"Snow Much Fun"

This week was "Snow" much fun!  We had hoped the weather would have been a little nicer so we could go outside for some snow exploration, but the weather just didn't cooperate.  So we had to bring most of the learning inside.  Here is a peek at what we did all week.

On Monday we turned our water table into a SNOW table!  Everyone was so excited!  We added some paints to see what would happen and then we added some digging tools. We noticed that the snow was easier to paint and to dig into once it melted a little.   By the afternoon, the snow was really wet and was super easy to sculpt and build with.  

We made a little snowman out of real snow in our classroom.

We even made a snow cake with candle and sprinkles.

On Tuesday we asked the question, How can you melt an ice cube?  We did a class brainstorm on the SmartBoard and came up with some really clever ideas.

 After our brainstorm, we played the Melt and Ice Cub game.  The students practised recognizing the dots on a dice and raced to see who could melt their ice cube the fastest.  There was a lot screaming and cold hands that day!

If you rolled a 1 you had to hold the ice in your hand for 10 secs.

If you rolled a 2 you had to drop it down your shirt.

If you rolled a 3 you had to blow on it for 10 secs.

If you rolled a 4 you had to drop it on the floor.

If you rolled a 5 you had to put 10 shakes of salt on it

If you rolled a 6 you had to drop it in water for 10 secs.

After playing the game and doing some of our own exploration in the classroom, this is what we learned about ice.

afternoon class

On Wednesday we got to play and explore with the ice we made the day before.

On Thursday we did some snowy writing about making snowmen, throwing snowballs, skating, playing hockey and making snow angels.  

On Friday we did some snowy math centres and then got to make a snowman snack to eat.

We tossed a beanbag onto a snowman and then had to make the number on a 10 frame.

We worked with a buddy to put mittens with the numbers 1-10 in order and then we had to put the correct number of snowflakes or snowballs onto them.

We rolled a dice to build a snowman with different materials.  Some of us rolled so many times that the snowman's body was too big to fit on the table.

 At the end of the day we all got to make two snowmen that we could eat.  We had to cut a banana into six pieces.  This was a little tricky for some kids.  After we had our 6 pieces of banana, we added chocolate chips for the buttons and eyes, pretzel sticks for the arms, a candy for the hat and sprinkles for the nose and mouth.  Everything is always better with sprinkles!

The Week of "P"

Our week started off by learning the letter "P."  We all brought in different items that started with that letter.  (Penguins, princess, pony, power ranger, etc)  Then we did our p centres.  Everyone was really excited that we got to do an iPad job.  We played ABC Magic 7.  It is a great memory game for two players.

As the week went on, everything we did seemed to start with the letter P.  We opened up a Pizza restaurant.

Having a Pizza Party

Drawing more Pizza for our Restaurant

We fingered Painted and mixed blue and red to make Purple.

We made all kinds of Patterns and then we sorted the Patterns to see if they really were a Pattern.

We also Practiced weaving and made some very Pretty Cds. The kids were very Proud that they could do this tricky job.  

Keep your eyes peeled.  These cds will be added to a
 collaborative art piece done by the whole school.

We finished off our week by Painting some very Pretty Pictures of winter trees.  The watercolour technique we learned was painting wet on wet.  First we sketched out winter trees.  Then we painted with just water to get our paper nice and wet. After we painted some Pinks and Purples and blues.  The fun part came next when we got to use a fork to splatter white paint on to make it look snowy.

The Mitten - Part 2

This week we continued learning and playing with the story The Mitten.  One of the big focuses we had was how we could retell the story.  We learned that there are many ways to retell a story. We did a picture walk just using the pictures in the book to help us remember the story.  We used our mitten we sewed last week and added the animals and told the story to a partner.  We got to use the iPad and make a puppet show of the story using our own words. After we could replay our puppet show.  (Everyone really enjoyed this one!) Lastly, we got to act out the story.

Watching our puppet show on the Puppet Pals app.

Creating our puppet show by moving the animals on the iPad.

Another job we did this week was to make a hedgehog that could go into a mitten just like in the story.  First we drew a quick sketch of the shape of a hedgehog.  Then we got to use a fork to help us make a print for the quills.  We thought it was funny to a paint with a fork.  All the hedgehogs are unique and really cute!