Saturday, April 3, 2010

Friday Fun - 2/4/10

The past couple of weeks have been exciting for a number of reasons. It was great to meet up with parents during the three-way interviews and to have the opportunity to discuss each child's learning and development. We have been doing lots of special things in the classroom and having fun with our learning.

Harmony Day Activities
For Harmony Day this year students wore orange and made a donation to the Red Cross efforts in Haiti. In the Year 1/2 and 2 classrooms we selected some activities for students to rotate through. One teacher taught students some origami, another taught students a game, another made a circle of decorated orange hands with them, and I played and discussed this video from explore.org. Our message was that everyone is different and we can appreciate and learn from the differences of others.



Earth Hour
We didn't do anything too spectacular for Earth Hour this year. We continued with our Friday Fun, but with all the power turned off. The room was darker, but not too dark. You would think that it would be quite easy to play with Lego without any power, however I did have students ask if we could put some music on, and I found myself itching to get on a computer and finish typing up students' stories! It's sad how reliant we become on electricity.

Cityscape Artwork

Year 2 students created cityscapes by cutting out paper buildings and then using black marker for adding detail. They added land and other features using oil pastels.

Excursion to the Botanic Gardens
The day of our excursion started out with a good bout of rain. It got so heavy at one point on the bus ride that we seriously considered turning around and returning to school. We decided, however, to continue as planned but to have something to eat in one of the classrooms before beginning our journey around the gardens. Finally the rain let up enough for us to move on. The Year 2s investigated the bridges throughout the gardens and completed booklets made by Miss Poore. The Year 1s explored the biodiversity of the gardens, pointing out interesting features of plants and insects. They also completed this booklet provided by the Botanic Gardens.


Bridge Building Day

Year 2 students brought in boxes and other items from home to use for building bridges. They were given some time to plan their design and then got busy with the building. It was great to see the designs they were coming up with and to see their responses to some prompts ie. "How do the cars get up onto the bridge?"

Year 1 Presentation

While the Year 2s built bridges, the Year 1s went through the photos that were taken during the excursion. They then created a PowerPoint presentation and speeches to share with the other Year 1 students to explain what they had seen and learnt at the Botanic Gardens. They enjoyed selecting the pictures to include and changing the background colours for each page.