In one of my first posts this year I told you about a book I got by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Yesterday, we finally read it as a class! The students really liked it, and then they wrote their own equations. Here are a few of my favourites:
recess + math = school
presents + tree in your house = Christmas
tape + box = robot
daddy + mommy + me + sister + cat = love
barking + commands = puppy
hockey + LA Kings = mad
imagination + mysterious = writing
We have been doing an artist study of surrealist artist René Magritte. Magritte liked to combine unexpected object in his art, to make the viewer think.
Last week we did some sketching of unusual combinations of items (an animal and a piece of clothing, food and a sport, etc.) This week we cut out some pictures from magazines and arranged them on a background where they wouldn’t normally be seen. I tried to take pictures of most of them, check out our gallery below.
Check out the math links I added. They may be helpful for the Grade Twos to complete their homework, and of course the Grade Ones can explore the site!
Welcome to Division Seven’s Viking village! We used what we’ve been learning about viking communities (clothing, housing, transportation) to build a village.
We were inspired by the viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland which I visited last summer. Mrs. Clark helped make the papier maché mountains, which we then painted, as well as the water. We stained the houses, and I put soil and grass seed on the roofs, since the houses in L’Anse aux Meadows had sod roofs. Lots of students made various other items for the village (fires, beds, weapons) and clothing for the people.
I think our village looks pretty good, especially now that the grass is growing! Click on the photos for a closer look.
We have been busy with our viking activities, I took pictures, but I left my memory card at school, so photos will be coming soon. In the meantime, I thought I would share some interesting websites I found.
Nova Online – The Vikings This site has some interesting sections to explore, I especially like the videos of a model viking village.
BBC Viking Quest This is an interactive game, you can choose your own adventure as a viking.
BBC Primary History – Vikings This is my favourite viking website. It is very kid-friendly, with lots of photos, videos, and interesting facts to read.
Hope you enjoy learning a little more about vikings!
For Social Studies we are learning about communities, by comparing our community to Viking communities. Mrs. Clark and I were inspired to plan this unit together since we both visited Viking settlements last summer.
To start, we talked about transportation– you may have seen a Viking ship model come home before spring break. Yesterday we moved on to housing, and we learned how vikings built the walls for their homes. They used a construction method called “wattle and daub”. Posts were anchored in the ground, then flexible branches were woven in between them. This wooden structure is called “wattle”. To seal the walls they applied a mixture of clay and dung called “daub”.
After each student had a chance to weave a branch between the posts we put on the daub (minus the dung!). I think it looks quite close to a Viking wall.
Stay tuned for more Viking activities to come!
After various breaks (me being sick and the strike) we are diving back into social studies! Two weeks ago we went for a walk up to create a map of our community. If you come into the classroom you will see it on the bulletin board. Each student made a building or business which is in the community, and we added them to the map as we walked. We also made maps of our bedrooms. It was challenging to imagine what furniture would look like from a “bird’s eye view.” I told the students to imagine they were taped to the ceiling.
Yesterday we went into the computer lab to explore Google maps. The students had lots of fun zooming in and out, and using street view to explore around our school. Spend some time looking at it with your child, they got really excited by it.
We will be learning more about maps, so if you are going on holiday in Spring Break, take a look at a map with your child. Show them where you live and where you will be travelling. They could even follow along as you drive!
This week we read “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” by Judi Barrett. We have been learning about seasons and weather, so this book was a perfect extension. In the town of Chewandswallow all inhabitants get their food from the sky. There are no grocery stores, people just carry their cutlery with them so they are ready to eat whenever the food arrives. Things are just peachy (pun intended!) until the weather starts to go wild. The school is crushed by a giant pancake and the pea soup fog is so thick no one can see a thing! The residents build rafts from the giant slices of stale bread, and sail to a safer land, where rain and snow is the only thing to fall from the sky.
After reading, I presented the class with a challenge to create their own weather forecast for the town of Chewandswallow. We made a list of possible foods and possible weather phenomena, and then the students wrote their own. The criteria was that their forecast had to include at least one food and one type of weather. We had some wonderful word pictures! A few of my favourites: foggy freezies and snowy skittles, an avalanche of jello, candy tornadoes with chocolate milk rain, and a tsunami of popsicles. Stay tuned – we are currently working on diamante poems. After this wonderful weather language I am expecting some more powerful writing!
When we returned from Christmas holiday we did a social studies mini-unit about needs. We discussed the basic needs all people have for food, air, water, shelter, clothing and safety. Then we talked about how once your basic needs are met, you need to meet your emotional needs to feel happy. The emotional needs are Belonging, Freedom, Power (feeling good at something), and Fun. We talked about a different emotional need each day, and brainstormed ways we could fill that need. We discussed how everyone fills their needs in different ways, but we need to make sure that they way we fill our needs doesn’t hurt anyone else.
Mrs. Clark recommended this book by Emily Jenkins as a read-aloud and we are loving it! It is about three toys and the adventures they have when their little girl isn’t looking. Stingray, Lumphy the Buffalo, and Plastic (who we discovered is a ball) have lots of fun together. Yesterday we finished chapter three. Lumphy got covered in peanut butter on a picnic, and hid in the closet because he was afraid of the “terrifying bigness of the washing machine”. We all laughed out loud picturing Lumphy stuck headfirst in a running shoe with his bottom stuck up in the air. He was freed by the one-eared sheep who likes to chew on laces, and decided to let himself be found when he heard the little girl crying. The washing machine turned out to be friendly, and sang him a song about “a roughy, toughy buffalo” which he quite enjoyed. The next weekend Lumphy deliberately stuck his face in the jam jar so he could visit the washer again!