Weekly Activities

Next week is the summative week for our generosity unit.  We are having a potlatch for our summative activity.  A potlatch is a traditional First Nations gathering used to celebrate, commemorate, communicate and acknowledge specific events such as naming ceremonies, weddings, memorials and others.  Guests at these events offer gifts to the host family to support their event recognizing that these offerings will be returned at a later date.  The host family will redistribute the wealth they accumulated along with the new gifts received to those invited to the potlatch. In preparation for our potlatch, we started to prepare gifts for give away. The children wanted to make  "friendship decoration macaroni bracelets".  The children didn't want just plain macaroni, they wanted colourful macaroni!  We used vinegar and food colouring to dye the pasta.  We were limited in our choice of colours having only blue, orange, yellow and red food colouring. ...

The composting does not smell very good We are learning that not only can we be generous to others but we can also be generous to the earth.  This idea came about from 2 separate events.  The first event was when  we were eating apples after discussing The Giving Tree.  When the children were finished eating the apples, they knew to put them into the compost.  This led to me explaining why we compost and how composting is a way to be generous and caring to the earth.  The second event stems from playing at the playground.  Sofia G. began to clean up garbage at the playground.  In our group, we talked about Sofia's act of generosity.  These discussions led us to begin looking at the ways in which we can be kind and generous to our environment and that we have a responsibility to take care of it. Sorting the garbage   We looked at pictures of landfills. The children were absolutely amazed at the size of the landfil...