Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Sensory Overload


This is Wrinkles. He's taking a nap as he is regularly worn out by excited Grade One students. This year's class loves him a LOT! He helps me make sounding out words more interesting for the little ones. It's not too much fun to have them say the last sound of a word, but it is more fun to correct a bad puppet who won't obey the teacher :)



Last week we learned a bit about our sense of hearing. We split into our four gym squads to go to different stations. This group had to go into the hallway for space reasons, but more importantly, it was the quietest place to be. They tried out the ol' cup and string telephone. We were showing how sound is carried through vibration.


Unfortunately they didn't all understand that for it to work the string had to be taut.
I also laughed to watch kids with both cups to their ears and wondering why they couldn't hear anything. Or as in this picture, both speaking into the cup and no one listening on the other end.










































There were three areas in the classroom. Here the students shook the sealed coffee tins. There were four pairs of tins and each pair contained a different item like pennies or macaroni. Students had to shake them to identify the matching sounds. Vigorous shaking ensued.



Other students went to the corner with the elastic band "instruments". They were experimenting with how different sized elastics changed the sound. They also pulled some elastics tighter than others to see what difference that made. It was good in theory, but there's that one other group in the corner which made an impact...


















And that was this area right here. The instruments corner. Strange how all the students were attracted to the drums and cymbals and experimenting with what kind of sounds they could make there. It got...loud. The most fun instruments were the instruments that they could hit as hard as they could to make the loudest noise that they could.
Perhaps they were not used to the concept of purposefully being very loud in class. Ha, I know, I wish. :)














Look they found matching pairs!















A brief glimpse into my quiet classroom. I didn't think pictures could quite convey what it was like this morning, so you get to listen and watch -- use that sense of hearing!!
No I did not pack any Advil for the day ;)




Grade One and Two:

Thursday, September 17, 2009

I sense some videos are coming up...

We're learning about the five senses and we started off with "sight". Yesterday we were talking about how our sight helps to protect us: we can see dangerous things etc.
Today we talked about how we can enjoy things using sight, especially things in creation. Well, we enjoy a lot of things!
We thought we'd show the things we like to see by drawing them in chalk on the front sidewalk of school. I thought I'd make some videos so you have some idea of what it's like in Grade One and Two.


Boys. Boys are different than girls.



Ugh. Next time I shall remember not to say anything when I'm recording. I don't like listening to myself!


And some pics of the kiddies. Until the memory card in the camera refused to let me take any more.

I wasn't sure of everything that was being drawn. This was very neat when they were finished with it: The Bruce Trail. And then they had to walk all the paths that they had drawn :)

You'd think that the arrangement of fellows would be the other way around, but no. The tall one has to look under the not-quite-as-tall one's legs.

Sunshine and sky and flowers and birds. No bleeding fox for these two!

Good thing I had a lot of blue chalk, much of it was used as lakes and waterfalls.

It was a great buy, these 100 sticks of chalk from Costco! I wonder if they'll last the whole school year long. Yeah, I don't think so either.