Co-op Update - Feb. 11, 2013

We seem to finally be on track today - no illnesses and no snow days! Yeah!

Over the last two weeks when I had a skeleton crew, we:

1) played with fractions and making equivalent fractions

2) played the "Tens" game. 

3) learned about prisms and pyramids and made a variety

4)  drew maps of Ontario - freehand and labelled important cities and waterways

 

5)  Worked on our birch tree art

6) Started studying homonyms

and had our reading time.

Today we:

1) Started with "BFG." Using some guidelines from "Writer's Jungle," we then studied the poem, "Jabberwocky" and made connections to "BFG" and "Alice in Wonderland." We tried to infer what this poem was about based on the few words we could identify and the tone of the poem. Next, came the big challenge. In pairs, the kids had to locate nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the poem. Some could easily identify the parts of speech just based on their position while others had a hard time wrapping their heads around the usage of these non-sensical words. All-in-all, it went fairly well. To put what they learned into practice, I had them take a passage (that I had written out) from the Berenstein Bears, and turn some words (nouns, verbs, etc...) into language similar to that used in "Jabberwock." Again, a few had a hard time learning to 'break the rules' and make up words. Once they figured out the goal, it went well and we had fun reading them allowed.

2) Snack and outside time. 

3) Over the last month we've been working on some birch tree art. The first step of this project had us using tape to create the trees in the positive space and then the kids painting the negative space. When the tape was removed the following week, their trees appeared! 

The next step was to paint on the lines of the birch bark.

And then this week, we added paper collage birds. I think they turned out great!

4) Reading time

5) Lunch

6) Worked on homonyms: to, too, two

    

7) Nets of pyramids and prisms. First we looked at a cereal box and it's net. We talked about it's properties. 

Next, the kids were given a net (each one different). They had to look at their net and tell me what they thought the shape was. Then they constructed it. Once constructed, we compared them all and we noted the number of vertices, edges, and faces for each one.

8) We finished the day with more "BFG" and they worked on their lapbooks. The kids added to their character comparison, their plot graph and their senses circles. Phoebe joined in for some reading fun! Once they were calm...she was calm!

For the last 15 minutes the kids played some games. 

Thanks everyone.