Fire Prevention Presentation

On Tuesday we had the visit from Arthur Herscovitch, a Fire Prevention Officer from the city of Ottawa.  He explained the function of a smoke detector and what to do in an emergency.  The children got to practise what to do if there is smoke in their house or if they catch fire.  He encouraged the children to talk to their family about a meeting place if a fire or smoke is detected in their home. 



Some objects are not safe to play with. They might cause a fire.

Stop, Drop and Roll

Learning about the protective clothes of the fireman

During the week, the children made and presented posters informing the school community about different fire safety procedures.

Touch the door. (Ella)

Put a blanket. (Giuliana G.)

Go to the window. (Tianna)

Leave toys behind. (Aiden)

Smoke goes up. (Ben)

I go down. (James)

Crawl to our meeting place. (Colin)

Stop (Hannah)

Drop (Ava)

Roll (Tianna)

Go outside. (Kaitlyn)

Go to a meeting place. (Jackson)

Go to a neighbour. (Sean)

Call 911. (Folu)

English Afternoon Tea

Friday, we had a Tea Party with the children. Women from England like to wear hats so the children had the opportunity during the week to make a hat and to wear it during our Tea Party.

In preparation for the Tea Party, we talked about the different British teas and the etiquette of drinking tea.


English Afternoon Tea takes place between 2 and 5 pm.

There are three types of tea:

1) Full Tea
Four course meal:finger sandwiches, savories, scones, desert and tea.

2) Royal Tea
Same as above plus champagne or sherry

3) High Tea
Full meal around the table.

The Etiquette of Afternoon Tea

-  Pour tea holding the lid of the tea pot.
-  Fill the cups 3/4 so people have room to add milk, lemon juice or sugar.
-  Move spoon back and forth without touching the bottom or sides.
-  Put tea spoon in the saucer on the back side.
-  If your tea spills in the saucer, place a napkin in it to cover the tea. Put your cup on top.
-  Drink tea holding the cup by the handle. Do not put the pinkie finger in the air or cradle the cup with one or two hands.
-  If you are sitting, hold the cup by the handle. If you are standing, hold the saucer in one hand and the tea cup handle in the other.
-  Do not pour tea that spilled in the saucer back in the cup.
-  Do not drink from the saucer.

Rocks part 2

Another question that came up during our inquiry about rocks is  ``Why do rocks get wet when it rains?``  For this activity, we filled out containers with sand, rice, water and soap.  We added rocks to each of the container.  The children were encouraged to play with the rocks and make observations.

Ella: The ones in the water are sinking.

Alessa: The sand comes off the rocks.  The rocks in the soap are slippery.

Christina: The rice sticks to the rocks where there is soap.

Folu: They are getting wet (rocks in water).  The rocks look dirty.

Brandon: Some rocks are getting dirty (rocks in sand).

Kaitlyn: The sand does not stick to the rock.  The soap sticks to the rock.  The rice does not stick.

Brandon: It`s getting wet (rocks in soap).  The sand has tiny rocks in it.


During circle time, we looked at the rocks all together and concluded that the soap and water ``sticked`` to the rocks because they are wet and that the sand and rice do not ``stick`` to the rocks because they are dried.  We helped the children make a connection to the world wet by reminding them of the day when most of them came in after our morning recess with wet socks.  They were able to say that their socks got soaked by water. We summarized that wet is when something is covered or soaked by water or another liquid.  We asked the children to name other liquid (we talked a little about the concept of liquid) that can get us wet when we are eating and/or drinking.  The children named soap and water from our previous observations and juice, milk and chocolate milk.

Finally, the children answered the question: ``Why do rocks get wet when it rains?`` 

Ella said that rocks get wet when it rains because the rain is made of water.

Look under the tab Classroom Activities to read more about our rock activities.

Rocks

During our inquiry about rocks, Giuliana asked the question ``Why don't rocks walk or have eyes?``   To help answer that question, we had the children sort Living and Non-Living pictures of objects.  

Then the children were asked to make some observations about the differences between Living and Non Living matter.
 Here are their observations:

Living	Non Living
-         It grows. -         It breathes. -         It eats food and drinks water. -         It has body parts. -         It moves.	-         It doesn`t have life. -         It does not move. -         It does not grow. -         It does not eat or drink. -         It does not have body parts.

Ella concluded that rocks don`t walk or have eyes because they are non living.

Spaceship- Airplane

James wanted to build a Galaxie Squad spaceship.  He explained that Galaxie Squad spaceships are Lego constructions that come in green or orange.  James wanted to build his spaceship red. With the help of his friends, he built the structure around the legs of three tables.  He estimated the number of extra large pieces contruction paper they needed to make the walls of his structure. They added a door, a window (to see into space), boosters,  2 wings, 3 chairs and a computer.  Here are pictures of his spaceship:

the back



the front

The next day, Tianna decided that she wanted to build an airplane to go to Punta Cana.  She looked at airplanes on Mrs. Cole`s IPad and was encouraged to draw a plan of her airplane.  We helped her get started by putting 4 chairs on each side of a strip of paper that we used to make the aisle of the plane.  We added one chair for the pilot. Christina numbered the chairs.  Tammy made airplane tickets. Tianna said that they needed televisions to watch movies and snacks to eat.  The children drew pictures on paper that we taped behind the chairs for the tv screens.  We also had them drew pictures on plates and on a paper infront of the pilot seat to represent the windows of the aiplane.  We discussed what we can see
in the sky when we are in an airplane and how objects and people might appear to us when we are very high in the sky.  After looking at models of airplanes, Tianna said that her airplane needed wings and tires. She taped plates for the tires and we added a big container for the turbine engine and placed a tube on top for the wing (we only add room to do one side).  The children had lots of fun getting on the airplane using their school bags as luggages and eating their snack.  Tianna went up and down the aisle with a cart on wheels pretending to pass snacks and drinks.

Science

We have four decorated vases in the classroom in which we put colored water in September.  We decided to have the children make some observations as the water had gone down.  Here are their observations:

Preston: Yellow has less water.
Fouad: Green has more.
Anthony: Red has medium.
Alessa: Green has more.
Sean: Blue and Red have the same amount of water.
Ava: They have evaporated.
Tammy: It (yellow) evaporated faster.
Kaitlyn: The Green had more sun.
Ava: Yellow evaporated too quickly.
Ivy: Yellow one is water.
Ben: You made the yellow one first (reason for the yellow water to have evaporated faster).


We helped the children notice that the water colored yellow had evaporated the most because the opening of the vase is larger than the other ones and that the water colored green had evaporated the least because the opening is smaller.  The water of the blue and red was almost at the same level as their opening were about the same size.

Measurement

Last Thursday afternoon Jackson approached Mrs. Cole and asked to make a paper airplane.  They looked together on the IPad and found a simple model.  Soon we had a group of boys (Colin, Sean, Alessio, Anthony, James, Jackson, Preston, Brandon, Antonio and Fouad) making paper airplanes.  We told them that all airplanes had a name and a number.  They wrote phonetically the name of their airplane and added a number. As we`ve been learning about measurements, we decided to measure how far their airplanes would fly.  We told the boys that they would have 3 tries after which we would conclude whose airplane could fly farthest.   At circle time, we talked about what we could use to measure the distance that the airplanes would fly.  We`ve been using Fruitloop cereal, paper clips and glass beads in our measurement centre but we decided that it would be too small to measure long distance.  Sean suggested a measuring tape but the one we have in the classroom is not long enough.  Ava suggested that we use paper, Colin people and I said we would use chairs for a third try.  We went in the cubby area as there is more space.  We taped sheets of paper on the floor and Ava wrote the numbers with Alessa`s help.  Anthony wanted to make a sign saying ``Start`` and Alessio wrote the sign and we all help him sound it our phonetically.  I made a ``tableau`` to compile the results. At the end of the activity we concluded that Jackson`s airplane called Mrs.Cole was the plane that could fly the farthest.

Our results

We measured the distances with sheets of paper.

Snow White

Recently the children watched the presentation Snow White. The goal of the play was to create awareness of online bullying.

After the presentation, we had the children compare the fairy tale ''Snow White'' with the play ''Snow White.''  Here are the children`s comparisons.

Similarities
-         Prince                                         - Dwarf -         Poison apple                             - ‘’Happy ever after’’ -         Snow  White the princess      - ‘’ Once upon a time`` -         Queen
Differences
-         Snow White (Fairy Tale) -         The Queen wanted to get rid of Snow White. -          The Prince kissed Snow White and they got married.	-         Snow White (Play) -         The Queen was a bully.   -         The Queen was nice, and because she was happy everyone was happy.

Cinq Petits singes

The children have enjoyed singing the song ``Five Little Monkeys`` so we decided to have the children dramatize the song in French. The children made masks of monkeys using paper plates and paint. We practised singing the song using our fingers.  Here are two performances of children who participated in the dramatic presentation of the song ``Cinq petits singes``.

 

 

 

 



The children are also learning about the prepositions ```devant, derrière, dans, sur, sous, à côté.``  They helped make a book called ``Où est le singe?`` by taking pictures of our stuff monkey in different places into the classroom.