Great collaboration makes us learn

Remember how we learned that when a gingerbread cooky gets wet,

it will be soggy and break apart?

Our next challenge was to build a bridge over the river

so that the gingerbread could get across and not have to ride

on the fox's back.

The students had the choice to work on their own or with a partner.

What was so great to hear were the conversations that the partners

carried on with each other.

There was negotiations and explanations.

They tried out different ideas.

Some found it difficult because the materials that they were 

using were toothpicks and marshmallows.

Not the strongest materials but it was important to 

'think outside the box' on this challenge.

How can the obstacles be overcome?

Here's an example...the original design had the bridge sag in the

centre, so these two are adding supports to each marshmallow,

with the hope that the middle won't be sagging when they turn it over.

I feel I should be saying "We interrupt our scheduled show for this

important message!"

Really I just wanted you to see the lovely angels that the students made

with their handprints.

I think these two are stumped....which is great because that is

part of the process.....its not working, so how do I fix it?

Even though this didn't work, I pointed out to all the students that 

the two boys had used triangles (see the toothpicks crossed on the

left, and that the triangle is the strongest shape in construction.

The students got to share their design and then try to have the

gingerbread man (cooky) walk across the bridge.

They were very honest, sometimes starting with

"The bad news is...."

or with "I thought that ...."

Some students are chatty and some have to be coaxed to share.

In the end, though, I do believe that they learned a lot from this hands-

on approach to learning how things are built.

The students created glyphs...a representation of something

about themselves.

Each part of the gingerbread person showed aspects of the

student who was creating it:

bow tie colour was the month he or she was born

mouth was favourite pet

nose colour was age

eye colour was gender

leg stripes were number of sisters

arm stripes were number of brothers

buttons were favourite activities

Let's see if you can figure out if this is your child...

or is it this one

or maybe this one!

We took a poll and we now know that our elf's name is Ginger!

(Here she is watching the class when they sit on the rug)

The Gingerbread Man is helping us learn!

On Monday the kiddos got to add a couple of small coloured candies onto

a gingerbread man.  This little 'eating' activity served two purposes.

The students will be exploring their five senses in a future science unit,

so we did any activity with adding a word to how the cookie tasted, smelt, felt,

looked and sounded.

The second part was an activity that involved recording how the

cookie was eaten. (By the way, did you know that they proper

spelling is actually cooky?)

For the first bite, the students coloured the part of the gingerbread

man on the recording sheet red.  The second bite was recorded as

orange, the third bite was green and the fourth was blue.

Once the cooky was eaten, the whole class shared which part

they chomped on first.  The class completed a graph with this information.

In the end nine students ate a leg first, seven ate an arm first and

two bit into the head first!

On Monday afternoon we received a special delivery package from

SANTA!

Seems he had received the letter I had sent him earlier in the month

requesting a little elf to come and be with us for the last two weeks

before Christmas holidays.

Here she is!

This is where she was when we walked in this morning.

The gingerbread learning doesn't stop!

We wondered what would have happened if the gingerbread man

had just tried to swim across the river instead of getting onto

the fox's back.  The students wrote out their hypothesis, which is what 

scientists do.  The cookie was placed in a glass of water and once

we knew it had been in for a while, we made our observations.  That's

also what scientists do.  We noticed that the cooky got bigger,

soggy, changed colour, and when you tried to take it out of the water,

it fell apart and was really mushy.

Wait until you see what we do next!  Tune in tomorrow!

Busy, busy, busy!

Benjamin Franklin said:

             Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Oh how true for littles!

Add a story, a challenge, an "I wonder what will happen..."

and the work doesn't seem like work at all.

In Science, we are Building Things.

The students heard a version of the tale of The Three Little Pigs,

but there was a twist.  Instead of the fourth character being a

big, bad wolf it turned out that it was the big bad blowdryer!

In small groups of three students, the students found a way to

choose their house to create (rock, paper, scissors never leads to arguments!)

Each student in the small group used a small milk carton (I've

been saving these for months!) and using paper for straw,

popsicle sticks for wood or Lego for bricks, they worked over a series

of days to finish their little house.

The big bad blowdryer showed up and we all gathered around

one of the tables, and thought about how scientists do experiments.

Scientists make sure the experiment is fair.

Notice how all the houses are lined up with one side against the 

line between the tables?  That is fair.

Scientists think about what they think is going to happen.

That is called a hypothesis.

Scientists make observations.  That means they watch very closely.

Oh my goodness!  Sometimes scientists (and Grade One students)

are amazed that things don't turn out the way they thought they would.

Look!  The wood house moved the least, the straw house moved more BUT the 

milk carton inside the three sided brick house house the most!

There is LOTS of time for thinking:

What did you think was going to happen?

Did it happen?

Why do you think this happened instead?

Sometimes, they cannot share, only think.  After more observations,

they are able to share their thoughts with words that show their ability

to compare and contrast.....

Really, in this picture, they aren't bored.....they just didn't know that they

were going to be in the picture.

LOOK at that brick house!  They were so impressed with the

kiddo who built it that they burst into spontaneous applause!

Yep...it didn't move at all!

They could explain why!

What else have we been up to?

We are learning to listen carefully and share various elements of stories.

For this month, the students are listening to a variety of different versions

of stories about Gingerbread.  The first three stories were about a

Gingerbread Man.  They all had the same title, BUT the gingerbread man

met different characters, sang different words and the stories ended

differently.  Later in the week, the students heard about the

gingerbread man's younger and wiser sister.

There are gingerbread men everywhere in out class,

and lots more books to read and compare.

The students made a fold out story board in the shape of three gingerbread men,

with the first one telling what happened in the beginning 

of the story,

the next one telling what happened in the middle

of the story and

the last one telling how the story ended.

Since this was new learning, we did the work as a class.

One of our other science units is about our senses, so I plan to 

have the students decorate and then eat a gingerbread cookie next week.

I am not aware of any allergies that I should be concerned about.

If there is, please let me know asap.

Can you imagine the excitement this morning when the students went

to put on their shoes and found a tiny orange, a candy cane

and some chocolate coins in their shoe?!?!?

Of course, today is December 6th and this is the feast day of St Nicholas.

The students learned that St. Nicholas was a real person and

for many children in Europe, this is the day that they receive their

gifts, often in their shoes which are left by the door.

They learned that the generous bishop had helped a family by throwing a

sack of money into their house through an open window and that

the sack of money had landed inside a sock which was hanging to dry

on the fireplace.....does that help you make a connection to today's traditions?

We have our own St. Nicholas doll now, reminding us to keep Christ

in Christmas!