Treasures in the Play Yard

Children who are immersed in nature handle every little thing as if it was the most amazing treasure in the world.

Missing Cat

Our children were very concerned about a missing cat today. Please see the poster. 

The children decided to create their own 'missing cat' posters to display around the school. 

We were touched by the children's care and concern for the missing cat and inspired by their authentic writing as they made posters. Please keep an eye out for Hurricane and contact the number on the poster if you see him. 

On Our Way!

Today we had 22 food items brought into our class! Thank you families! We placed them in groups of 5 during circle for easy counting. 

We now have a display placed in the front entrance of our school welcoming our community to join us in gathering food for The Downtown Mission. 

The first board describes our previous experience in December donating food to the holiday drive and how greatly that impacted our children. 

The second explains how worried our children were to learn of the new need The Mission had as outlined in last week's paper. It outlines their suggestions for how they might help, including the idea of asking the whole school to bring in food. 

The third contains posters that the children have made to share their thoughts on the cause and advocate for help. 

We couldn't be prouder! Stay tuned to see where next this journey leads!

Mouth and Foot Painting

Our children have started an amazing inquiry this week that we were so excited to share with you! It all began last week when one of our children brought in some old calendars that had been donated to our program for use at the art center.  The children enjoyed looking through the calendars and were admiring the beautiful paintings.

Mrs. Bombardier and the children looked at the 'artist information' page to see who had created such beautiful work and were amazed to find that the artists had painted the pictures by using their mouths and feet!

The children were intrigued with this idea and wanted to know why this was and how the artists learned to paint using a different part of their body. Miss Waites helped us to do some research by using the Internet and Smart Board. The children were able to view videos of people painting in this interesting way!

Of course this inspired many of them to want to try this themselves, so Mrs. Bombardier set up two areas where children could explore.

One center encouraged children to attempt to paint using just their mouth - children had to hold the paint brush, dip it in colours, and swish it in water to clean it in between colour choices. Covers were placed on the brushes in order to prevent germs from being spread.

Another area encouraged children to try painting with just their feet!

Although we are always fans of art activities, what we loved about this inquiry is that is really encouraged our children to think beyond their immediate lives and perhaps appreciate another's perspective - hopefully creating empathy and understanding for people who may look or act differently that we do. We can't wait to see where this inquiry takes us!

Operation Christmas Child

Our school is participating in the project "Operation Christmas Child". This goal of this endeavour is to fill a shoebox with items that can be delivered to a child in need somewhere in the world. You can learn more about this worthwhile cause here. As a way of building empathy and care in our children we have decided to fill a class box. We voted last Thursday to fill the box with items for a girl (age range 5-9) and filled it with various extra items from our classroom (crayons, pencils, scissors) together. As we are currently discussing measurement in math, we also decided to link this concept to the project and discussed items that would and would not fit inside a shoe box. Once all our items are collected we will work together to fit them together in the small space.

Mrs. Alaoui and Miss Halupka explain what Operation Christmas Child is to our class.

 

Miss Halupka records the children's ideas for what might be good items to send in our box.

The completed list of items we brainstormed for our box.

We feel working together to fill and send our box along with the others collected by the school is an excellent community building activity for our children as we work together to better the life of a child somewhere in the world. If you are willing to donate one or two items for our box, we would greatly appreciate it!  We are hoping to have our box ready by November 11. Thank you for your continued support of our children and program!