Co-op - Wednesday Oct. 17, 2012

Co-op - Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012

Sorry folks! Not as many pictures today! 

Virtues:

We randomly chose today and the virtue of Modesty was it. We read through the explanation of what modesty is and how it can be achieved. We went through the various scenarios and came up with simple solutions. At the end we quickly went through each member of the group and came up with character traits, gifts, or skills for each child that we are all aware of without that child ever having felt the need to brag or be boastful.

Working With Words:

We started with an example of a compound word and talked about what makes it a compound word. I gave them 'beginning words' and they needed to make them into compound words, eg/ water, ship, main, ice, etc... Using the dictionary we confirmed if these were in fact compound words or two separate words. Some came up with examples on their own. While we did this work, the older two worked on their own studies but I discovered later, that they had one ear open, and were able to apply this knowledge during our book club!

Math - Measurement:

For our introduction into measurement, we brainstormed to come up with different things we can measure. They automatically said, "pencil, book, etc.." Instead we talked about what features of the pencil we could measure; for example, the length. Other answers like; height, weight, capacity and time came up.

We made a very brief comparison of metric and imperial measurements. We'll talk more about this at a later date. We looked at the ruler and how the measurements are set up. Most of the kids were very familiar with millimetres and centimetres. Our first try at measuring was using a worksheet that had the ruler printed on the sheet with the object above it. This makes it much easier to measure and the kids don't need to worry about lining up the ruler and keeping it steady on the zero mark as they read the measurement.

They had to record the measurements in both centimetres and millimetres. They quickly made the connection for converting between millimetres and centimetres. Very quickly they moved on to using the ruler.

After a lot of practice (because they were enjoying it and really had a good grasp of using the ruler), they had to measure their height, weight, and lengths of their arm, leg, foot, and middle finger. After measurements were completed we put them in order from shortest to tallest and compared their weights.   We talked about how weight doesn't necessarily increase as height increases and the factors that affect weight (bone density, muscle mass, water, etc....). We will continue measurement next week since it was a popular activity!

Paddle to the Sea:

We watched this video which is a wonderful adaptation of the book Paddle to the Sea. All kids were enraptured and discussed it's similarity to the book, willingly on their own!

Outside Break:

The rain broke and we had a bit of time to play Ship to Shore and Electricity. 

Book Club: Frindle

After lunch, our whole group continued with Frindle at chapter 5. We did a quick recap of what we read last week. As we read, we looked for and recognized compound words. Our two older students demonstrated that they had heard my lesson as well while they were doing their own work! A few took turns reading. I showed them how to recognize punctuation and their meaning as they are reading. There were lots of opportunity to look at unfamiliar words and use the context to infer their meaning. We also found opportunities to count syllables - something else they love to do! We continued to make predictions.

Frindle is about a boy named Nick who likes to make up words. Instead of making up words today, we made up codes. They had to make their own code for the alphabet and then had to write a secret message in that code. Most wanted to save their codes for home, so be prepared...you may have to do some decoding tonight! This is another great activity to encourage kids to use words. Anything to get kids to write!

Art Activity:

Using an online resource we followed instructions for drawing a frankenstein. Special attention was on scale, filling the page, and following the lines on the screen. The kids could then put their own creative spin on each feature and once the line work was done, they could add small details and colour. They turned out great!

Free Time:

Outdoor time, including octupus, capture the flag, and trampoline. Then they came inside and had free time with lego and the dolls!

Thanks for another enjoyable day. The weather, once again, cooperated.