Weekly Activities

Cutting out community figures. Designing the game. Ready to make the game. We have begun to make a board game! The children have titled the game "People in Our Neighbourhood ". The children began by designing the board game using magnet tiles. The magnet tiles were then traced to make the board and then the squares were coloured. Finally pictures of community members were glued to the spaces. The object of the game is to move through the board answering questions about people in the community. The game will serve as an assessment tool to help me see what the children have learned and how they have made connections to the central idea. (C entral Idea: The work people perform helps build community ".)  We will play the game next week. The final product!

Roles and Responsibilities Belonging to a community involves different roles and responsibilities for each of us. The children have been learning about different jobs within our community. I asked "what communities do we belong to?"  The children know of two communities they are a part of:  home and school. We took the time this week to identify what responsibilities the children have as part of these communities. Responsibilities at home: Tyreese: I have to make my bed. Byron: Not to jump around in the house. Sophie: I have to pick up my toys. Grace and Jayla: Have to clean their bedrooms. Esme: Go to school. Responsibilities at school: Oliver: Help clean up. Grace and Sophie: Be kind. Jayla: Walk inside. We concluded by making a Venn diagram which made the children aware that they have similar responsibilities at both home and Creative Minds.

The children expressed what they know about community workers through puppets.  Each child chose  made a community worker puppet and expressed what that worker did within the community. Jayla made a firefighter. "They help fight fires to keep us safe." Grace made a street cleaner. "They clean the roads so we can drive on them." Sophie made a firefighter.  "They put water on fires." Oliver made a person who cleans houses. "He helps to keep everything clean."

Our wet weather caused the storm drain near the school to plug and created a swimming pool to wade through.  Wednesday there were some workers here trying to solve this problem.  The children found out that they were trying to unclog the drain.  Their presence prompted a walk in the neighbourhood to see who else we could find in the community.  Here are some pictures that tell the story.

Demonstrating the Handy Helper. We presented our Handy Helper in true pioneer spirit Thursday as we had no electricity!!  As the children presented the invention, questions were raised as how we powered our invention. This  prompted a small discussion about electricity, batteries and solar power. What a knowledgeable group we have at Creative Minds.  Next week we will be starting our new unit of inquiry: Building Together .  The central idea being  The work people perform helps build community.

We began preparing for our summative next week.   Throughout this unit, the children learned that many things were done by hand in the past including cleaning. Referring to the central idea that t here are similarities and differences between the way people lived long ago and the way people live today the children will develop a cleaning machine so we won't have to clean by hand. Wendy began the week by showing the children a Cat in the Hat video  http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=4jK6l1WJKUU She asked the children to pay attention to the end of video where they will see a special invention, one that she wished we had at the daycare. At the end of the movie, the children were excited to share their thoughts about the machine.  Wendy did a human graph - would you want to clean or have a machine do the work.  It was unanimous, the machine won. Next week we will build the machine. Esme said "I cant wait for next week!" To build a machine we needed to see how ma...

Communication: Postal Mail We continued with Wendy's idea of communication and investigated postal mail, our main way of sending letters prior to email.  The following 2 videos helped the children understand postal mail. Making a valentine mail delivery in olden days  https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Q5YeodlER30 a trip to post office https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=bS8FULtQnGA It was now time for us to send a letter home. Since tomorrow is Valentine's Day, it was a great opportunity to make a valentine.  The next step was finding out what all was needed on the envelope: return address, recipient address and postage.  Once the envelopes were addressed and sealed, we weighed each envelope to calculate the postage. All of our letters required the 63 cent stamp.  Stamps on and off to the mailbox we went. The sign on the mailbox said that delivery would be within 2 days.  Could you please let Wendy or myself know when your letters arrive. ...