Co-op Update: Monday Dec. 10, 2012

      Today was our last session before the Christmas holidays. All the kids arrived a little weary. They must all have had busy weekends. By 10:30 am, or so, they were back to their usual energetic selves!

     While we waited for the girls to arrive, the kids worked on illustrating their books. I printed up their books using this site. Once everyone was present, the kids read their stories to the group. Our two older students only had 15-20 minutes to work on their own work today.

After our stories, the kids got to work cutting out nets for miniature houses and churches that they were to turn into ornaments.

They worked so hard cutting out the pieces and desperately need time to run outside. While they had some free time, I glued the houses together and prepared for step 2.

When they came inside they got started painting their houses one of three pastel colours.

While I prepared the lunch, the kids were divided up between three different games. I make it a point to switch up the pairing of kids so they all get a chance to be together. Othello was a big hit!

Thank you to those people who sent along stuff for our lunch. The kids made sandwiches and had make your own salads. We had garlic bread and some treats too! They all ate very well!

After lunch I put out an assortment of embellishments that they could use to decorate their ornament and turn it into a wintry scene. We had glitter and fake snow everywhere! Sorry about the wet glue! The day flew by today. I should have planned for them to have more drying time.

The kids were eager to do their ornament exchange. Wow, all of you went above and beyond. They were beautiful and the kids were so excited to give and receive. 

I've listed the creator of each ornament below the photos.

Mikhaila H.

Mason

Braeden

Maya

Henri

 Micaela, Jesse, and Eli

 Tara

 Aislinn

Thank you all for participating in this co-op. I thoroughly enjoy every single moment I spend with your kids. I have lots planned for the new year! If you have any requests, please feel free to send them along.

I want to wish all of you a wonderful, happy and healthy Christmas and New Year.

Co-op update: Monday Dec. 3, 2012

Here's a quick update for our co-op day today!

1) Game of UNO while we waited for others to arrive.

2) Using the books, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie each child wrote a Christmas version using a formula I gave them. We'll illustrate these stories next week. For those who weren't present today, if your kids would like to do this on their own at home and bring it back for next week that would be great. They could illustrate them here.

3) Snack and outdoor play.

4) Christmas word art.

5) We did a quick lesson on perimeter and area. Using lego, we practiced a few.

6) Lunch and more outdoor play.

7) After lunch we continued our talk about perimeter and area and added a note to our geometry and measurement lapbook. We practiced finding the area and perimeter of many irregular shapes using lego and large grid paper. We finished off with a little challenge!

8) I showed the kids their Canada books that I put together for them using the artwork they completed a few weeks ago. I think they turned out great. Each province has an alphabet project and it's own section. As we continue our conversations about Canada we will add to our books. Today we read about Saskatchewan and filled in our alphabet list. 

9) Some reading time!

10) We read a chapter of BFG and discussed descriptions involving; taste, sound, and sight. Next week we will add these descriptions to our lapbook.

11) A game of charades!

Co-op Update: Monday Nov. 26, 2012

 It was a dreary day today and most of my gang came in sleepy. Luckily it didn't take too long to get them energized!

We started with some cuddles!

 Then I split them into two groups and had one group act out a scenario on responsibility and the other group did compassion. This was an entertaining start to the day!

We have been working on a geometry lapbook. So far we've studied polygons (up to 10 sides), intersecting, parallel, and perpendicular lines. Today (while the two older ones worked) I gave them a lesson on angles. We went over what an angle is and how it is measured. I showed them a protractor and used it only to demonstrate a straight angle and the number of degrees in a circle. Everyone was familiar with the term right angle and that it measures 90 degrees. I had them show me a right angle with their bodies (in many different forms). I then introduced them to the cute little acute angle and the obtuse angle. We demonstrated these with our arms. They seemed to get this really quickly. To demonstrate their knowledge they had to draw a cartoon showing a character sitting in chairs with; an acute angle, an obtuse angle, and a right angle. They had NO problem with this and most were quick to recognize that the obtuse chair would be the most comfortable chair to have!

They then used the coloured sticks and added examples of the three types of angles to their lapbook. They used an index card to measure and confirm the right angle.

After snack and some much needed outdoor time, we did a lesson on symmetry as an introduction to our geometrical art project. I gave each child the outline of an octagon. They had to create a geometrical design that had at least one line of symmetry. Some found this harder than others. One challenge that a few had, was using the ruler properly, and lining it up with the corners to get a straight line. Once they had their lines drawn, they had to colour it. They had to apply their colour in a symmetrical pattern as well. While they were working, they were not allowed to share their designs. As you can see (and as they saw), they were all quite different. They could try this with other polygons at home.

Lunch time and outdoor play!

After lunch while the older two did their activities (and kept an ear open to ours) we continued in our lapbooks and focused on quadrilaterals. We covered; squares, rectangles, rhombus, trapezoid, parallelogram and kite shape. As I introduced a new one, they constructed it out of pipe cleaners. We talked about similarities and compared; line lengths, angle sizes, and parallel sides. They all could identify the 3 types of angles in the various quadrilaterals.

Today we started a lapbook on our novel BFG. As I read two chapters they drew a cover which had to have their version of a BFG. They were fantastic!

As I read, I recorded some of the giant's words. This is a great book for word and language analysis. I think I've already mentioned that there are wonderful opportunities for inferencing and use of context. The kids made a word booklet (to go in the lapbook) and we listed off some of the giant's words. I re-read each word in its sentence and the kids had to come up with a synonym for the giant's word. They had lots of fun with this!