As the winter breaks starts I wanted to share what the Super Kids have been up to!
We started the month with an exciting field trip to The Manitoba Theatre For Young People to watch “A Year With Frog and Toad”. What a great experience! This musical follows friends frog and toad with stories and songs for each season. The sail with the mail was a class favourite. This play fit perfectly into the social studies concept of timelines and explored seasons in our science curriculum.
Throughout the month, we have been reading different versions of the gingerbread man story. We compared and contrasted each story noticing the similarities and differences.
We were inspired by Jan Brett’s classic, “The Gingerbread Baby”. We created our own gingerbread houses for our gingerbread families to live in just like Matti did in the story. Using a glue and paint mixer, student traced their drawing to look like icing. Next chalk pastel was used to give the candy some colour. Our gingerbread village is displayed in our classroom and the kids are so proud of it!
With the help of our 5/6 buddies, each student made their own “gingerbread house” using candies provided from their families and graham crackers.
The Super Kids were presented with a gingerbread man STEM challenge. Can you make a bridge to help get the gingerbread man away from the fox? The class dove into designing their structures by first talking with their partners, researching bridges and structures using QR codes, and then exploring the materials provided. WOW! What excitement! The Super Kids loved it. One group changed the challenge and built a boat, two others thought a zip line would be more exciting, and the others measured the “river” and create some inventive bridges. Some groups didn’t want to go outside for recess because they were to busy building their structures! Thats a BIG DEAL in grade 1 and 2!
Unplugged coding was a great way to incorporate computer education into our gingerbread theme. The challenge was to use the coding skills, learned through our work with the Kodable app, in an unplugged coding activity. Can you code the gingerbread man to his house?
Our winter concert was earlier this month. Our music teacher, Mrs. Styles, taught our class an instrumental piece to share with our families.
Part of our social studies curriculum is to learn about each others traditions and celebrations. Each student was given a little family homework. Each family was to brainstorm their traditions, pick one, and create a page for our class book. Traditions could be holiday related but didn’t have to be. Examples were annual family pictures, decorating a Christmas tree, going to the cottage in the summer, Chinese new year, and Diwali celebrations. Through learning about different holidays celebrated by different cultures, the Super Kids realized that most celebrations revolve around family, food, games, light, and sometimes gifts. When learning about traditions kids have when celebrating Hanukkah, the class was challenged to make a lego dreidel. It had to spin and they had to add up the types of lego they used.
Math games this month had a seasonal theme such as gingerbread addition and subtraction games and race to 100 with dreidels.
After reading “Snowman At Night” we created our own snowman art. Our holiday gift to families were made using the kid’s feet, hand, and fingerprints. Oh the giggles!
We ended the week with one more STEM challenge. How tall could you build your “tree” of cups? Two attempts were made after planning in groups. Each group measured their structure to see how tall they could make their tree. Before the third attempt students explored structures and cup stacking with QR code videos. With this new found knowledge they were determined to make the structures taller. The tallest was 167cm!
Today we ended our first term with all 5 1/2 classrooms combining into groups and rotating through snowman centres in the morning. We had a party in the afternoon and welcomed a Super Kid back to our classroom who has left our school with some hugs and giggles. I want to wish both Super Kids who are moving on to new educational experiences all the best! We’ll miss you and your families.
Happy Holidays and I’ll see you all in the new year!
