Easter

First we read a non-fiction book about Easter. It explained that Easter happens on the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring. That is why it isn't always on the same date every year. We learned that Easter celebrates new beginnings, like the birth of baby animals (bunnies, ducks and chicks), and the growth of new plants. (The book also mentioned that Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but we didn't discuss this concept in depth).

Our Easter activities centred around eggs. Mrs. Nilgun organized some egg activities for us. Everyone had the opportunity to make a shaker by putting different small items inside of a plastic egg. At the end of the day, we danced and shook our shakers to many different songs from different cultures, as well as some popular songs that the children loved (The Gummy Bear Song!)

Mrs. Nilgun also organized an egg-and-spoon relay race. We very carefully carried eggs across the room in spoons. It was so fun!

One of our favourite books this week was The Easter Bunny's Assistant. We learned ways to accept people (or skunks) for who they are, and that sometimes you have to change YOUR way of thinking to keep your friends. (Bunny solves the problem of having a stinky friend by putting a clothespin on his own nose).

Throughout the week, we worked on an activity that challenged our spatial reasoning. Some students found this very easy, and some found it quite difficult. I set the eggs up in the right hand egg carton, and the students had to match it in the left carton.

 

Click here to read more about why we need to pay attention to spatial reasoning, and how you can support your child in this key mathematics concept.

Passover

Thank you so much to E.L.'s grandma, Judy, who came in and taught us about Passover. We learned that people of the Jewish faith celebrate Passover as a commemoration of their liberation by God from slavery in ancient Egypt and their freedom as a nation under the leadership of Moses.

We learned a bit about slavery and freedom ( in a very child-friendly way)

We coloured the word SLAVERY in sad colours:

 and we coloured the word FREEDOM in happy colours:

When the Jews were freed, it is said that they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread dough to rise. So that is why matzo (unleavened bread)is eaten during Passover. Judy gave us each a piece of matzo to try and everyone wanted more!

Judy read us a story of The Matzah Man (like the Gingerbread Man)

We were able to make our own Matzo Men:

Judy lent us her Sammy Spider book to read. We love Sammy's adventures!

Thank you so much, Judy for sharing your knowledge with us! We always have so much fun when you come. And thank you to E.L. for sharing his Bubbe with us for the afternoon :)

Bobsleds!

We finished off our inquiry into the Olympics by making bobsleds!

First we made our bobsleds from Kleenex Boxes: We made them fancy like real bobsleds. 

 

Then we brought in some  stuffies as athletes. But, safety first! We had to make helmets. Students had to choose something that would work as a helmet, then we strapped them on and decorated them.

C.P. Had a duck stuffie and chose a laundry detergent scoop to be the helmet. The scoop handle stuck out and protected the duck's bill. Somehow, this one didn't make it into the photos, but it was very creative. Form follows function!

We raced down the slide, then we had the chance to try to do something to our sleds to make them go faster. We found that heavier bobsleds seemed to go faster, so some people tried to make their sleds heavier. One student added an extra athlete for weight!
 

 

I also brought in a pair of vintage "bobskates" -- double bladed skates that strap onto your boots. We taped them onto a bobsled to see if it traveled faster. It traveled a bit faster. We found that the heavier bobsleds fell harder and some helmets cracked.

 

We concluded that heavier and faster bobsleds need more safety equipment!

We will revisit some of our Olympic Games during an upcoming Fun Friday! Just because the games are over in PyongChang doesn't mean that they are over at Earl Beatty!

More evidence of animals

We are still looking for different signs of animals in our playground.

When there was still snow on the ground, we found:these tracks in our playground area -- which we think were from a sled  with runners on the sides.

Ms. Brown showed these pictures that she took in her parents driveway. Some of the tracks were so small, that the animal must have been able to fit in Ms. Brown's hand. What kind of animal can fit in your hand?

We also found these (below). What are they we wondered? They were under a tree.... Maybe it was poop! We guessed that maybe it was from birds. It looked very shiny, like it was wet. Someone said that it was wet because it wasn't frozen yet. So it had probably happened very recently... like a few minutes ago! We looked up carefully, then moved out from under the tree, just in case the birds were still there :) Just one more reason not to eat snow....

Animal poop is another sign that animals have been in our playground. We learned that animal poop can be called droppings, scat or dung. We made some different "scat" from brown play dough. (coloured with cocoa -- it smelled delicious). Below is some cat scat, and some rabbit scat that we made from play dough!

Below is "a bit of dirt with tracks in it from a person walking their dog" by M.R. in Room 9.

We will continue to discuss evidence of animals as we see it throughout the rest of the winter and spring.