Springing into Earth Week with curiosity and care for our home…
Here is our poem for the week (on the top) and on the bottom of the collage, TN, TB, CP & CS explain what they’re doing while friends ride bikes and explore outdoors.
Cropped slide shows the title “Ask Me About April 6-17” and the cropped edges of photos from inside the classroom and out.
Families,
We usually share our “Ask Me About” slides with the class before sending out to you, but our change in weather was so very welcome and we headed out to enjoy the sun right after lunch. We hope you still hear good stories from your child about what we’ve shared. Have a great weekend!
Play is valuable, shows us so much. ML’s story shows her growing knowledge of plants, while her design shows an understanding of symmetry.
“It’s a flower. I made the little squares to make it stable. The yellow part in the middle is the pollen. And the green ones are spikes to protect the plant.”
More rainy days, more ducks showing up in puddles all around the school.
Students report to their friends when anything new signs of spring appear outside our windows. Ducks in our yard sure count as springy.
K2 continues to buzz with talk and play about space travel, celestial bodies and our own planet as seen from space. Artwork, a new book in progress, and dramatic play such as the felt solar system here have been very popular since we watched the Artemis II astronauts return home. 🚀 🌖
Coming now: some posts from earlier this week that were stuck in drafts when Bluesky was glitchy.
We started out very well, but after a while students got brave. A few stepped a little further into the deep parts, or stomped a bit too hard. A few students asked if they could wear boots tomorrow. As it was nice & warm, we didn’t rush back inside to change socks as it was the end of the day.
Families, we apologize for the messy but valuable lesson we learned today.
Those students in rubber boots were allowed to test them out in the puddles on the yard (those in shoes stayed high & dry).
Lessons learned:
• water is wet 😂
• some puddles are deep
• some boots are shorter than others 😩
Two students stand near a puddle on the grassy schoolyard. In a larger puddle beyond theirs, two mallards are swimming.
Two male mallards float in the deep puddle on the soccer field.
Our prediction from back in March came true! The puddles came back after rain, and the ducks came back to the puddles!
We were very happy to see these nature nature when we went to play.
Collage of photos show a tall structure made out of colourful magnatiles, students at work drawing them and their finished drawings which capture the tower from the side and from the top.
CP and CS worked hard to capture the color and design of the tall tower that CP created. Notice the different drawings from different perspectives - they inspired friends to stand up and look down inside the structure, too. Great work! #WeBuildInK
Three students holding the items they made out of snap cubes to support their baseball play: a bat, ball (held in a real leather glove), and a catcher’s mitt.
Student writing on a whiteboard: “OUR BASEBALL GAME”
“Our baseball game”
Another dramatic play moment created by a group of friends.
ZH: I made a catcher’s glove.
PS: I made the bat.
ER: I made the ball, and I’m the pitcher.
ZH: And we have an audience.
Students crouch over a puddle in the grass beside a paved path, poking at leaves with sticks.
A row of students crouching beside a puddle on the grass, reaching in with sticks as they dramatize “gone fishing.”
After all the rain, we found puddles everywhere. Some students looked for worms, which gave a group an idea: let’s bait our hooks and go fishing!
A child outside on grass, holding a worm in his cupped hands while another student teaches theirs out to catch a ladybug that has landed on the first child’s cuff.
From yesterday afternoon. SJ held a worm that he’d found on the grass and was showing it to friends when they all had a surprise - a ladybug flew down and landed on his cuff.
We think the insect could tell that S is a gentle friend to nature neighbours.
From left to right, the crew of Artemis II: Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen Pilot Victor Glover Commander Reid Wiseman Mission Specialist Christina Koch
Sending much love to the #Artemis II astronauts who are homeward bound.
Here it is, by popular request: how to brush your teeth in space.
youtu.be/3bCoGC532p8?...
Graph on a whiteboard asks students to respond to the following question: “Which Chris Hadfield Story should we share?” By choosing one of the video options: “brush teeth, wash hands, sleep, eat.” The largest number of magnets are placed under “brush teeth” and though not all students have voted yet, the later votes didn’t change the outcome.
We have been sharing little stories about the moon and space travel this week, including some of Canadian astronaut astronaut Chris Hadfield’s video answers to student questions- in space!
Today we asked which one they’d like us to share with you, families. As you can see, the 🦷 🪥 video won.
Part two, some completed outside in that one day of warm sunshine. Galaxy skies!
(We will finish the project next week once all the pieces are dry).
Two large castle-like structures built in a classroom by a sunny window. On the floor, a tall tower made out of colourful magnatiles. On the windowsill, a long castle shape made out of window blocks, a variety of wooden shapes with different colour windows inside each. The colourful shadow projection of part of the castle appears on the carpet.
A student playing near the window block castle has colourful shapes and shadows from the structure showing on his neck and head.
CP’s creation, shared by request.
“TB helped me make the big tower. ML and I made the window tower.”
CS was building nearby, and wound up very colourful in the shadow of the window shapes.
Snap cube figures in a row include green Yoshi, red and blue Mario, and green and blue Luigi.
Yoshi held upright to show his red “spikes” down his back.
A student holds another figure he made, Toad. Visible are red and white for his mushroom hat.
Three friends worked hard to create figures for their play. They asked to share.
ZH: I made Yoshi. Yoshi has spikes and I made him from the movie.
ER: I made Mario because he’s the leader and he’s my favourite.
PS: I liked the movie too. I made Luigi with green (on top). I made Toad too.
A sneak peek at a messy, fun invitation we had today. This is only part one - more to follow, tomorrow.
Here’s a look… 🤩
(alt text for photo: earth seen glowing in space, only the top sliver illuminated as the lower section hides in moon shadow, the earth also obscured by the moon filling the foreground).
bsky.app/profile/swap...
Poem on chart paper with a photo of the moon with half in darkness. Text reads: “The Changing Moon Moon in the sky. Some nights you're big and round. Some nights you’re very small. Some nights you're only a sliver. Some nights you're not at all.”
This week, we will be learning about the NASA moon mission on Artemis II which includes a Canadian astronaut. We’re also learning about the moon phases and how different it looks for us during the day, night, and through the month. If you notice the moon this week, let us know!
A collage of photos shows students in a gym, wearing white helmets. They are completing a climber circuit built of ropes suspended above mats and the gym floor, climbing their way around. Their faces are blurred for privacy.
Today, we met the wonderful team who are running Jungle Sports in our gym all week. They helped us get ready to climb safely, and then we were off! Ask your child about this adventure which we will enjoy all week.
Cropped photos on a slide with a rainbow background. Text reads: “Ask Me About March 23 - April 3”
Families, as we’ve got an extra long weekend ahead of us, we shared our Ask Me About stories in class today instead of on our usual Friday. We hope you enjoy our stories!
Whiteboard abstract art in bright colours, with many similar shapes and colours in slightly different designs.
Students standing behind a tall Magnatile tower on the class carpet.
A colourful castle made of Duplo blocks on a table.
Some beautiful collaborations in K2 on this cold, rainy day.
1) HC inspired AM with her colourful designs, so she made her own version as they shared markers.
2) CP & CS’s Magnatile tower.
3) MS & EH’s colourful Duplo block castle.
The water from the experiment, strained in a tall jar.
We agreed that we wouldn’t want to drink that water even after straining. SJ suggested “Add soap to clean it,” while others agreed it would be bad for our friends the ducks, or fish. Some students remembered that we drink water from the lake, too, so we don’t want it getting dirty! #WorldWaterDay
Two jars on a classroom table. A large jar has a strainer on top and wet trash inside it. The slimmer jar beside it contains water strained from the first. It’s full of silt and residue from the first jar’s contents. It’s cloudy and brown.
CS: “The water will go through (the strainer) but the garbage won’t.
The water didn’t look too bad before we strained it, because it was harder to see it clearly.
Afterwards, we noticed that it looked like the water we saw in the video about communities without safe tap water. “Like ginger ale.”
We revisited CS’s experiment today. Here’s C holding the jar, with the trash still in it. We were surprised that it didn’t smell that bad!
He explained to the class:
“I picked up garbage so it wouldn’t go in the lake and the fish wouldn’t die. I put the garbage in the jar with water.”
So, we went looking at other trees around the yard. We spotted several trees with sapsucker holes, and one with gooey yellow pine pitch gumming up a lower hole in the trunk that had many little holes higher up. Here’s what we saw…
This morning, TB continued the investigation when he told us about finding maple sap icicles over the weekend. We went back to this tree to look for dripping sap, but there wasn’t any when we looked.
