Month: February 2023

This past week the Super Kids celebrated two big days! Valentine’s Day and the 100th day of school. The kids were so excited to celebrate their classroom friendships and making it through the first 100 days of learning together.

Valentine’s Day began with our 3/4 learning buddies from Ms. Lagimodiere’s classroom joining us for some acts of kindness bingo and reading stories that they picked from the library about friendship.

Next, the class exchanged Valentine cards with each other.  They couldn’t wait to deliver the cards to each other and open them.  If your child brought Valentine cards, thank you for sending cards in for the whole class so students didn’t feel left out.

Valentines themed centers were a highlight of the day.  The kids rotated through activities such as sight word heart bingo, coding a friend with valentine’s actions like blowing kisses and picking flowers, building a structure out of foam hearts, reading Valentine’s themed books, and themed math games.  We even had a timer set for 10 minutes per station with hearts and music. 🙂

 

The 100th day of school was on Friday and the class was told that there was going to be a mystery for them to solve.  The class was invited to wear black, sunglasses, and come ready to investigate like secret agents.  The class came in and I greeted them with an app to confirm their identify with their fingerprint.  When they were granted access to the classroom they were asked to find their secret agent badges and be ready for a top secret briefing.  To say they were excited would be an understatement!

Classroom setup 100th day video

   

All the grade 1 and 2 classes on the English side of our school and the grade 1 classes on the French side of the school rotated through activities set up in the rooms to help them earn words that when put together at the end of the day formed a sentence clue.  With this clue the class would hopefully solve the mystery of who agent 99 was and why they stole all of the zeros in our classrooms!  Activities involved fingerprint science, ninja training, a laser beam obstacle course, secret message in invisible ink, 100 cup towers, coded messages, bowling, and special glasses.  The kids were so pumped!  These activities took the whole day with some breaks for snack, recess, and lunch.  At the end of the day they all headed outside for some Phys Ed time before solving our mystery.

When arranging the words collected it formed the sentence…”The zeros were not stolen, they are just lost!”  Where do things go in our school when they are lost?  The lost and found in the office.  We took off to the office and found them!

The kids left school with smiles on their faces and a bit tired from their day being a secret agents.  It was a great day where the kids got to spend time in many classes in our school and I got to spend time with so many kids that go to school in our building.  I missed being able to do that during our Covid restrictions and I’m so glad that we have the opportunity to be a school community again in these meaningful ways.  🙂

Back in early January, (I guess it’s been a little bit since my last post :)) we celebrated Lunar New Year and the year of the rabbit.  The Super Kids explored the zodiac calendar and learned what sign their birth year was.  We listened to traditional music and learned about the traditions surrounding this holiday.

We then created our own rabbit art with a red backing for good luck.

Cosmic Kids yoga is a fun way to get our bodies ready for learning.  Living in Winnipeg Manitoba during the winter can result in some indoor recesses.  25 first graders can get a bit restless, so activities like this help us get moving.

 

Feb. 2nd was supposed to be our outdoor field trip to The Fort Whyte Centre.  Unfortunately, it was the coldest day of the year so far at -44C with the windshield.  We had to reschedule, but we had a great day as school learning about groundhogs and shadows for Groundhog Day.

We were fortunate that the cold snap only lasted for a little over a week and we could head back outside for some outdoor fun together.

Math games are a big part of our classroom learning and help our developing number sense.  The Super Kids love getting into partners and practicing their skills with a fun game!

Our fairy tale inquiry is in full swing!  We have been reading many fairy tales and fractured fairy tales over the past month. Curriculum connections are being made to all areas of the grade 1 program.  Learning about parts of a story, predicting what comes next, summarizing the plot, and making connections is a daily experience as we read a new tale.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears was a story we focussed on earlier in the month.  After reading a few versions of the story told from different points of view, we wondered if the science around the story was actually possible.

Would the temperatures of the porridge bowls be possible? Could Mama’s bowl be colder the Baby Bear’s bowl?  First, we needed to learn more about the thermometer and how this important science tool works.  The class then learned about the different systems used to tell temperature and noticed that the thermometer had a number line on it.  The kids then experimented by putting thermometers into hot and cold water and noticing what happened.  There were a lot of excitement watching it go up and down.

After testing the porridge, setting a timer for 15 minutes, and then checking the temperature again, the class came to the conclusion that it wasn’t possible for Mama Bear’s bowl to be colder.  We then had to brainstorm reasons why it could be that way.  One student thought that maybe Papa Bear put it in the fridge to cool it down like his mom does for his baby sister.  Another student thought that maybe the porridge was poured in the bowls in a different order.  Then the class created their own Goldilocks art.

Next we tackled the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty”.  Now I know what you’re thinking. Humpty Dumpty isn’t a fairytale, but there are several fractured fairy tales with Humpty as the main character.

“After The Fall” by Dan Santat the story of how Humpty faced his fears and climbed back up eventually only to fully crack open and become a bird.  This opened up some writing opportunities to talk and write about what our fears are.  We then wondered what other animals Humpty could have been.  There are more than just birds that hatch from an egg.  The class then learned the difference between oviparous and viviparous animals. The class was challenged with two STEM projects related to Humpty Dumpty.  First they had to work together in groups using loose parts found in our classroom such as lego, blocks etc. to create a wall that Humpty could sit on.  Each group was given a plastic egg to test with.  After the wall was built the group then had to measure how tall and wide their structure was.

The second challenge was to create a parachute for Humpty to use so he wouldn’t fall and break again.  The plastic egg had to stay in the cup to show this.

Next, we experimented with materials that we thought might protect a real egg.  We have an egg allergy in our classroom so the eggs were in ziploc bags with the materials we wanted to try and only I handled and dropped the egg.  The kids first predicted if they thought that the egg would break when surrounded by bubble wrap, Easter grass, cotton balls, water, and yarn.

egg video

The week wouldn’t be complete without a fun Humpty Dumpty art project.  We plan to use watercolour and oil pastels to finish our project this week.

This week we will be celebrating our classroom friendships on Valentine’s day and the 100th day of school on Friday.  Stay tuned for more adventures. 🙂