"Hats on" to a great day of learning!

Just over half of our class wore hats today to help bring awareness to the importance of mental health.  Thanks to everyone that participated!

Bison Kit

Today room 4 and 5 had lots of time to explore the artifacts from our Blackfoot Bison Kit.  The kit contains cultural artifacts from early Blackfoot communities.  Most of the items are made from different parts of the bison including the animal's hide, bones, sinew, horns and hair.  This kit has been an excellent extension to our field trip to the Glenbow Museum, where the children participated in the Blackfoot education program. At the museum, the children gained detailed knowledge from our aboriginal teacher, Clarence about how many tools and items were made.  For example, our kit contains both a drum and a quiver made from a bison's hide.  The drum's hide is hard while the quiver's hide is soft and pliable.  The children determined that the quiver's hide would have been "tannned" by rubbing the buffalo's brain on it (contains natural lanolin), while the hide on the drum would not of had this process.

When sketching and writing about the artifacts the children answered questions like:

"What was this artifact used for?"
"Who would have used it?"
"How was it made and what materials were used?"
"How was it used?"
"Would this item be used to today?  What would have replaced it?"

2 -D Shapes

We have also continued our exploration of 2-D shapes today.  We have been working with our Montessori materials to help us learn about the characteristics of  different shapes to help us describe, sort and classify them. 
We have been examining shapes and talking about:
-how many sides they have
-how many vertices they have
-the size of their angles (right, acute and obtuse angles)
-whether they are open or closed


Look around your home and get your child to describe the characteristics of the shapes they see.