Fish

Did your child tell you about the new member of our class?

We invited the children to help us name our new fish by printing their suggestions for a name on a large piece of paper. Tomorrow we will have a vote and see what our new friend will be named.

Our New Sofa!

To enhance our reading center and encourage children to spend more time exploring books during play time, we have purchased a new sofa for the classroom!

Slimy Snails!

Mrs. Cipkar brought us a snail she found on her walk today! We were so excited!

After safely putting the snail in our terrarium, we found some helpful books from the library. We researched our snail and found out many interesting things! Our snail was a garden snail, it eats leaves, it is slimy, it creeps along on a long body part called a 'foot' and can hide its body in its shell. Garden snails like to stay wet, but do not live in water.

We wrote out some of these neat snail facts to post near our new snail-arium!

Once we knew what out snail liked, we went on a hunt in the yard (where Mrs. Cipkar found it) to find things to add to the snail-arium to make our snail happy and comfortable.

We added these things from the school yard to the snail-arium and many children spent much time this afternoon admiring our new friend!

Amazing Engineers!

Our children are amazing at building things out of the 3D blocks. Check out their creations!

Water Experiment

Miss O'Keefe performed a really neat science experiment with the children at the water table. You can easily replicate this activity during bath time at home. Challenge your children to predict why they think the cup sticks to the thick paper and the water does not fall out!

Earth Day Yard Clean Up

In celebration of Earth Day, we spent some time outdoors with our Grade 2 buddies cleaning up the school yard. Children wore gloves and helped to pick up any litter they found.

Puppet Show!

Miss O'Keefe placed a variety of materials at the art table today and invited children to make their own puppets - which resulted in a very lively puppet show just before home time!

Exploring Worms

Some of the children came into the classroom today excited that they finally spotted worms on the pavement (they've been watching for them, but the weather's been just a little too cold). They asked if they could collect some of the worms for observation at our science area. What a great idea!

We headed outside and reminded children that worms are living creatures that need to be treated gently and with with respect. The children wore gloves when picking up the worms. Some children did not want to touch the worms, but assisted with finding them.

Once inside we placed the worms on a tray with some dirt. Many began to wriggle around on the tray. The children were fascinated with their awkward movements! Some rolled and wiggled around and around while others inched forward in a very straight line. Some hid immediately in the dirt.

There was so much rich conversation happening as the children made observations about the worms. Many remembered which they had collected and compared their worm's movements to their friends'.

At morning recess the worms were safely returned to the grassy area outside. What an interesting morning!

Exploring Movement and Paint

Miss O'Keefe put out a great activity today for our children to use when exploring movement and painting. Children were able to use really neat wind-up toys and paint with them by dipping their feet in paint and then winding them up on paper. It was very entertaining to watch as we never knew where the little eggs would travel! You just have to see it!

What was great about this activity was that the children had to really experiment with the type and amount of paint they used with the hopping eggs. If the paint was applied too thickly, the eggs would stick to the paper and not hop. If there wasn't enough paint on their feet, they wouldn't leave a footprint trail. 

Those little eggs made some amazing artwork!

Once the children tired of the painting, they raced the little eggs all around the room!