Month: June 2016

This week has been packed full of activities!  There is a buzz in the air of our school.  The students, teachers, and families are excited.  SUMMER IS ALMOST HERE! T MINUS 1 DAY AND COUNTING…

Today was “Bump Up Day” and “Skittles Day”.  The Super Kids that are moving into grade 3 next year, got to meet their teachers and our classroom welcomed our new friends from the Kindergarten classes.  Everyone was nervous, including me!  Next, we participated in “Skittles” which is our field day.  The students spent the morning going from station to station completing the tasks and earning skittles.  We were wishing the rain clouds away, but it didn’t work. We ended up moving inside.  Our amazing P.E. teachers quickly set up the activities in the halls, gym, and classrooms.  In less then 15 minutes we were up and running again!

This week we created our own pattern block insects to complete our bug unit.  Below are a few examples of what the kids came up with.

  

Those students that hadn’t presented their passion projects did so today.  There were 10 presentations.  Below are a few pictures of some of the presentations.

   

I want to thank everyone who has subscribed to our classroom blog this year.  I hope that you have enjoyed being a fly on our classroom wall. 🙂 The point of this blog is to keep families informed, but also to reach out into the world and make connections.  I will be continuing the blog in September and thank everyone for helping us make our year memorable.

A Special Note:

Dear Parents,

I give you back your child, the same child you confidently entrusted to my care last fall. I give them back pounds heavier, inches taller, months wiser, more responsible, and more mature than they were then.

Although they would have attained their growth in spite of me, it has been my pleasure and privilege to watch them personality unfold day by day. I give them back reluctantly. We have spent a year together and in some cases two, in the narrow confines of a crowded classroom. We’ve grown close.

We have laughed, played, studied, learned, and enriched our lives together this year. I have watched each student develop their own sense of wonder.

For those students that are moving on from our Super Kid classroom, I wish them well. I will always consider them “my kids” and be interested in their lives.

For those students that are returning to my classroom, I’m looking forward to seeing them again in the fall. I can only imagine what we will learn about next!

Enjoy your summer!

Sincerely,

Michelle Didyk

On Monday, all 4 grade 1/2 classes went to the Royal Aviation Museum of Canada right here in Winnipeg.  After a long drive with construction delays and a train, we finally got to our destination just in time to see a water bomber take off right in front of the museum!

We headed upstairs for some play time in the kid’s centre before lunch.  The class loved pretending to go through a metal detector.  Some even took off their shoes and put them in the basket.  Others enjoyed taking turns flying the plane and guiding the planes in the tower.

      

Next we headed downstairs for some bubble fun!  We learned how to make our own bubble wands to make huge bubbles!

    

Finally, we headed for our tour around the museum.  Our leader was very animated and funny.  He kept our attention and taught us lots about different kinds of planes.  One student even got to sit in a plane and move the controls to show how the plane moves direction.  We got to sit in an old Air Canada plane like we were taking off to Hawaii.

We had a great day learning together. 🙂

I had the pleasure to accompany the Island Singers to a retirement home to perform today.  Many of the Super Kids have chosen to be part of our school’s grade 1-4 choir.  This group traveled to a local assisted living facility to entertain the residents today.  They were wonderful!  The audience smiled, clapped along, and tapped their feet. One lovely lady asked me to come talk to her.  She told me how thrilled she was that the kids came to see them.  It was the highlight of her week and she even had her hair done.  She told me that seeing the kids made her smile and she felt young again.  🙂  I’m so glad that the Super Kids and the rest of the choir could make members of our community happy.  Our music teacher had done a fantastic job with the kids and I was thrilled to be able to come along.

 

SPOILER ALERT….THE SECOND PART OF THIS POST EXPLAINS OUR FATHER’S DAY ART ACTIVITY! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR GIFT OR YOU ARE NOT OUR DADS. 🙂

The third time is the charm.  After having to cancel our folk dance in the park two times due to rain, we were finally able to dance today in our own school playground.  Thank you to Mrs. Lawrence, our music teacher, for organizing the event.  The Super Kids loved dancing together.  Many family members came out to watch us.  When we came outside and set up for our afternoon, there was music playing and the kids couldn’t resist starting dancing early! Check out the video below.

dancing

dancing2

I was to busy dancing to make actual videos of the kids dancing their folk dances, but here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying the afternoon.

This week the Super Kids learned about the artist Gustav Klimt.  We learned about his life and looked at many of his art pieces.  The class loved his use of patterns and gold.  One student even recognized his piece “Woman In Gold” from a movie her parents were watching.  I told the class that I watched that movie too.  We studied his artwork called “The Tree Of Life”.

We discussed what we see in the painting and focused on the tree.  We made the connection to our families.  Our parents are an important part of our lives and our dads are a big part of the foundation of our family tree.  We decided to make our own Klimt inspired trees for those important men in our lives.  We hope you see the connection and see the meaning behind it.

    

Happy Father’s Day!

How can it be June 10th already?  The year has flown by.  Some of my Super Kids have been with me for two years and I can’t imagine sending them off in just a few short weeks.

(Group Hug for our friend that is leaving us early for summer!)

This week we have been taking a look back and celebrating our growth as learners.  One of our Super Kids had his last day with us on Thursday, so we were busy getting his things organized to take home with him for the summer.  This process got the whole class looking at our journals and noticing how they wrote at the beginning of the year compared to now.  We organized our art portfolios and took a stroll down memory lane. The kids pulled out all of their pieces and showed each other their favourites.

I’ve been busy assessing reading for reports cards and I’ve made sure to celebrate each child’s reading growth.  The class’ favourite activity right now is “Read to Self”.  It is fifteen uninterrupted minutes of quite reading.  Honestly, it is one of those times in the day when I love to look around at all my students and smile!  I am so glad that they have fallen in love with reading!

All of our butterflies have hatched and were released this week.  We were very surprised that all of our caterpillars matured into butterflies.  We had many discussions about how sometimes in nature this doesn’t happen.  We were very proud parents. 🙂

I had butterflies on the brain!  I even saw a gorgeous butterfly at the garden centre with my family.  Of course I had to take a picture to show the class.

In health we have started lessons from the Kids In The Know program.  These lessons involve trusting your instincts and personal safety.  We have been examining scenarios where we need to trust our instincts and say no.  These lessons are very important and I encourage everyone to talk to your families about personal safety.

We’ve been continuing to have our Friday genius hour every week.  The kids look forward to it and have created some amazing projects.  One Super Kid even presented their project to our 3/4 buddies!

   

Thank you to this Super Kid’s family for bringing in this science lesson provocation!  Lesson plan out the window and we learned all about woodpeckers, why they make holes in trees, and their life cycle.  That is my favourite kind of day!  Student driven inquiry!

 

Enjoy your weekend!

What a week in the Super Kid classroom!

Our butterflies are beginning to hatch!  In science we have been learning about the life cycles of different animals with a focus on insects.  We have been anxiously waiting for them to hatch.  Yesterday, we had one butterfly and by lunch we had five.  Today we have ten so far.  The kids are amazed!  We even saw one shaking and then break through with wet wings.  I overheard a conversation between two girls that made me laugh!

girl 1 –  “You know, I can’t believe they’re butterflies already!”

girl 2 – “They grow up so fast don’t they.” 🙂

 

I can’t believe how all of my students have grown as readers!  They have books from home, the library and our classroom library in their book bags.  Some are busting.  They are reading with expression and purpose.  I’m thrilled with their progress and I hope that every family celebrates!

 

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go to “Dancing In The Park” today.  Every year the kids in grade 1-3 learn different folk dances and we go to the park and perform them with other kids from other schools.  It rain on our first scheduled day and again today on our rain date.  Oh well.  We can’t control the weather. 🙂  What do you do when it is indoor recess…make masterpieces of course.  I came back from lunch recess and found this on the classroom floor.  My kids really are super!