Month: March 2018

Over the last 3 months we have been exploring how natural patterns affect our environment. Through our guided inquiry, students have investigated: day and night, the phases of the moon, seasonal changes, the water cycle, and explored how air and water are important to life on Earth.

The Grade1/2 students were inspired by Todd Parr’s “The Earth Book”, which tells a story about how kids can make a difference.  Students wrote a script, created giant puppets, and designed a program that outlined the meaning of each scene.

  

This performance is an artistic representation of all our learning this term. We are proud to present to you – “The Earth Book – A Shadow Theatre”.

Please click on “The Earth Book Program” link below for an explanation of each scene.

 

The-Earth-Book-Program-final-29ezcl5-1mj5anv-1p3jqcs

On March 22nd, we performed our shadow theatre with our 1/2 friends from Mrs. G’s room,  to a crowd of over 100 people during our school’s spring exhibition. Please copy the link below to download and watch the video.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xs211a9429u21nb/shadowtheatre.m4v.zip?dl=0

This week we not only were preparing for our exhibition, but we also were studying the idea of sinking and floating.  Students predicted if they thought an item would sink or float and then we tested each item.  This lead to a STEM activity on Friday.  Can you make a boat that will float out of recyclable material that will hold a 20 gram weight?  The answer is YES! The class rose to the challenge and many created boats that held a 200 gram weight! I know what you’re thinking.  A design project on the last day of school before spring break after a late night performing for our community!  Are you nuts? If you know the Super Kids as a class you would understand.  They love to create, build, and plan.  Activities like this make them smile, giggle, and bring out their natural curiosity.  This was a day of creativity for my engineers.  It was a great way to spend our last day together before the break.

I want to wish all of my Super Kids and their families a wonderful spring break!  I’ll see you soon. 🙂

 

 

 

 

This past week was full of excitement in the Super Kid’s classroom.  The Star Dome visited us.  What is a Star Dome?  It’s a portable planetarium.  That’s right…a field trip that comes to you!  The dome is quite big so we had it set up in the main floor learning commons.  The class was so excited to go inside.  We shocked the presenter with all of our knowledge about the seasons, the moon, and the planets.  We could name all of the phases of the moon and the presenter couldn’t believe it!  Have you ever held a 14.5 billion year old meteorite? We did.  It was very heavy.  One of the kids said, “You mean I’m holding something that was in space that long?  I’m so lucky!” What a wonderful way to celebrate the learning that we have been doing over the past few months and bringing it all together!

     

Now that we know that we have one place in the solar system to live, we have to take care of our home.  How can 6-8 year olds do that?  We plan to find out through investigations into air, water and how we can protect our Earth. Today the class brainstormed different examples of water in our environment.  We also watched a “Sid The Science Kid” video about water.  The link is below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt68zrJuXb4

We look forward to sharing our journey of how we got where we are in our learning at our school’s upcoming exhibition!  Our class is joining forces with Mrs. G’s class and creating a shadow theatre to a children’s story book by Tom Parr.  The theme is taking care of our Earth. The class has taken their knowledge of shadows from our moon study, shadow lessons, and Olympic charades, and dove into creating their ideas for their pages.  We can’t wait to share it with you all!

  

Did you know that March 2nd was Dr. Seuss’ birthday?  We had to celebrate by having a Dr. Seuss day!

 

We read Dr. Seuss books, did Dr. Seuss themed math activities, watched the story “The Lorax”, created “Cat In The Hat” artwork, and even had green eggs and ham!

          

Do you like green eggs and ham?  Surprisingly lots of the class wanted to try and find out.

 

“The Lorax” story created a perfect connection to our celebration and our overall theme that we’ve gotten to.  How can we help the Earth?  One Super Kid came with the perfect shirt for the occasion.   We then brainstormed how we can all do our part.  Each student worked on a writing piece that began with the following statement.  “I’m ____________ and I speak for the children.”  Then they created a list of things that they can do to help our planet.  Ideas included turning off the tap when you brush your teeth, the 3 Rs, plant trees, and ride your bike.

 

Earlier last week we created some artwork for a PAC fundraiser.  Every student in our school is submitting a piece of artwork that will be turned into a greeting card for families to purchase. Our class was inspired by the paintings of Claude Monet.  We looked a several children’s book about Monet and learned what impressionism is.  We then created our own artwork inspired by Monet’s “WaterLilies and Japanese Bridge”.

      

The kids always amaze me with their willingness to jump in and try a new art project.  They are so creative.  I’m so lucky to be able to spend my days with my kiddos.  Yesterday my two worlds collided.  The snow storm that hit the Winnipeg area created a problem. Well, several problems actually.  The buses were cancelled so my daughter came to work with me and helped out in our classroom.  Well, that is once we got to school after being stuck in our driveway for an hour and a half!  Living outside of the city is great but my long driveway in a winter storm creates a problem. 🙂

The kids loved having Anna spend the day with us.  Anna read with the kids, worked on math activities, helped with our projects, and even went to gym with the kids.  Today when I got to school the kids all hoped she would be with me again.  🙂