Groovy Grade One

Groovy Grade One a video of our year!

Bubble! Bubble!

We had an hour long play with bubbles! We had 4 different bubble centre activities. It was all provided courtesy of Science in Motion! We learned that bubbles like to be wet and that they are basically lazy and that they only like to be spheres because that is an easy shape to be!
                                                    It was lots of amazing bubble fun!

We blew bubbles with straws and tried out bubble puzzles! 

We made Bubble Art! 

We experimented with different bubble tools!

Look! what I can blow a bubble with! Cool! 

Finger bubbles! 

It was a morning full of Bubbley fun experiments!

Spring...we decided to celebrate despite the weather!

Spring is still not awake around here...yet. We keep hoping! So to celebrate Spring and hopefully entice it to make a permanent appearance, we worked at a few spring centres and activities! 
The first centres we did all revolved around candy Peeps! I brought out the Peeps each inside a plastic egg and placed them on the Learning Carpet.  Each child then chose and "adopted" an egg. It was so cute! Then all the centres they visited had a Peeps theme to them. 

Adopting our baby peeps! We made them a lunchbag 

"nest"and wrapped them in a little flannel blanket.

Reading to our baby peeps.

Reading to our babies so they could have "nap time".

Measuring with Peeps

Seeing how tall we are with Peeps! 

Making a Peeps work folder

Our Peeps centres were a big hit! Some children loved their baby peep so much that they even brought it back to school the next day! 

We also did a project that I used as a formative assessment for one of our units.

 I gave each child a bunny cut out and had them choose a profession and then make a complete outfit for their bunny, based on the profession they chose. 

Believe me their choices of professions was quite hilarious! 

This is a Bunny Gardener and a Bunny Vampire Cheerleader!

A Bunny Ninja! 

A Winter Bunny in a Snow suit and toque! 

This one is my favourite because it makes me laugh! 

It is a Zombie bunny! Who knew that being a Zombie bunny is a profession! LOL! 

The little maker of this bunny even bent his little arms forward! Too funny! 

Learning Targets!

Learning Targets are a "big thing" in our school right now. Kids know what they are expected to learn and it is put on our target board. I usually try to talk with the kids about the targets and we decide together what is important to know. Then we put the target ideas into I can statements and the kids work towards the bigger goal. I admit when I first heard about this idea, I thought it was a bunch of "hooey" and that the kids won't use it; that it is really just "teacher wall paper." But, hey, I am a life long learner too...so I decided to embrace it and give it a try. So I wrote down everything they told me. Well, my little darlings knew exactly what learning targets were and they proceeded to absolutely WOW me!! 

Hooray!!

Our GROOVY Learning Targets sign!

I made it from wooden letters and cut outs!

Words the kids told me about targets!

L.A. targets

math targets

Science targets

Social targets

LOL! Had to share!

We have been talking about safety as part of our Health class. So we read a story about safety, Called "I can Play it Safe" and then I had the kids complete the sentence, "I can play it safe by ___. 
Each child did a picture and completed the sentence. This particular picture made me laugh! She completed the sentence by saying that "I can look before crossing the street."
Her picture is lovely, but if you look closely her thumb is up! It looks like she is hitch hiking! LOL! I love kids art! 

Field trip!

We went on a field trip to the Science Centre in the city. The kids were so excited, because many of them had never been there before! I had a group of 4 boys with me. We didn't even get to visit the entire place because these boys were so impressed with the Creative Kids Play Museum. We spent almost the whole day there! 

Standing in the middle of the water table!

Building a water ramp.

Giant water table, complete with a waterfall.

Air tubes! Build a plane and let it "fly" up the tube!

Building with Kapla blocks! So cool! I gotta get some of those!

This is just a small sample of all the fun we had there! 

We always dress our kids in bright orange

 t-shirts when we are on field trips and then they are super easy to spot where they are at! Much easier to round up when it's time to go too! I would highly recommend doing this!

Robots are RADICAL!!

We have been building robots with beautiful junk! This was our last building day and wow they look fabulous! The kids had such great ideas! 
We decided together, as a class group, that we would assess each robot and give each person a mark. So with some questioning, the children and I developed our own rubric to mark each robot. I was surprised at how hard they marked each other! They decided that if you were missing even one small thing that would automatically lower your mark! 
I am sharing a photo of the beginnings of the rubric we developed together.

This is just a selection of the robots that the kids made.

 I love how different they all are! 

Each child also told a story about their robot, what it's name is and even what it's job was! So wonderful! 

Next week we will measure and look at the shapes they used to build their robot!

There is so much that we could possibly do with these amazing creations!

Little Greenhouses!

I admit it...I LOVE Target! They sometimes have the coolest things for my Grade one kids! 

I found these little mini greenhouses, complete with soil and seed packages! (and the best part...they were only a dollar!!) 

Yahoo! 

I bought one for each child in my class. We planted the seeds and they have now sprouted right along with... SPRING!!! 

We are growing Basil. We are hoping that the little sprouts will grow enough so we can use them when we make spaghetti and sauce. We are thinking we could pick some of the leaves and put it on our spaghetti and then eat it. The kids are really excited about it. Plus the little greenhouses are super CUTE! 

I know some teachers are anti-cute, but not me! I am all about cute! I love it when things look cute, I find it kinda motivating. You can see in the photo...even my watering can is a cute little yellow duck that I found at the dollar store! 

Cute little greenhouses!

The "teacher's" extra bucket...just in case! 

Look! Little basil sprouts! 

These are the best! I hope Target will continue to carry these every year! Yay! Science! 

We also "planted" little bean seeds in a paper towel.

First we talked about the needs that plants have and then we had to decide

Will a plant begin to grow with out soil? 

That was big thinking for us! Especially with what we had already learned about the needs of plants! 

So we "planted" out beans in the paper towels and then put them in a zip plastic bag and hung them in the one window of our classroom. Much to our amazement...they sprouted!

We plan on planting the sprouts in some soil and see what happens next! 

So cool! 

My little Scientists are excited! 

Building with Beautiful Junk!

We collected A LOT of beautiful junk for our Building Things Unit! So we decided to build ROBOTS! We looked at photos of robots on the internet to get some fun ideas. The children were so excited to get building! Before we started we decided on what our robots HAD to have. We decided that our robots needed to stand up, have a head, body, arms, legs and feet. 
After the children build the basic idea, I had them stop building and we met on the carpet to share more ideas of what we could do to add more detail to our robots. They had some wonderful ideas! I am really looking forward to seeing what they come up with! 

Choosing the junk we will use to build with!

Beginning to build...

Sharing ideas with some pals

Measuring and using math...with no prompting!! YAY!

The beginnings of some cool Robot dudes!

Cool arms!

Can't wait to see what comes next!

I am planning on using the Robots in our Math unit too! We will talk about the shapes the children used in their robots and we will use them for a formative measurement project too! So much can come out of this building project! Hmmm...we might just add some writing to this project too, especially since some of the kids asked if they could name their robot! 

So much building FUN!