For the Love of Learning: Co-op - Monday October 1st

I must apologize for this post being a little late. It has been a crazy week!

We started the morning with our word work at the table. We worked on identifying past tense verbs. We did some on paper and some orally. They all picked this up quite quickly. I will discuss this in more detail in another post.

We then moved to 3 different math rotations. The older two worked on their work.

Rotation #1: Time

I showed them a variety of times (hour, half hour, quater hour and minutes) and they had to take turns telling me the time. We then passed the clock around and I gave them a time and they had to find it on the clock. All kids love working with time!

Rotation #2: Money

Using cards with money amounts on them, the kids had to count out their amounts and compare their answers. They soon realized that they could each have different coin combinations to make the same amount. Money is another favourite!

Rotation #3: Skip counting

Using a ball, they rolled it between group members and skipped counted by 3s, 4s, and 6s. Next week we'll try again but we'll take it outside and make it more active.

After the math rotations they had a quick snack and had some outside time. I was expecting rain all day and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a beautiful day. We took advantage and had a number of 15-20 minute breaks outside. The kids always manage to organize themselves into games and get along very well.

Literature Group:

We started a literature group today. All members of our group participated. I chose the book Frindle and am 'lightly' using the Bravewriter's Arrow notes that I have for this book from last year. We read the first two chapters and we discussed:

features of front and back covers
who is Brian Selznik (the author) and what other work of his have we seen? Answer: Hugo Cabret
characteristics of opening paragraph. How does it grab our attention?
characters
hyphenated words
use of quotation marks
comprehension

I read aloud and if the kids felt comfortable, they took a turn as well. They could read as much or as little as they wanted. There wasn't any pressure to read aloud. They seemed to like the book choice and amazingly, not one had read it already. How did that happen?

After break we started a fall tree art project. Using only black paint, the kids had to paint a tree. The focus was on line thickness and using the different edges of the brush to create different thicknesses for the branches. All participated but one! She continued her independent work! :)

Outside again! - Capture the flag - Waiting for paint to dry!

We had lunch and then returned to our painting. I didn't have red tempera so the kids were able to experience working with red watercolour crayons. If you've never used these, you must! I love them. They're great for taking on a hike too. They learned about the different ways to use them and then tried them out by adding red leaves to their trees. For the other colours, they used one finger tip to apply the other colours. We talked about the size of their finger tip and how to use the different edges to create different effects. We also talked about colour blending and how to create a fall looking tree. Where do the colours change first on a fall tree?

This is a nice, easy project, that usually produces a successful result. Very little frustration involved.

This guy turned his into a volcano!

Returned to the couch for a few chapters of Paddle to the Sea. The kids are really enjoying this book.

Then the kids had 20 minutes of silent reading time. During this time, I would be happy to read one-on-one to practice reading and comprehension strategies if anyone so desires! Just let me know.

Map work - to continue our study of Canada we did some map work identifying neighbouring countries and waterways.

Break time - Outside

We played a Survivor like game involving blindfolds, and kids being given instructions (by a teammate) on how to retrieve an object with a blindfold on.