The 50th Day Of School

Thursday was the 50th day of school!  The year is flying by so we had to celebrate by having a 50s themed day.  Students were welcomed to dress like kids from the 1950s to help with the atmosphere of the day.  Our neighbouring 1/2 classroom also joined us in celebrating the day.  Here is a picture of myself with Mrs. G from next door.

We listened to rock and roll, had a sock hop, did 50s math, and even had a yummy float!

50s themed math was lots of fun.  The kids rotated through centers that had them grouping numbers larger and smaller than 50, racing to the number 50, practicing their doubles, and estimating how many blocks could fit inside different sized records.

      

50 seconds is longer than you think!  Using the online stop watch on our projector, we counted to see how many chews of gum, bunny hops, twists, and hula hoops we could make in 50 seconds.

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Click on the links below to see us in action!

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Using a green screen app, we were transported back to the 1950s.

   

 

Next we tried a special treat…a float!

 

What a great day of learning and celebrating!

Our classroom’s blog was mentioned for the second time this year in the Edublog Digital Newsletter!  Edublog is the digital forum that we use for our class blog.  It’s so exciting to be mentioned again this school year and to be tweeted out to all of Edublog’s followers!  We were recognized for our giraffe artwork. Our website has had hits from all over the world this weekend.  I can’t wait to share the great news with the class on Monday. 🙂

On Wednesday and Thursday night I had to opportunity to meet with each of my Super Kid and their parents during our school’s conferences.  It was a pleasure to see you all again and share how proud I am of each and every one of my students.  I consider it a privilege to be able to spend my days with them helping them grow, discover, and question.  I have the best job ever!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zones, Giraffes, and Engineering Projects..Just Another Exciting Week

This week the Super Kids started to learn about the zones of regulation using the characters from the movie Inside Out.  Having a common language and understanding our emotions was the goal when discussing this topic.  We started by reading the book “In My Heart”.  This is a wonderful book that explores feelings and how our heart has many emotions.  This lead into introducing the zones of regulation and talking about what makes us feel these feelings.

Throughout the week we used this language to talk through recess issues, to understand our friends point of view, and to describe our feelings.  I heard one student come in from recess and say, “My bucket was tipped and I’m so frustrated!” Another student said, “You’re in the yellow zone! Take a deep breath.  I’m your friend.”  Ok…I had to smile!  I shared the following movie trailers from the movie with the class to help explain the zones.  They made a rather heavy topic more relatable and fun.

Have you heard of the book “Giraffes Can’t Dance” by  Giles Andres?  After reading the book together we had to turn it into an art lesson and create our own giraffes dancing.  I’ve attached a link to the book so you can enjoy it as much as we did.

The art lesson took a couple of days, but with some patience and time, the class created they’re very own dancing giraffes.

         

This week we practiced our developing math skills though some fun math games. The Super Kids practiced recognizing and adding ten frames as well as tallies through a bingo game.  There are different levels to each game, so everyone was challenged.  Students can play anyone no matter what level of game they’re on, because each student had their own board!  This has quickly become a class favourite and we can’t wait to share it with our families next week during conferences.

Friday afternoon turned into a crazy time!  One of the Super Kids favourite things to do at recess is to slide down the hills on our playground.  Since the snow has come, they just can’t get enough sliding time!  I challenged the Super Kids to design and create a sled ramp that would push their “sled” the furthest.  Challenge accepted!  My students are engineers!  You would think that some kids might be overwhelmed by this activity…not my class.  They quickly formed groups and started designing, creating, testing, and modifying.  It turned into a huge afternoon project. I couldn’t stop laughing, smiling, and cheering for my amazing kids!

As you can see from their designs, our lessons on incline planes, friction, and how things move all were needed to create these projects.  We even stopped in the middle of building, ran to the hallway, took off our shoes, and slide across the floor in our socks.  Then we tried it in our shoes.  We had a mini lesson on friction right then to remind them about the materials they were using and how it could effect the motion of their sleds.  FYI, I slide farther then the kids in my socks. 🙂 Check out the following links to see some of the kids testing their designs.

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We’re excited to share our learning with our families next week at conferences.  Have a nice weekend.

Lest We Forget

This week our school recognized the sacrifices our Canadian Military have made over the years with Remembrance Day activities and an assembly.  Our class was honoured to have World War II veteran, James Magill, of the Royal Canadian Airforce join us.  He is the great grandfather of one of our Super Kids.  He shared that he was just 19 years old when he volunteered and served from 1940 -1945. He shared his medals and explained what each one was for.  He was awarded “The Distinguished Flying Cross” for valour.  His lovely words put what we had been talking about as a class into prospective for the kids.   Mr. Magill shared his thoughts about how lucky we are to live in Canada and how war is sometimes necessary for the greater good of all mankind.  He brought pictures of the plane he flew and the men he had the pleasure of serving with.  His stories and demeanour reminded me of my own grandfather who also fought in the war.  When I got home I had to give my dad a call and tell him all about the man my class meet today and how he was just like his father. 🙂

   

One of the questions the class asked this week was why do people wear poppies.  We discussed how they’re made, why they’re made, where you can get them, and how the money goes to veterans and their families.  I find this topic difficult to explain to my class of 5-8 year olds.  The concept of war is very big so the only way I know to explain it is to relate it to our playground.  We discussed how the world is like a playground.  Sometimes you get along with others and sometimes you have disagreements.  It is how you solve those problems that is important.  You have to use your words and listen to each other.  Sometimes countries can’t use their words or compromise.  They fight each other and Canada’s role is to try to help keep the peace and help those countries talk.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t.  One Super Kid said that the world leaders need to come to our school to learn how to talk to each other and use our classroom peacemaker book.  🙂

The class learned about the artist Georgia O’Keeffe.  We looked at her flower art pieces specifically looking at her poppy artwork.   We read the book “Through Georgia’s Eyes” to fully explore her as an artist.

    

We noticed that she zooms in when creating her pieces.  One Super Kid said it is like we’re a bug on the flower.  We took inspiration from her and created our own poppy art pieces that were displayed during our Remembrance Day assembly.

  

 

 

 

Spirit Week

This week our school had our very first spirit week.  Students were asked to wear different colours on Monday, Halloween inspired colours on Tuesday, jerseys and hats on Wednesday, and PJs on Thursday.

Halloween was a blast!  We started off our day with a visit from our learning buddies from Miss. Englot’s class.  With their guidance, the Super Kids explored pumpkins.  We used our developing number sense to estimate and measure how tall our pumpkins were, how much they weighed, would they sink or float, and how many pumpkins tall our learning buddy was!  Our estimating skills have really developed and many kids were pretty close to the actual measurements.

 

After recess we enjoyed rotating through Halloween inspired centres that included witches ring toss, building skeletons, Halloween bingo, and tic tac toe.

   

In the afternoon the “Wood Lily” classrooms rotated through activities in each classroom.  FYI – Wood Lily is the name of our section of the school or what we call our neighbourhood.  We have students from grade 1-4 in our neighbourhood.  When students were in our room they had a STEM challenge.  In group students had to construct a spider bridge that could support spiders (blocks) only using pipe cleaners, tape, scissors, and their imagination.   The bridges spanned between tables.  This was a huge hit!!!!

    

A big thanks to one Super Kid mom that brought us a sweet treat!

PJ day was another opportunity to have a great time learning!  The class graphed their bedtimes, read with flashlights, and continued our measurement focus by estimating and measuring their favourite stuffy.  We just had to read a few bedtime stories too!

  

Flashlights make reading even more fun.  If that’s possible!

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Library time was warm and cozy! While Mrs. Nicole read us a great book, Mme Meg joined us on the floor for some relaxing time.

We finished off our crazy week with some choice time centres.  Some Super Kids decided to make homes for their stuffed animals.  It was a zoo…literally!

Take care.