We're Going on a Shape Hunt!

I apologize for such a long break in blogging! I am determined to get back to it as soon as possible, and I thought I'd start with what happened after the holidays and just before my absence from the classroom-- our shape exploration!

As I'm sure most of you have heard (and sang... hopefully not over and over and OVER again!) we have been learning a variety of shape songs and poems to help us identify 2D and 3D shapes. When I left, we were exploring a variety of 2D shapes, using the 2D Shape Song and Shape Monster poem. As part of that, we decided to go on a shape hunt.

First, we found many objects that were either a circle, square, rectangle, and triangle. We sorted them and talked about what they looked like.

The ball of yarn was VERY creative!

These might not look like squares, but it's truly the camera angle!

 

Next, we decided to MAKE SHAPES WITH OURSELVES! It was a lot of fun... especially figuring out how to make our bodies into a rectangle, and not a square.



Triangle!



Circle. (Well... we tried our best).

Square-- all sides are one person long

Two long people and two squishy people!

Overall, it was a good time to look at shapes! We are now past shapes in our song, so look for lots of holiday celebrations coming soon!

A Snapshot of Inside Play

We were given cameras (yay!) for our classroom, so I took advantage of it and took pictures all afternoon! Within 10 minutes of pictures, here are some of the things we working on...

Beyblade made with snap cubes.

 This beyblade is no ordinary snap cube beyblade! Traditionally, they have been made in our class with 9 blocks snapped together in a 3 x 3 grid with a block on top as a handle and a block below as a point. This monster was created after much trial and error by a friend with persistance! The new design he created is stronger, faster, and consistantly wins battles in snap cube or block stadiums. After teaching others how to make this beyblade, it has been decided it takes many more blocks (27 vs 11) and it's hard to get a colour scheme-- but a winner is a winner, no matter how you see it!

Princess and Toy Story puzzles are a favourite right now!.

 One girl can complete all our puzzles independently and is very proud of that fact! Others are learning to use logical thinking skills to match pictures on the pieces or to guess what part of the puzzle each piece belongs to.

Some were looking for sight words in our weekly literacy poem.

 Some students were playing with wiki stix (they look like pipe cleaners, but are made of wax and stick to paper!). They were hunting for the words "I" and "And" in the Dreidel song we are learning.

The boys were cooking.

 At the restaurant, the boys were busy ordering, cooking, serving and prepping! In this picture, one boy is cutting up the "food" at the table to serve to his patrons.

It spins!?!

 As our snap cube beyblades are boring for some, we are on the hunt for what spins. This juicer at the restaurant makes a fantastic top!

Exploring colours and story concepts.

 After reading some winter stories, a friend is exploring the colours and materials at the art easel to create a snow-woman that resembles herself. Other friends sat by to give input about what was missing (buttons, longer fingers, etc).

A battle is a-brewin'!

 This friend was exploring with geometric pattern blocks and using them to create complex battle grounds for his triangles. The battle ship is strategically creates and the triangle warriors are forming ranks to take the battle ship from the bad guys.

Oh wait... that's my play!

 Guilty as charged-- I was in a heated battle with some friends over who could build the tallest tower with foam blocks. We had to experiment with many bases and patterns to see who could get their tower to be the tallest each time.

Exploring funnels and pouring!

 These friends knew exactly what they were doing as they quickly-- and easily-- made "potions" by stacking funnels in such a way that water poured through the top funnel would filter into the cup below.

Alphabet hunt in the sand.

Several friends enjoyed going on an alphabet hunt with our fresh sand! It was so much fun to dig and search for letters or sounds. One friend called the letters or sounds (i.e. S! or "sssss!") and the other two had to see who could find the letter.


A snapshot of play! All the busy learning certainly made for a fantastic Thursday! Please come back again tomorrow for a post about 20 things to do during the holidays!

An Artistic Type of Day

Today Mrs. Saini and I decided to put out Halloween themed stamps and paint at the messy table. Out came the paper! Out came the stamps! Out came a completely new direction to our plans!

Within minutes of digging in we had:

String art....

Look at the experiments with symmetry!

Finger painting...

Colour mixing, writing and general fun!

Stamping....

Exploring the correct amount of paint to put on the stamp. Too much paint made globby pictures.

And although there are no pictures, there were colour mixing activities occuring in the sink after messy hands were washed off. How they used the paint was fantastic. In the end, we talked about symmetry, patterning, directionality, sensory experiences, colours, letters, writing, and more.

So of course, I turned around and, my goodness, there were art activities being explored all over the room! At the creative centre we had a student exploring hole punches...

Super strength to push that punch!

Someone else was drawing a lovely picture with our markers...

Scary costume!

And someone else was writing a letter to Mr. McCutcheon...

Mr. McCutcheon is going to have a lot of writing to do!

At the creative centre we were exploring writing, communication, pencil grips, telling stories with pictures, counting shapes, developing hand muscles, exploring colour and sharing.



Finally, our builders were hard at work preparing our drama centre. On Monday we are making it into a PetsMart. A few boys were working hard to ensure that it was "fixed" and ready for the pets. Stay tuned to see our drama centre come into fruition!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins and MORE Pumpkins!

Today we learned about pumpkins, and, in fact, started an inquiry on everything "jack-o-lantern." It all started last week when some students noticed that we had put out word cards at the writing table. A few students really enjoyed writing "jack-o-lantern" or drawing a picture of their own jack-o-lantern. After this, we watched a short movie on Shapes and Pumpkins with Thomas the Train and added some stencils to our writing and creative centre with Halloween shapes.

It was the day to take complete advantage of jack-o-lanterns, however! Mrs. Saini read us a story about how pumpkins grow in the morning. Soon after we decided to measure our pumpkins. First we thought of all the ways we could measure pumpkins (how tall, how heavy, with our hands, with a scale, with a measure, with our bodies), and then we drew a picture of how we were going to measure them and began!

Diligently measured the pumpkin, then drawing a picture to record it!

 Many students used tape measures, rulers and the scale to see how they could measure the pumpkins. Often times it involved teamwork as students had to have someone help them to measure the circumference of the pumpkins. After we measured, we recorded our information on a paper by drawing a picture and doing our best job to write what we used to measure.

There were a few disagreements about what pumpkin was bigger, but in the end, it didn't matter because we all had fun exploring measurement.

After we were all done measuring, I got a carving knife and we decided to see what was inside. Our guesses were: seeds, slime, baby pumpkin, candy, orange, brown and nothing. When we opened it up we saw...

Princess and pumpkin guts!

Lots of seeds and pumpkin guts! Anyone who wanted a turn got to scoop out some of the pumpkin. Our students all felt that the insides were smooth, slippery and slimy. They certainly had fun exploring the feel of the pumpkin between their fingers.

At this point, a few friends were curious about the seeds. They asked questions like, "If we bring this home and plant it, what will happen?" and "Can you eat these?". While the first was a great question, there are few green thumbs in our class (nor the light for growing a plant in the midst of a cold windstorm), so we decided to see if we could eat them. I explained that you can eat the seeds, but you need to separate the seeds from the pumpkin "guts" first, and then cook them.

We quickly started separating!

Our red seed bowl was behind the cauldron. They did a great job! Mrs. Walt helped out by bringing them home, washing them of all their germs and marinating them in olive oil and salt.

We decided that we would cook them tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, many students were asking what our jack-o-lantern would look like and were coming up with designs.

Ohhhh! So scary!

Whose design will win for our two pumpkins? Find out tomorrow when we carve them to get ready for our spooky Halloween party on Wednesday!