Eggs-citing Day of Learning

Jelly Bean Prayer waits at each child's table as a wee Easter gift

The day after Easter weekend (Easter Tuesday?) is one where I've traditionally (for about 5 years) followed a theme of sorts to get the kids back in the swing of learning after having been off for 4 days.  Bring on the eggs-plosion of   

             eggs-tremely   

                       eggs-citing   

                             eggs-periences!

Enjoying an egg hunt in gym class

GYM:

Students were divided into teams of 4.  Plastic eggs had been hidden under the pylons that were scattered around the gym.  Time for a little eggs-ercize during this Easter egg hunt in gym. 

For each round, the students had to find the right coloured eggs in the right order.  We did Yellow, Blue, Green for the first round.  The first students for each team set out to find the yellow eggs.  They were only allowed to check under one pylon.  If it had yellow, they took the egg.  If it didn't, they left the egg under the pylon and headed back to their team so the next person could go.  

We played a few rounds, broke a couple plastic eggs but definitely got up and moving first thing!

My favourite tradition is Resurrection Rolls

RELIGION:

When food is involved, especially after gym, the kids will buy in EVERY SINGLE TIME!  This lesson is simply delicious.

Materials Needed:

• Large Marshmallows (White represents Jesus' purity and His body)
• Butter (melted in microwave represents oil placed on bodies during burial)
• white sugar mixed with some cinnamon (represents spices used in burial)
• Crescent Rolls or Grands Biscuits (represent the linen wrapped around the body)

Preheat oven to 350 F

Students took a marshmallow, dunked it into the butter until covered and then dropped it into a baggie containing the cinnamon/sugar mix.  They then took a roll and worked to get it wrapped around their marshmallow, taking care to cover completely by pinching the dough shut.  We placed ours into muffin papers so that the kids could write their name on the roll that they actually made, ensuring that they were eating their own germs!

10-12 minutes later... 

MATH:

After licking the sticky goodness from their hands (and then washing them), I had the kids grab a pencil for some Easter Math.  

NRich Maths had some interesting information about the largest Chocolate Easter Egg so I created a worksheet which allowed the kids some practice at estimating and calculations.

After lunch, we tried eggs-perimenting with Egg Drop Engineering.  No, we are not talking Chinese food here.  We're talking about honest to goodness, raw eggs and designing, building and testing a contraption that allows the egg to survive without eggs-ploding.  FUN!  Here are some of the designs...

Each group was given the same materials (brown bag, Solo cup, smaller plastic cup, 1 pipe cleaner, 2 large paper clips, 3 popsicle sticks, 1m of tape, 1 sandwich size Ziploc, 1 paper towel, 4 bendy straws) and 25 minutes to design, build and test.

We then headed back to the gym so that we could set up a drop of 2m.

There were seven teams.  

1 egg survived.

You do the math!

~MissBrooks

The 4th Day Before Christmas

Today, in an effort not to be outdone by yesterday, was "snow" full of activity that maybe a nap is in order for tomorrow!

After a game of "Tree Movers" in gym, we headed back to the classroom to see Madame Coolen, decked in her finest apron and wielding wooden spoons and measuring cups.  The grade sixes were going to be making short bread cookie dough this morning as part of their French lesson!

Listening to instructions for making candy cane short bread cookies

This leant itself well to the problem for Math.  It was a baking question that the students were told to VISUALIZE, VERBALIZE and VERIFY.  The visualization really helps in understanding the problem...

Each batch of 48 cookies that Jolly McJingles makes takes 20 minutes in the oven. If the oven is on for 3 hours and 55 minutes (15 minutes for preheating), how many cookies did Jolly McJingles make?

I love how you can use different
strategies/thinking
to get to the answer!

The entire school is doing an open response for the poem "Snowman".  So, that was the text we read aloud today since it fit with our plans for later in the afternoon (and a sample was due to the bosses tomorrow).

SNOWMAN

Author Unknown

My little snowman has a mouth,

So he is always smiling south.

My little snowman has a nose;

I couldn't seem to give him toes,

I couldn't seem to make his ears.

He shed a lot of frozen tears

Before I gave him any eyes---

But they are big ones for his size.

This lead to a discussion about line 2's "smiling south" and punctuation's importance when reading poetry.  Do you interpret the meaning differently depending on how the poem is read?  The kids noticed that there was no punctuation after "tears" in line 6 so, if it was read along with line 7 it meant something different to some of them.  The question they were asked to respond to was "Why do you think the snowman is built the way that you are visualizing?"

We decided poetry is a little like Math because there is no right answer or way to go about it as long as you give REASONS for your THINKING!

Some responses included:

They put a smile, nose but he doesn't have toes or ears so he is feeling pretty sad cause he doesn't have those body parts but there was one last thing: his eyes. So he was waiting for his eyes to be put on and as soon as the person put on the eyes he stopped because it said that  “He shed a lot of frozen tears Before I gave him any eyes---” That means the wet tears turned into frozen tears because he was no longer sad.--Christian

I think he was sad but he became happy because it says “He shed a lot of frozen tears Before I gave him any eyes--But they are big ones for his size.” And that means that he was sad before he could see the world that it good and full of joy and not badness.--Grace

Maybe the person found too big of rocks (eyes) so they looked odd on him.The frozen tears could be that the snowman is melting and water was dripping from his face.Also his mouth he could have made the snowman facing south (direction).That is why I see him that way.--Xavier

The disastrous craft table

We spent the last period of the afternoon with a glue gun and an explosion of craft items so the students could make Christmas tree ornaments.  These turned out pretty cute and definitely show the maker's personality.  Tomorrow we will wrap them (if giving them away) and send them home.

Come back to read how the cookies turned out and what the third day before Christmas gift is going to be!

~MissBrooks

Each​ ​batch​ ​of​ ​48​ ​cookies​ ​that​ ​Jolly​ ​McJingle​ ​makes​ ​takes​ ​20​ ​minute

Cooking With Class

Salsa Making Preparation

March was a month filled with more days away from school than in it (or so it seemed).  This week was possibly the shortest week ever slotted into a school calendar!  We began the week with Easter Monday and ended with a PD Day on Friday ... which happened to be April 1 ...

How to engage the kids who've been off routine because of March Break and Easter Break and who can't wait for another three-day weekend?

COOKING!

Biscuit dough, marshmallows, melted butter and cinnamon sugar are all that's needed

A tradition in my room after Easter weekend is to make Resurrection Rolls.  Now, I'm not about to take up time (because we CERTAINLY do not have time to waste with EQAO coming at the end of May) just for the sake of wasting time.  Making these yummy morsels is such a symbolic way of "rolling" out a religion lesson about the Resurrection of Jesus as all of the ingredients represent a part of Jesus' burial and resurrection.  Watch this year's class making theirs here.

Before the break, we received tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes from Forgotten Harvest.  You say tomato and I see SALSA!

The kids are currently in the process of writing their pages for a class cookbook that we are having published.  The criteria for their recipe choice were three-fold:

1. Nutritious:  Our plan was to revamp the school Nutrition Program with some new ideas.  We needed to stick to the rules of this program's delivery.
2. Inexpensive:  Read "cheap"!  We felt keeping the budget to a cost of $0.25/student (LOWER is ALWAYS BETTER) would make a recipe doable.
3. ECO-FRIENDLY:  This criteria was our chief concern.  After having attended Camp Sylvan back in the fall, we were given the task of an Eco project that could be implemented into our school life.  We had learned a lot about food waste and the generation of garbage and thought an "eco snack" would help our school generate less garbage.

Look at how that FRESH salsa hugs the chip

BACK TO THE SALSA ...

This was our second attempt at an "Eco Snack".  You can read about the granola bars, which sparked the idea for this cookbook, here.

Since the tomatoes were FREE, all we had to purchase was cilantro, onions, lemon and lime.  We already had cumin, sugar, salt and pepper available and decided against adding garlic and jalapenos (SPOILER ALERT.  This was a MISTAKE--we'd add these next time).  The entire cost to the Nutrition Program was $8.

Absorb that for a minute....$8.00!

  

We have 288 students at our school so the unit rate was $0.03/serving!  

You can watch the creation of our salsa recipe here.  It was modified from the Pioneer Woman.

Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel.  We'd love to hear what you think!

~MissBrooks

Granola Bar Math

After participating in the Camp Sylvan Eco Leaders of Tomorrow experience, the amount of waste that we generate at school began to nag at us.  But what to do about it?

St Bernard is so fortunate to have a snack program that runs under the direction of some very dedicated parents and grandparents.  We understood there were stipulations in what was served for snack and considered composting as an action project to extend our learning from Camp.

One wrapper measures 10 cm x 14 cm for a total area of 140 cm2.  

Usually we get granola bars about once a week.  That's 25 wrappers for our class...286 wrappers for the entire school.  So we wondered if it would be better to make our own granola bars since there would be no wrappers.  This would be quicker and easier to implement if given the go ahead.

Here's the amount of space 9 wrappers takes up on our carpet.

First, we asked our principal if it would be possible that our class make the snack for the school and if the snack program would cover the cost.  Mrs Daragon said yes!

Next, we set about determining everything we would need to find out to prove that this cooking adventure would be beneficial to the school.  After we brainstormed, we knew we needed to do a little math!

• length, width and height of the bar we currently received so that the homemade ones were the same size
• the area of 1 wrapper so that we could figure the total area of wrapper going into the garbage (the wrapper is NOT recyclable)
• the number of ingredients in the Kirkland brand of granola bar (the one that is purchased for snack program)
• the number of ingredients in the recipe we would use (we omitted almonds, flax, wheat germ)
• the cost of the ingredients needed to make the recipe for the school
• the cost of purchasing enough granola bars for the whole school
• the cost per bar if homemade (unit price)
• the cost per bar if purchased (unit price)
• the amount of time to make and pack for snack
• the amount of time to count the bars and pack for snack  

Finally, we booked the staff room during our Numeracy block and the students worked as partners to measure out ingredients and press the mixture into aluminum pans.  We then needed to refrigerate the bars so that they could be served the following day, which also happened to be "Boomerang Lunch" day where any garbage must be returned home so that there is no garbage generated through lunch and snacks.  Good timing!

The finished product!  Looks like a GIANT granola bar!

We heard many positive comments from different classes so we feel that in the cooking, we were successful. In terms of time, money and eco friendliness, we'll let you decide.  Check our findings in the pictures below and comment your opinion.  We can't wait to hear what others think!

~Miss Brooks

'Tis the Season

Aidan is best dressed for Wacky Winter Wear Friday!

Do you remember the week before Christmas break when you were a kid?  I honestly cannot as maybe all my school memories were deleted in order to make room for the uploading of my teaching experiences.  

Which, are probably better.  AND are definitely more festive and creative and hot chocolatey!

I began the week trying to maintain some semblance of routine.  For the most part, it was successful.  

Monday was the last day for our music teacher, Mr Cuckovic, whose first official day of retirement is Dec 19. Or, since that is the weekend, do you say that Monday would be the first day?  Or, since it is the Christmas holidays, would Monday, Jan 4 be the first official day?  Nonetheless, he will be missed at St Bernard.

We moved into the staff room on Wednesday during Math.  Thinking it might make a pretty great classroom since there's a stove, fridge, bathroom and padded chairs.

This week concluded the Mad Minute challenge of 50 multiplication facts in 90 seconds.  Lucky for me that Justin was the only lunch winner or I would have become pocket poor!  The class has improved their memory and times over the last four weeks with many now completing the challenge in under five minutes and getting all facts correct.  I did propose a "Last Chance" quiz on the first day back to see who still remembers their facts after two weeks of no school.  

Using Christmas Carols, we reviewed concepts like fractions, ratios (that was new!) and place value.  We studied the math in "Deck the Halls", "O Christmas Tree" and,  as a shout out to Sebastian, our exchange student from Columbia who's returned home, we also looked at "Feliz Navidad".  Some questions included: What is the ratio of Spanish words to English?  How do you write that as a fraction?  I found this idea on Teacher pay Teachers and thought "Why didn't I think of that?" as I watched the complete engagement and enjoyment of the students.

Chef Madame teaches the kids to bake "pain court" (shortbread) in French!

If you follow us on Twitter, you may have seen the Gr 6 class becoming bakers.  There was a feeling and smell of Christmas down in our end of the school this week.  The shortbread weren't your ordinary butter cookie but had the scent of mint and vanilla.  Definitely an improved aroma in our room!  I'm hoping to post a video on our YouTube channel before the New Year!

Coming together for cookies and juice with the Gr 6 class from St Jules

After a Christmas breakfast of sausage, waffles, party potatoes, eggs and juice, the 5/6P and 6B classes were probably ready for a nap....the chefs definitely were!  With minutes to spare, we headed to the gym for another Christmas treat!
The gym was packed to capacity on Friday morning as the staff and students of both St Bernard and St Jules were treated to the Wacky Winter Wonder Show.  This was the first time that the students had a chance to come together since the twinning of our schools.  Special thanks to the "bosses" for this Christmas treat!

As I mentioned in my last post (I think), school is such a great place to be for Christmas!  Wishing everyone as joyful a time at home with their real families.

Merry Christmas!
~Miss Brooks