Weekly Activities

We travelled to Uganda to meet Beatrice Biira. Beatrice was a young girl who was not able to attend school due to a lack of funds.  The Heifer International donated 12 goats to her village and Beatrice's family was one of the recipients.  This goat inevitably changed Beatrice’s life.  After listening to the book, “Beatrice’s Goat” by Page McBrier, the children made a chart comparing their responsibilities with those of Beatrice’s before she was given the goat.  Their list of responsibilities:  to play, to go to school, clean up toys and help mom and dad.  Beatrice’s list was much different.  Her responsibilities included looking after her brothers and sisters, working in the field, feeding the chickens and grinding the cassava plant into flour. Beatrice did not go to school. Oliver summed it up by stating, “We sure are lucky!” After receiving the goat Beatrice was able to make money by selling the goat’s milk.  Not only was...

Today we pretended to purchase a large piece of land to build our own community.  What does our community need? Grace - water Oliver - house, stores Sophie - cars, fire station Jayla - roads, police With these ideas the children planned out their community. As they were building, the children realized that they needed a lot more in their community.  They soon added a school, gas station, hospital, park, playing and other stores such as a tire store and bicycle store. Grace thought the community needed a border in case people wanted to travel. Once completed, the children named their community Postray and began to play. They all chose different jobs in the community: Jayla worked at the firehall and hospital because she wanted to help people. Sophie worked at the bicycle shop. Her responsibility was to deliver bikes to other people's houses. Grace worked at the border. She was responsible for taking people's passports and giving them back then the people could pass....

We played our "People in Our Neighbourhood Game."  The rules of the game were simple:  - take turns  -  roll the die and move your playing piece  - choose a question card  - choose a movement card (to move playing piece forwards or backwards). Examples of the question cards: - what does this person do in the community? - what would happen if we didn't have this role in the community? Playing the game helped me see how much the children understand about community members' roles and responsibilities. What impressed me the most was how the Fire Group worked together as a community by taking turns, helping each other count and answer questions. We have shared our game with the other children to play.

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.