The month of February has been a cold and windy one! We’ve had several blizzards that resulted in highways being closed and extreme cold warnings. You just have to love the ups and downs of living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. One of these blizzards resulted in all routes to our school being blocked by accidents so most of our school’s staff had to walk in. Mrs. Rempel and I braved it together. 🙂
With the weather being what it has been, the Super Kids had to talk about temperature, minus temperatures, and how a thermometer works. The class had great questions. Why do we use Celsius and the United States doesn’t? What is the red part in a thermometer? We used hot and cold water to show how a thermometer worked.
Groundhog’s Day was a day where we watched with fingers crossed to see if there would be six more weeks of winter predicted. Unfortunately, it was. We learned about groundhogs and experimented with shadow making.
Bell Let’s Talk Day is a day in Canada is a day where we acknowledge and talk about mental health. Talking to kids about their mental health is so important. Knowing their feelings are valued and helping them learn to recognize how they are feeling helps them express these feelings to others. This is a big concept, but using the zones of regulation along with the help from the Disney movie “Inside Out”, helps explain this concept in kid terms. We have posters of the “Inside Out” characters in our room and we use the language of red, blue, yellow, and green zones to explain our feeling in our classroom. We also read the book “Ruby Finds A Worry” to help with our discussion on feeling anxious or nervous about a new situation. The class wrote about it in their daily writing journals.
The Super Kids then created a heart with all the people they felt they could go to if they felt worried, scared, or needed someone to talk to.
We also got a special gift from one Super Kid’s family. They know the author of the new children’s book “Angry Cow” and had it signed for us. We loved the new addition to our classroom library. The book talks about dealing with anger.
Lunar New Year was celebrated earlier in the month and several of the Super Kids celebrate with their family. The class read stories, created lanterns, and even research tigers. Did you know that this year is the year of the tiger?
The Super Kids enjoy working on their math skill builder practice books and even choose to work on them during indoor recess or center times. We use the document camera to show our learning with the class.
Throughout the month of February our class has been learning about daily and seasonal changes in science. Students have learned how the Earth spins, orbits the sun, how the moon orbits the Earth, and how time is related to these patterns. Students showed their learning by creating stop motion videos. The videos are on the iPads at school, but I do have one that I have linked below. I’ll add more to this post next this week. 🙂
We have been recording the phases of the moon this month in our moon observation journals. February moonrises happen during the day most of the time, so we have been lucky to see them from our classroom window. Thank you to our families for helping with our journals over the weekends.
Valentine’s Day was a day that the class was very excited to celebrate their friendships! The class couldn’t wait to share their cards with each other. It always warms my heart to see them deliver their valentines to each other. They were so excited to open their cards and thank each other.
The Super Kids painted special giant Valentines for their families and wrote special notes on the back.
The afternoon was spent rotating through activities with a Valentine theme. Groups coded their friends with Valentine actions, playing heart sight word bingo, sorted candy numbers into even and odd groups, sculpted love bugs, and played a doubles game.
We finished the day with a traditional Indigenous friendship game called stick and stone. All you need is 10 popsicle sticks and two stones. The game of chance is an example of give and take. The kids loved playing it and even continued to play it during indoor recess.
This past Friday was the 100th day of school. To get ready for our construction themed day, the class created their own construction equipment art and tool boxes from mask boxes we have been collecting for a few weeks. The class was so very excited about the upcoming day, that some kids even got into the spirit during indoor recess and created their own cranes out of straw and connects.
Despite a blizzard warning and a power outage, the kids came in excited to tackle the 100th day. One student even said they thought it was like a real construction site with the power being out. Student came into the classroom to find their own hard hat, name tag for the 10×10 construction crew, and their tool box.
The class had to complete a series of challenges to earn math tools for their tool boxes and numbers for the class 100 chart. The day was filled with math challenges such as 10 frame math, roll to 100, place value hunt, 100 piece lego challenge, cup structures, QR codes, and construction puzzles. The class had a blast working through each challenge.
We worked to some construction noises thanks to YouTube and even had a movement break with a construction actions. Check out the class below in the link and the YouTube video below too.
construction class movement break
As you can see the month has been full of exciting learning experiences. I hope everyone has a relaxing long weekend. Take care.