Outdoor Classroom Continued

April 11, 2019 - The class took a look around the playground to see the differences from our last Outdoor Classroom session. The only snow left was on the north side of the row of trees and there was lots of water on the east side of the playground. 

We noticed some garbage that had been hidden under the snow so we picked up what we could today. 

April 24, 2019 - What a difference 13 days later!  We didn't need coats or mitts today!  The snow and water were gone.  We had a chance to get to the rest of the garbage that was in the wet spots and put it where it belongs.

We also took our Outdoor Classroom Journals with us to record things we notice with 4 senses: seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling.  No tasting outside today!

Epson Short Throw Projector - new technology!

At the end of January this year, our Smartboard abruptly stopped working! You can read the blog post here from when it was new, four and a half years ago.  We tried all the usual technology tricks to get it going again - restart everything, unplug it and plug it back in and new cords but nothing worked.  It actually still worked great to project the picture and sound from the teacher laptop but the pen and interactive functions had stopped working.   

This week, the Maintenance Crew from Fort La Bosse came to change it to an Epson Brightlink 695wi Short Throw Interactive projector and a new whiteboard to display it.   

The main difference we noticed right away is that the pen needs to be used to drag, write and erase when we used our fingers before. (Unless it has a way to do that which we haven't discovered yet!) 

Happy Easter

Some of the Grade Two Art and views this week:

Learning About a Volcano

                                                                                                             When I first met with this group on the last day of school in June of 2018, I asked them for a list of things they thought they might like to learn about in Grade Two.  This list has remained posted in the classroom and we check them off as we learn about them.    Next to tackle once we came back from Spring Break was volcanoes!

With books and a DVD from our school library, we were ready to begin.  Scholastic Book Orders had a Volcano kit that we worked together to assemble.

Finally it was time to follow the steps to make it erupt!  The anticipation was incredible.  Some students stood back from the table to avoid being hit by lava but...

Besides a little foaming, not much of what we were expecting happened.  We even tried adding some dish soap, like the paper towel commercial on TV shows.  Still nothing.  

Since the paint that came with the kit was completely dried out, we wondered if a new box of baking soda would do the trick. 

With a generous amount of fresh baking soda, we tried again.  There certainly was a little foaming but not the dramatic eruption pictured on the box.  That led to a discussion about advertising and exaggeration - all important lessons! 

April Fools in Grade Two

The students were quite curious about a covered pan on my desk in the morning of April 1st. After they got back from gym class, I invited the helper of the day to pass out a brownie that I had made for each one of them. 

He did his best to keep a straight face while he handed out brown e's to his classmates.  

Just then I pulled another pan out from behind my desk - real brownies! Happy April Fools Day!