Preparing for St. Brigid's Day

Making patterns with counters

Friday, January 28th, 2011 

Today we were making patterns with counters.  With just 4 counters each, look at some of the interesting patterns we made.  We were just proving that 4 counters are always 4 counters, no matter how we have them arranged (sometimes a difficult concept when we are young).

The Forest Child drama

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Today teacher read us a really interesting story about a forest child.  We acted out little bits of it, and we chatted about what it would be like to be brought up by animals, like the little girl in the story.  We chose whether we'd prefer to be the Forest girl, or the Forest boy.  Most of us just wanted to be what we are in real life, but teacher wanted to be the boy, so she could live with both the animals and the humans.  After we finished reading and talking about the story, we made a sound collage.  Each of us had to make sounds that we can hear in the forest, then we tried making the sounds louder or softer by watching teacher's signals.  It was a lot of fun, and we felt like we were really in a forest.

How does teacher's topper work?

Teacher has a great topper to sharpen our pencils.  Sometimes it gets stuck so teacher takes it apart and fixes it so it can work again.  We were wondering how it works, so teacher took it apart and showed us.  There is a little cog wheel in it (like the cogs we play with), and there are 2 little pinchers, like fingers, on a spring to hold the pencil in place.  Unlike the usual toppers, the pencil does not twist, it is the topper itself that twists, when you turn the handle.  It is really interesting finding out how things work.

Paintings of Houses

Learning about colours

We were painting houses this morning (well, pictures of houses).  We didn't always have the colours we needed, so teacher was talking to us about mixing colours.  We found out lots!

Releasing our Moth

Looking at our moth

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

 We all had a good look at our moth today.  It started as a little green caterpillar, then became a dark brown cocoon and is now a brown and grey moth.  We love looking at it, and feeding it fresh oranges and water.

More houses data

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Today we talked some more about houses.  Today's data chart was about the type of house that each of us actually lives in.  Here is what today's chart looks like.

Learning about Houses

We are learning all about different kinds of houses.  We talked about the advantages and disadvantages to living in different kinds of homes.   Then we got to choose which type of house we would like to live in.  We made a DataChart of the results.  Looks like most of our Mammies and Daddies will have to move to a house boat or a three story house, because these are the types of houses we like the best!!

Our Brave Moth

The first spring primrose

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

Teacher has spotted the first primrose bud.  It thinks spring is coming, and you can see its lovely yellow bud.

Penguin art

Feeding the winter birds

Teacher feeds the birds that come to her garden.  She leaves out peanuts and water for them, and even leaves out chains of monkey nuts (still in their shells).  The birds love to visit her garden.  Here is a picture of a blue tit eating the monkey nuts.  Remember to leave nuts and seeds out for the birds to eat in this cold weather.

Music in the Classroom

Literacy games

Eskimo art

Making Electric Circuits

In class we have been talking about elctricity, how Michael Faraday discovered electricity, how electricity is available from power stations, solar power, wind turbines, water power and battery power.  We talked about keeping safe around electricity in the house, and we made our own electric circuits.  We also had a chat about what life was like long ago without electricity, about what children of long ago couldn't have got from Santa (because there was no electricity back then) and about how machines in the house have changed since electricity became available.

Happy New Year 2011