Co-op update: Monday Nov. 19, 2012

Another great day today folks! While we waited for a few kids to arrive we reviewed our week as far as bucket filling and dipping goes. It was difficult to get past the regular/usual/continuous sibling "stuff." I think our older kids understand the consequences of bucket dipping perhaps a little more than the younger ones.  I told them about the third rule; which is putting a lid on our buckets! We realize that bucket dipping is going to occur, but if we can find strategies (our lids) to help us from being affected by bucket dippers than we can help keep our buckets full. Examples of this would include; ignoring, humour, walking away, conversation, etc... We had some good conversation around this topic. We are done with the buckets. They may want to hold on to them so that they can reflect at a later date on the things that filled their buckets.

We started the morning with language centres. I had five centres and the kids rotated through in groups of twos. The centres included:

1) Listening to The Boy Who Cried Wolf which can be found here.

2) Word Families - writing down as many words as they can think of in six different word families. I helped a fair bit with this.

3) Boggle 

4) Synonyms - finding pairs of synonyms 

5) Contractions - making contractions and decoding contractions (this is one area where they could all use a bit more practice!)

Snack time and then outside with facilitation by me! Played a game of Ship to Shore. This tires them out nicely!

Due to lack of table space and chair availability for this size of group, I had to do the art in two sessions. While the girls read, I worked with the boys and then we switched.

Today we worked on creating patterned paper. I found this idea and just loved it! It's essentially a mixed media project and could be completed in different variations. The end result could be used for wrapping paper, scrapbooking, etc... I'm going to make the papers into covers for their Canadiana books.

For step one, they created their backgrounds using watercolour paints. They had to think about colour, line types (since I would only allow organic lines), and how to avoid a muddy mess. They really got into this and the compliments were flying!
    

After lunch the older two students had time to work on their studies while the remaining 8 were divided into 4 groups of two. They rotated through 5 math stations. These were the stations:

1) tangrams - making the square and making pictures with all the pieces
2) time - using the time given on an index card, they had to find the time on the clock and they partner had to assess it (switch)
3) adding WAR game with Uno cards - to encourage speed when adding
4) dice multiplying game
5) word problems on math site

After math, we returned to our art (since it was dry) and they added doodling with markers and white highlights with white-out pens.

I think they turned out great! What do you think?

Mason

Braeden

Jesse

Eli

Mine (for demo)

Aislinn

Tara

Henri

Maya

Micaela

 And Mickey's is missing....oops!

We finished off the day with BFG. We're really enjoying this book. I'm hoping to start a lapbook on BFG next week. There's lots we can do with this book.

30-40 minutes of free time outside!