Month: April 2016

Our class had a wonderful day at the Assiniboine Zoo today!  We spent the day learning about animal adaptions with our zoo leader.  She taught us how animals adapt to their different habitats.  After showing us the Manitoba bison, arctic fox, and bald eagle, we headed into Toucan Ridge.

       

Toucan Ridge is a topical house where you can find different animals that can be found in the rainforest.

           

We were thrilled to see squirrel monkeys, sloths, red tree pandas, and even an ocelot.  We did see a toucan, but I didn’t get a good picture of it.  We also were the first people to be told that the sloths are going to have babies!  After exploring the different flowers and trees in this habitat, we headed to the zoo classroom for some more activities.

    

Our zoo leader knew that we are learning about the rainforest, so she made sure to share how different rainforest animals adapt to their environments.  We then broke into four groups and created an animal that could live in the desert, rainforest, ocean, and arctic with different materials provided.  The Super Kids had to explain why the animal had that adaptation.  Four brave students volunteered and we got to work.  It was great to see them put their new found knowledge to work.  For example, the rainforest animal had large eyes to see in the dark, the ocean animal had a blow hole, the desert animal had humps to store water, and the arctic animal had white fur.  By this time, we were a hungry group!  It was off to eat lunch with the polar bears!  We got to eat our lunches at Tundra Grill, where if your lucky, you can see the polar bears roaming.  We saw three polar bears while eating!  One even came over to the glass just to rub his back end.  He must have been itchy.  The class had a good laugh at that!  After eating we had a play at the Polar Bear Play Park.

 

 

         

 

      

Next we headed to see some more arctic animals.  The seals were very active! If you know what I mean 😉 The Super Kids thought it was funny how they keeps chasing each other.

    

Before heading back to school, we explored the Discovery Centre and walk around the other side of the zoo to see lots of exciting animals.

 

      

      

The Super Kids should be an exhausted group tonight.  Thank you to those who joined us to help make our field trip a great experience.

 

 

 

 

Happy Earth Day!  Earth Day is actually on April 22nd, but we don’t have school on Friday.  The Super Kids decided to celebrate on the 21st instead.  We challenged the whole school to bring a trash free lunch.  The class has been busy promoting our challenge by making morning announcements and making posters that they hung around the school.  We also challenged the teachers to turn off their lights for at least an hour in honour of Earth hour.  Our favourite classroom quote, by Dr. Seuss hangs over our classroom door and says, “A person’s a person no matter how small!”  We hope that all the students in our school know that they can make a difference.

We have been busy practicing our rainforest play, ” The Great Kapok Tree”.  We’re performing it tomorrow afternoon for our 3/4 buddies and our 1/2 buddies.  Next week we’ll perform it again for our Grandparents on senior’s day.  The kids are so excited.

The Super Kids are in the middle of their research projects on a rainforest animal.  Today they created a script with a few fun facts about their chosen animal.  They practiced in partners this morning and performed it in front of the green screen wall in our school this afternoon.

Thanks to a handy app that our student teacher found, we are transported to the rainforest!  Check out a few videos below.

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Continuing with our Earth Day theme, the class learned a new place value card game called recycle it.  The goal is to make a bigger number than your partner.  The twist is that you can recycle a card once and pick a different card.  Strategy was important!  Each partner had to record their number and use a greater than or less than sign.

On a completely different note…whats up with rubix cubes?  My class has gone nuts over them!  They bring them to school and take them outside a recess.  They can solve them so fast.  We watched a video on YouTube showing the fastest solver in the world.  He solved the cube in 5 seconds!  Some Super Kids have decided to make a genius hour project on them.  I hope they can help me.  Rubix cubes have always baffled me.  🙂

Mrs. Didyk and The Super Kids

This week the Super Kids got to taste, smell, and feel products from the rainforest.  Many of the students didn’t realize how many things they eat and use everyday come from the rainforest.  We tried bananas, oranges, passion fruit, avocado, chocolate, and figs.  We smelled pepper, lotions, and gum.  They were so excited when they walked in from lunch recess and saw all the plates sitting at the tables!  After the lesson, we discussed why our student teacher shared these products with us.  The students made the connection to deforestation and the importance of saving the rainforests in the world.  They were making personal connections to the issue.

We are busy becoming rainforest experts by studying a rainforest animal.  The class has been using information books to find details about their animal.  We have also been using the website pebble go for our project.  The class is excited to make their own table of contents and glossary.  The picture above show the kids hard at work.

Check out our very own kapok tree!  Its a great place to cuddle with a book.

Mrs. Didyk and the Super Kids

What a week!  We are back from spring break and it feels like we never left!  The Super Kid classroom has turned into a rainforest.  This week has been about generating excitement and enthusiasm about the rainforest.  We learned what a rainforest is and where they are in the world.  It is a natural connection to our study before the break on the water cycle.  Our grade 3/4 buddies joined us and helped us create rainforest animals for our ceiling and bulletin board.  We made jaguars, tree frogs, monkeys, sloths, butterflies and macaws.  The room looks like a jungle!

 

 

 

We read “The Great Kaypok Tree” by Lynne Cherry and decided to make a reader’s theatre to perform on Earth Day.  If you haven’t read the book, check it out at your local library or you can go to YouTube and watch a reading of the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw0arFtHeVw

A man walks into the rainforest to cut down a kapok tree that is home to many animals.  He gets tired and falls asleep at the foot of it.  Once asleep, many animals come down from the tree to whisper in his ear many reasons why he should not cut it down.  The class is very excited to share the play with other classrooms and our grandparents on grandparent’s day at the end of the month.  We have been busy practicing our parts and acting out the scenes.  Thanks to those families that have donated snake stuffed animals, butterfly wings, and even made anteater noses!  Below is a picture of our student teacher and a Super Kid making a sloth mask.

To become biologists and research a rainforest animal, we have been learning about non fiction writing and how to find information.  Students were partnered and given the same rainforest information book.  Today we looked at what a table of contents is and how to use it.  Next week we will use the same book to learn about headings, bolded words, and the glossary.

Continuing on our rainforest theme, today we had an art day!  To be honest, this is my favourite kind of day.  We went with flow of the day, listened to calming music and created works of art.  We looked at pictures of snakes and noticed that snakes like to coil themselves around trees in the rainforest.  We looked at how we could draw this by sketching together.  Then we coloured and painted.  Below are some pictures of the art process.

 

 

As the year goes on, its nice to see those students who were hesitant to create art, expand and view themselves as artists.

I hope you have a great weekend with your family.