with Ms. Lai & Ms. Loungsay
Our class ended our Winter theme unit by building homes for some of the animals that hibernate in the winter time. Each table group chose their animal(s), gathered materials and then built the home together. We were so impressed with how everyone worked collaboratively and helped each other out!
We had so much fun looking for “animal tracks” in our little forest area! We first looked at what animal tracks we might find and then each table group was responsible to find two sets of tracks. Afterwards, each team read a short animal tracks booklet to help them match the tracks to the right animal. Then they had to find the “animal” in the classroom. Everyone worked so well together and accomplished the goal as a team!
With a little imagination, we were able to make it rain and snow in our classroom! First, we poured water into a large bowl. Second, we added a few layers of shaving cream to the water. The shaving cream is the cloud. We talked about how clouds are formed from a process called evaporation (when the sun heats up water in rivers or lakes or the ocean and turns it into vapor or steam). The water vapor or steam goes into the air forming clouds. Lastly, we added food colouring. We pretended it was rain/snow. When water droplets grow heavy enough and depending on the temperature, rain or snow will fall. We had so much fun watching those clouds!
Welcome back, families! We hope you all had a wonderful and restful holiday. All our friends had so many stories to share with each other and their teachers. To share our favourite winter break story, we used loose parts such as gems, rocks, sticks, wooden pegs etc. to build our story. We took pictures of their story and then they each recorded their favourite winter break moment orally! Our storytellers cannot wait to share their stories with you!
Please login to your child’s blogfolio to listen to their story.
The story Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert is about the Leaf Man drifting around and it visited many places and saw a lot of animals. We don’t know where the Leaf Man is going because it goes where the wind blows. After reading the story, we went on a nature walk and created our own leaf person or creature. As the children were building their leaf person/creature, we heard some interesting stories of where their leaf creations have gone and what they have seen and done! A few leaf people went to the North Pole to look for Santa. Another leaf person went to outer space. And then a leaf butterfly was too sticky, so the wind couldn’t blow it away! We also had a leaf family hanging out at the park! These leaf creations can be anywhere. Look around next time when the wind is blowing. You might see a leaf person drifting by.
On our first nature walk, we explored signs of fall. We read a story called “Wonderfall”. The story follows a single tree through the changing seasons. While we were reading the story, we noticed the tree drops acorns, loses leaves and provides food and a home for a pair of squirrels. Before heading out to explore fall, we brainstormed what we might find using one of our senses, sight. We predicted that we might see leaves changing colours, leaves falling, acorns, apples, caterpillars, squirrels, people wearing jackets and scarves, wind, the sun, and clouds. During our nature walk, the first thing we discovered were falling leaves. We also found a caterpillar on an abandoned frisbee! We didn’t see any squirrels gathering acorns, but we did find some apples under an apple tree.
On our second nature walk, we gathered leaves and decided to sort them by colours to make it easier to see what we had found. We identified the colours we needed and placed coloured construction paper mats in brown, red, green, orange and yellow on the floor. Then we sorted! Stay tuned for our next post. We will be creating our own fall colour!
We also made patterns on our nature walk too!
Whether it’s leaves for hair, pinecones for eyes or even sticks to make our lips, we had so much fun creating our very own nature self-portrait. This activity encouraged us to practice our planning skills, gave us an opportunity to experiment with textures, shapes and colours, and allowed us to be creative. We also learned to respect and appreciate nature.