Weekly Activities

Last week the children worked on self portraits in a new way. They had a close up photo to look at, and we talked about the different features of a face. We have more pictures to view on CM's wall. This week we took the same pictures, but just used everyone's unique features and made a new self portrait. We had great results and most faces looked like a community effort. It's been interesting trying to spot a specific child's eye(s) and mouth.

Thank you Ireland for letting us borrow such a great teacher for Spring, Summer and a bit of Fall. You've been such a great part of Creative Minds and we will miss you.

In connection with our Community Helpers we talked about what job a Mathematician is. We estimated how tall we thought the toy giraffe was.  Then we measured. Cubes made a great reference to measure with. How long is Saige's foot? How many cubes long? Tracing our feet on paper made it easier to measure.  We even traced Saige's body to see how tall she was.  The estimated guess was 'over 100'. We counted the cubes and it was 61. We traced Simone's body so we could compare her measurement to Saige's.  The estimate was 'probably about 50'. We counted up the cubes and it was 48. In the afternoon we had some great science exploration. When the baking soda mixed with the vinegar it made a fizzing sound. Aegon liked to see how big the fizz would be if he dumped lots of vinegar in. Even when the baking soda and vinegar were well mixed and there was no longer a...

Southlands Elementary had the Terry Fox run today. They invited CM's children to attend an assembly and watch a video about his accomplishments. I have two children in elementary school and I've seen the video they usually show. I was curious about how 3-4 year olds would handle these big issues. What questions would they have? Would we have space and time to answer the inquiries during the assembly? Probably not. When I gathered the children after lunch time I wanted to see how much they knew about him. "Who is Terry Fox?" "He is brown and has a bushy tail" -Sophia "My sister runs for Terry Fox" -Simone "My brother runs too!" -Gwendolyn "I don't know" -most of the children I found this small video that highlighted his achievements and showed it to the children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0I7vyi8ObI At the end I asked: "Who is Terry Fox?" "He ran across Canada" "He had ...

What is a neighbourhood? Who are the people you see each day? This was a popular song when I was a child. I shared 3 small clips of Sesame Street with Cedar Group. https://www.youtube.com/watch? time_continue=1&v=YZlC-GhzNos https://www.youtube.com/watch? time_continue=46&v=W5cRukvx850 https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ewydtuobhqs We looked at a google map of Southland's Elementary's neighbourhood.  I asked the group if they knew what it was. Sophia recognized it as a map. I asked what our map has on it. Roisin said she saw houses. I pointed at the white lines and asked what these could be. Jamieson said they are streets. I asked them if they knew what this area is called. Many children said it was a community. I asked if they had heard the word neighbourhood before. Sophia said she has some neighbours that live near her. Miguel said 'I have neighbours too!'  I brought out some paper, rulers and markers for us to make our own neighbourhoo...

This month we are taking a look at Picasso's work. We've done the Blue Period. With self portraits: Cubism: Collage: We've done self portraits: With 3 dimensional materials: