Weekly Activities

This week we travelled to Kisinga, Uganda to compare this community to ours.  Our travel to Uganda was inspired by the book, Beatrice's Goat by Page McBrier.  This is a true story of a young girl whose life is changed by the kind gift of a goat by "some kindhearted people".  By selling the extra milk the goat produced, Beatrice was able to save money to change her family's life.  The family was able to build a new house but what changed the course of  Beatrice's life was the opportunity to attend                                                                school. After the book, we looked at pictures of the village.  The children were most interested in pictures of Beatrice as a child and as an adult.  We compiled a list of the similarities and differences in the two communities. ...

Wind Community    I noticed in previous group times that the children do not always want to cooperate or work together.  Part of belonging to a successful and happy community is the ability of the community members to work together and to listen to one another.  We worked on our listening, and cooperative skills in our Wind Community by playing games together.   Finding out that cooperation is needed to move the parachute.  

Teacher Question: What are some jobs done in the community? Today's group time was initiated by the children.  During free play this morning, the hospital set up yesterday was transformed into an animal clinic.  Using the knowledge the children had from visiting Olivia's Dad at work, the children changed the "people hospital" into an "animal hospital."  We also watched a video from Brainpop Jr. about caring for pets and the role veterinarian. Our clinic wasn't just any ordinary clinic, our vets examined a tiger, a snake, a skunk, a bear and two dogs!!!  

Line of Inquiry: We take on roles each day (preschool) and this helps us build a strong community. We have been looking at the roles and responsibilities the children have at the daycare.  The children identified many of the service learning jobs as their responsibility. They  also added some other responsibilities:  - sit on chairs because standing on chairs is unsafe and dangerous  - put lids on markers so they don't dry out - listen to everyone. The children were very serious about identifying and carrying our responsibilities of the Wind Group.  Five essential tasks were identified by the children as important for the group to work successfully. 1.  Sit on the floor 2. Take turns 3. Be gentle 4. Listen to one another 5. Hands to ourself Rocco was choses as the "Checker" for today's group.  His job was to make sure we all were following our essential tasks.  Each group time a new Checker will be chosen. Using the knowledge shar...

Measuring the water Using the outhouse The results of water collection are in.  The children were excited to predict how many cups of water we collected in our barrel after being outside for seven days.  The predictions ranged from 1 cup to 20 cups of water.  The actual cups of water collected was 17 cups.  As pioneer children, the group had to decide what the water would have been used for.  The consensus was that the rain water would have been used as drinking water. Painting the structure Our pioneer home is complete!  We now have an outhouse.  After hard work and lots of cooperation, the children built an outhouse.  It was quite a hit with the group as they lined up to use it. The children dramatized pioneer life using the stove, covered wagon and outhouse they built.  We also used the wagon to play the song game "Little Red Wagon."

painting the stove painting the wagon our covered wagon adding the wheels cooking on the pot belly stove Our focus this week was what it was like to live in a pioneer home. We dramatized living in the olden days by making a pot belly stove to cook on. The children collected twigs to use in the stove and were very proud to share their stove with the rest of the class. The children also made a covered wagon to haul their goods. The children enthusiastically pretended to live in the olden days making a home to live in. As running water was not found in the pioneer homes, the children have a set out a rain barrel to collect water for our home. The children made predictions as to how many days it will take to fill the barrel. The predictions range from 3 days to 11 days .  Too bad we didn't set the barrel out sooner because it would have overflowed in a day. washing clothes Next week we will compare our homes today to those in the pioneer days.

We watched a National Film Board video titled "The New Schoolteacher"  by  Jocelyn Rehder .  http://www.nfb.ca/film/New_Schoolteacher After watching the video, the children thought they might like their school more than the one shown in the video because our school has a playground, a water table and more toys.                                                                                                   The children noted that there were  differences in writing instruments from long ago to current day.  We began by making a quill pen. Rather than use ink, the children dipped the feather tip in paint and used it to print their names and draw pictures.  The children enjoyed using our  quill pens  ...