Month: December 2022

I hope that everyone is having a restful holiday season!  We’re on winter break for another week, but I was looking through the pictures from this past month and decided to write a blog post before the new year starts.

Our class has grown with two new Super Kids recently and we are excited to welcome a third beginning in January.  We found out about our new class member on the last day of school before winter break, so look for another updated contact list in early January.

When the weather gets cold, we end up having indoor recess from time to time.  Some movement breaks are necessary.  Sometimes these breaks can be to get our bodies moving, but other times it’s to calm our bodies for focused tasks.  Cosmic Kids yoga helps us do just that.  If you haven’t heard of it before, check it out on Youtube.

 

 

Partner work through math games, literacy games, and buddy reading activities helps us practice our developing reading and mathematical skills.

Computer science week was held earlier this month.  The Super Kids learned about the coding app Kodable and became computer scientists!  After learning how to code on the program, we took that knowledge and applied it to an unplugged coding activity. Can you code your gingerbread man to his house? Groups then tried to follow other groups instructions to see if it would work.

 

Have you noticed that there are many versions of the classic “Gingerbread Man” story?  We did!  Our class signed out all the different versions our school library had to compare and contrast them. We looked at the settings, characters, and if the fox actually eats the gingerbread man.

Each student drew their very own gingerbread house and outlined it with a glue/paint mixture to represent the icing.  Next chalk pastel ws used to add detail. We created a gingerbread village on our bulletin board. 🙂

We even learned to sew with the help of a parent volunteer!  Students sewed, stuffed, and decorated their gingerbread man before taking it home as a gift to their families.

I then challenged our class to build a boat out of recyclable materials to help get the gingerbread man across the river and away from the fox.  This STEM project had the kids working together, problem solving, and re-designing.

Our 3/4 learning buddies spent some time with us the last week of school.  We headed outside to play and then shared some hot chocolate.

Throughout the school year, we have been learning about family traditions and different holidays celebrated.  Hanukkah was a holiday that began the last week of school.  We read stories and learned a dreidel game.

One of our art lessons this month was to create our own reindeer!  The class first had a direct drawing lesson on whiteboards before drawing their reindeer on watercolour paper and painting their creations.

The last week of school was spirit week and the last day was PJ day.  The class brought a stuffy from home to read to with flashlights and to uses our estimating skills.  Students partnered up to estimate how many blocks long their stuffy was before measuring them.

I’m looking forward to hearing about everyone’s holiday when we return in a week.  Enjoy the rest of your break and I’ll see you next year. 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembrance Day is a day for each of us to stop and remember.  Explaining this day to 5 and 6 year olds can be tricky. We talked about why people wear poppies in November.  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.  As you can imagine, there were many questions and your child might have many for you on the topic.  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.  We agreed that the world leaders need to come to our school to learn how to talk to each other.  🙂

We watched the following video and talked about what the kids thought was happening and how with no words just video the message was shared.

We then learned about the artist Georgia O’Keeffe and read a book about her journey as an artist.

  

She was an artist who looked at object close up and created wonderful pieces of art.  She is famous for her flower pieces.  Several of them are poppies.

 

We created our own poppy art inspired by Georgia’s work and in honour of Remembrance Day.

The Super Kids also created poppies using a different art media.  Using plasticine, the class created Barbara Reed inspired art. Barbara Reed is an author and illustrator who uses plasticine as her media.

Continuing with our exploration of plasticine as an art media, the class created their own nocturnal animal dioramas with some help from our grade 3/4 buddies.  After reading sharing our research with our buddies, students created a diorama that had to show the animal, habitat, water source, food, and home.  The class then learned how to use the iMotion app to create their own stop motion videos!  They were so excited to make their video and share it with their families at student led conferences. I’ve attached one video below and will add more this week.  The videos are on the iPad at school.

Stopmotion1

After reading the book “The Royal Treasure Measure” the class estimated and measured each other friends with their feet.  The kids were so excited to measure their family members during student led conferences.

 

Developing our number sense has been a big part of our school year so far. Understanding what numbers are, counting up and back from them, and noticing patterns are all important skills the class is developing.  One of our favourite activities is to fill in a 100 chart with the help our friends.

The Super Kids have been developing their literacy skills through phonetic instruction, home reading,  buddy reading, decodable text, and much more. Learning a new phonics rule is like uplocking a secret code.  I just love when the kids come rushing over to me to tell me they found an example of the floss rule, -ck ending, open syllable word etc.  They are beaming and so excited to show that they understand.  Thank you to our Super Kid families for helping us make these connections.

 

Well the snow has hit and it’s that time of the year in Winnipeg again.  We’re bundled up for recess and I had to take a few pics out on my last recess duty.  We also had to create some snowman art to hang in our classroom.

Stay warm and stay tuned for more Super Kid adventures. 🙂