Earth Day - April 22nd. 2016

Happy EARTH Day! 

In connection to our new unit on Plants, we focused today on celebrating Earth Day. 

The children's knowledge on plants is very broad and today it was delightful to listen to what they know about the importance of taking care of our surroundings, as well as appreciating and protecting the Earth. 

"Take a step into the surrounding forest at Creative Minds, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Let the breeze tickle your face and the sun warm your existence. Be thankful for all that our Earth is offering us. Be Kind. Be Gentle..." 

We discussed reusing, recycling and reducing materials that we use daily. The importance of saving energy, planting and conserving plant life. 

These hands can help take care of the Earth

"Earth" word search. 

The flower queen 

Thank you for supporting our bake sale

Dear Families, 

Thank you for all your support with our bake sale today. 

We raised almost $100 in one day! 

The children showed love and empathy by choosing to donate the money they raised towards a cause in our community. 

We shared stories about different places and they each got a chance to choose one.

Since you helped us by making donations, please feel free to add your name and your preference to our chart (on the door in the cubbies). 

On Monday, we will count the votes and proceed with our generous act. 

This shows our connection to each other!! We live and work together to build a strong, healthy and loving community. 

Baking the goodies one day before the bake sale 

Our first customer 

Waiting patiently for more to come... 

Sharing stories about the different places in our community 

- THANK You - 

The jobs people do in our community support its development

The children at Creative Minds show an understanding of responsibility, commitment and community through their daily actions. They help each other when needed, read books to one another, sign up on our service learning chart to clean and to keep the school tidy. All these actions show their devotion to our community. 

To expand their thinking, we discussed and visited different people and places in our community. The children leaned towards wanting to learn more about doctors, construction workers and farmers.

From Sasha's inquiry "How do farmers milk cows?" we embarked on a Farm exploration. For more than a week we sang songs, such as "The farmer in the dell" and "Oats and Beans and Barley grow", read books and researched more on Farmers and their responsibilities. 

In order to build a connection, we gathered what we have learned about food that comes from a farm and we will use that to raise money. The children will plant seeds and bake goodies. These goodies will be sold to the families at Creative Minds. 

Next week, we will gather as a big group and brainstorm some causes in our community that we could help with the money we raise.

This exercise will teach the children how we all work together to build a stronger community and help one another. 

Spontaneous moments bring delight in our day

Gabriel started reading a story to a group of children and as he transitioned away, Kamy continued reading the story to them.

With delight I watched and listened to their conversations.

Eric "The wolf will blow the house down" 

Kamy "Yes, he huffed and he puffed..."  

The children were so engaged in her storytelling that, soon, other children came over to see what was happening.

She gently invited the children around her to come sit down and listen to the story. 

A moment of joy and friendship! 

Living in the present; experiencing the past...

This unit plays a very important role in our lives. It gives us a chance to use our thinking and acquisition skills. Using hands-on activities we will acquire knowledge of how certain activities happened a long time ago. The children's task is to take the time to experience on their own how duties were done in “olden days”. 

These are some of the things that the children experienced in the last few days: 

* They cleaned the room without using any power tools

They used a broom to sweep the floor, a stick to beat the carpets, old rags to wipe the furniture, their hands to wash and a line to dry clothes on. 

 * They were given the opportunity to experience eating, reading and playing by candlelight. 

Light is a very important factor in our life, allowing our eyes to see colour and detail. Not having light made it harder to see the pictures in the book and the writing as well as everything else in our environment.

For a couple of days, the children were given some old household materials to make their own toys. This allowed the children to design and build their own replica of a toy. 

As an assessment, we created a graph where we compared the effort each task would have taken in the “olden days” versus the effort it requires today with modern conveniences. 

Cooperation and coordination with every step

For the remainder of the unit, we will be playing games that people play nowadays, forgotten ones and even some from different countries/cultures. 

Baking an apple pie from scratch

The children were offered the chance to compare the quality of home baked food compared to the store bought ones. 

A common denominator that we all agreed on was that buying a pie from the store is more convenient when you take time and effort into consideration, but the home made pie allowed the children to practice social skills as well as gave them the chance to create their own pie by adding more or less of some of the ingredients. 

It was delightful to watch the children smell the ingredients and enjoy this whole process. They mixed ingredients, modelled the dough into pie trays and added the apples to it. 

It was delicious indeed!! 

washing the apples

cutting the apples into small pieces 

rolling the dough 

It smells delicious!! 

The different ways of preserving apples

Title: Then and Now 

The key concepts we are focusing on as we embark on this new unit are: Perspective and Causation. Our conversations are focused on similarities and differences between the past and present and the ways that inventions impact the things we do.  

After watching two short videos containing some examples of what children used to do in the olden days, the children in the wind group brainstormed some of their knowledge about the "olden days." 

This week, we talked about different methods of preserving food and reflected on the convenience versus the quality of foods made from scratch compared to those that are store bought. 

The children showed understanding of the comfort of buying food directly from the store, but they definitely enjoyed experiencing the process of making their own apple chips.

A very long time ago, people used to hang the sliced apples on a string and air dry them. Today, we are fortunate to be able to use the oven. 

fresh apples

dried apples 

The apple chips filled the air with a sweet smell and the apples tasted fresh and delicious. The children shared their home made snack with everyone and it was a total enjoyment!! 

The hung apples will definitely take longer until ready for us to eat. 

Next week, we will be using apples to make an apple pie from scratch!