and rainstick, a giant kapok tree in the middle of our room, a 3D bulletin board showing the layers of the rainforest, the water cycle on our window, research projects, art work and so much more. We have been busy practicing our reader’s theatre play of “The Great Kapok Tree”. If you haven’t read the book before I have attached a link it below.
Check out the pictures below showing our process through this journey.
Making drums
Measuring felt for our tree
Making our tree
The Kapok Tree
Rainforest products
Researching
Throughout this process we created several art pieces with rainforest and jungle themes. The book “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild” has become a class favourite. After reading it the kids made their very own Mr. Tigers! Check out the author, Peter Brown, introduce his book below.
With a direct drawing lesson, each student painted their own Mr. Tiger with a bit of personality. 🙂
The Super Kids learned about the famous artist, Henri Rousseau. He was a French artist that loved to paint jungle scenes, but he actually never got to visit one. We read a book about his life and then began the process of creating our own art pieces inspired by him. The book link is below. We are still working on them, but here are a few pictures of our steps so far.
Have you seen the book “The Good Egg”? It’s the second book by the authors Peter Oswald and Jory John. Their first book, “The Bad Seed” is hit in our classroom. When I saw that a new book was out I just had to get it for our class. It’s a fabulous story that teaching kids to take care of themselves and it’s hard to be good all the time. We loved it! Check out the book trailer below. 🙂
Now you’re all caught up! Until next time. 🙂
