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Sunday, January 19, 2014

Pinwheels and Carnivores

We learned all about the big, mean, ferocious, and deadly ALLOSAURUS {and adjectives. Thanks to the kids for coming up with those awesome ones right there}. I figured we needed something pretty intense to spice things up after learning about the stegosaurus and the triceratops last week. The kids are getting pretty good at writing non-fiction texts about the dinosaurs they learn about, and they come up with some great adjectives. Adjectives make reading more interesting!

Just to stay on the topic of dinosaurs, I’m going to jump over to our storytelling centre so you can see what they got to explore this week. 


It’s a dinosaur sensory bin. Sensory bins are wonderful, especially for those kinesthetic learners. There were so many textures to play with in the box, and lots of different sized toys to go with it. I borrowed the sand from the kindergarten room and bought the glass beads, stones, bird/dinosaur nest, and mini dinosaur toys at Michael’s. Much to my surprise, there was literally no sand on the floor. Such responsible kids I have in my class.

In science we learned all about renewable energy with a focus on wind energy! In order to learn what renewable energy is, I turned to “the funny scientist man” {as referred to by the Grade Ones}, Bill Nye!



Then we talked about windmills/wind turbines. They were fascinated, but had no idea how they worked. So I showed them this:



Thank goodness for YouTube…and it’s media literacy ;)

I have this great book called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It’s based on a true story of a boy in Africa who built a windmill to generate energy for his suffering village. The kids were all over that because it made them think of their own buddies in Uganda.



We ended our wind power lessons off with a little craftivity by making pinwheels! They had a blast and a handful of them brought them back to school over the course of the week to play with at recess.



Some other pictures of the classroom this week!


A little addition to the math wall



A great book that explains that big idea in energy: Energy makes things happen!



Reflecting on wind energy. Also learning what “pros and cons” mean


Well that was short and sweet for this week. I am almost done my first draft of report card comments. For those of you who are also working on your report cards, I’ll leave you with this:




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