Washing hands

As you are likely aware, we have made washing our hands properly a focus as of late. To help with this, we talk about what proper hand washing looks like. We encourage the kids to scrub their hands for the duration of the ABC song. The public health unit has loaned us a tool to help little ones understand hand washing and germs. We apply a small amount of white lotion to our hands (we talk about this as putting magic germ potion on our hands)! The kids then view their hands under a black light. Their germs glow!

Then, students are asked to go and wash their hands well, and check again. It is so visual and shows without a doubt exactly where they have missed in their hand washing!

Some students even showed us where they had missed!

We are also doing a science experiment with germs. Hopefully I’ll be able to post our results and some pictures, presuming the experiment works!

Sink or Float

We talked about the pirate ships sailing on the seas.  We were able to discover that the oceans are salt water, where as lakes and rivers around us are made of fresh water.  We conducted an experiment to see if things would float or sink in the different kinds of water.















They discovered that the beads would float on top of the water when dropped into the salt water, and sink when dropped into the fresh water. One student made a video using the ipad documenting his experiment.  Some other students, drew pictures showing what happened.

Look closely, you can see the bead at the bottom of the "plain" water bottle, and the heart shaped bead is floating in the salt water.

We discussed as a class why they thought this happened.  It was so interesting to hear their speculation.  Some explained it that the salt made the water "heavy" and therefore it pushed up the beads.  Others explained it saying, "the salt in the water pushed the beads up". One student said that there were molecules in the water, and the salt made more air molecules and that is what made the beads float!!!  Back to science class for me!

More pirates still!

For the third week, we have continued our buccaneer theme! The students have explored so many areas within this theme, and covered a lot of learning.

We made parrots, compasses, we designed boats and measured our jump off the plank!

We hope your child has been sharing with you some of our fun.

Young Engineers

We put out a challenge for our students to see if they could build a boat that could float for 30 seconds while holding a treasure (a container with 10 dimes!). We had some young engineers and boatbuilders hard at work! They used various “junk” materials.

After completion, we put them to the test.

After one sank, some of the kids declared “it is a shipwreck!”

Walk the Plank!

So many of our play pirates were uttering “Walk the Plank”, and jumping off their make believe plank, we decided to add an element of measurement to their play. They suggested using a ribbon with a symbol on it, and once they jumped, we could count how many symbols they had bounded past!

This added the real task of counting to their meaningful play. We then added clipboards and encouraged them to record their jump. 

Writing numbers in a purposeful manner is hard work!

Real learning is so meaningful when it comes from their play!

Not A Stick!

On Friday, we read the book: Not a Stick with the Green class.  It is a story of a youngster who keeps picking up sticks and adults keep telling him to put them down.  With a little imagination, we discover that the main character doesn't have a stick, but a orchestra baton, a fishing pole, a paintbrush, etc.


After reading it, we went for a walk into the forest.  Our job was to find a stick and tell me what it was.

Some sticks were horses.

Some were machetes.

Some were two headed dragons!

Some were axes.

Some were swords.

One was a crutch.

One was a cane.

What fun we had using our imagination!

More pirate fun

We have been continuing our pirate theme this week. The students seemed to be having a blast.  They are making and labelling maps, even counting out how many steps required to get to their designated "treasure".
Thanks to Estella and Abby, they even brought in a map and ship! Thanks girls!

This will definitely be an inspiration!

These kinder kids are building their own pirate ship, eventually adding a flag.

Many finished their pirate ship pictures.

We attempted to make our own large pirate coins, complete with numbers and money symbols.

Some of you may have seen the treasure boxes that came home!