Practising Mindfulness

We just completed three morning lessons on Mindfulness with Kelly Comishin. It was wonderful having her in to guide the children through a series of mindfulness lessons. During the first lesson, we focused on "awareness of breath". Kelly read Mouse Was Mad, and we practised ocean breathing and starfish breath. During the second lesson, we focused on "awareness of body", where we investigated what our bodies look like and feel like when we are upset. We practised breathing with stuffed animals and feathers on our belly. We also did a fun "carrot stick/noodle" activity, demonstrating the different way our body might feel when stressed and relaxed. During the third session, we focused on "awareness of mind". Kelly gave us feathers to use as focal objects and we practised counting breath. We were encouraged to be present in our thoughts. We did some singing as well, and finished off with this song:

 

So long, farewell,

Our mindfulness is over.

We breathed a bit, and talked a bit, and now it’s time to practise it!

Thank you Kelly for joining us!

 

Winter Wonder

Captain Powder came to school today and taught us all about the Wild Winter Wonderland we live in!  We had so much fun learning about Winter and how animals hibernate, migrate, or tolerate.  We practiced hibernating like the bears, bats, and turtles.  We talked about the geese, cranes, and eagles that migrate.  We even learned about how deer, elk, chickadees, and humans tolerate the winter by growing thick coats, huddling together, dressing warm, and doing fun activities in the snow!  We compared how Canadian and Himalayan people dress for the cold winters!

We played snowshoe hare tag and learned how the snowshoe hare grows white fur in winter and can run on top of the snow.  We also learned about the Lynx being one of the snowshoe hares top predators.

Captain Powder explained how lucky we are to live in a place where we have three wild cats in the area, the cougar, bobcat, and lynx.  He also informed us about how humans can effect nature in negative ways like the Mountain Caribou which are becoming extinct due to logging of the old growth forests.

We learned so much about our beautiful home and have realized how cool Winter really is!

A Message In A Bottle

We wrote a message to our future self this week and buried them in the snow.  Now we wait until spring when it melts away and we can read our messages and compare ourselves to our future self.  Will we be the same height?  Will we like the same activities?  How will we change in just a few months?

Learning how to swim is so fun!

2015 Winter Family Challenge

The David Suzuki Foundation is hosting a family challenge to get outside, starting January 26. If you sign up, the Foundation will send you emails with ideas for getting your kids outside and you can enter a photo contest for prizes! For more info, check out:  http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-youth-with-nature/#challenge-tab

Join us for Family Literacy Day: January 27

We welcome anyone with a CRC on file to come and read with us (parents, grandparents, friends of the family). Kids will be able to listen to adult readers around the classroom 1:45-2:15. Thank you!

Kingdom of Wings

We have had a magical week in the fresh snow! When we ventured out on Monday and Tuesday, we started building all kinds of amazing palaces and castles. Since we had a few fairies create a home in our classroom over the holidays, we decided this could be a winter vacation place for them. We then experimented on Wednesday with food colouring and water to create a fairy ice rink. We made it purple (red and blue groups mixed together). While we were busy creating all of these amazing get away locations for our fairies, Jaia exclaimed, "I have the perfect name- Kingdom of Wings". Everyone loved it! When we went to check on it on Thursday, we found out that almost all of the water had disappeared. This opened up a great discussion about all the possible reasons for this happening. Mrs. Burgess decided to take the "rink" home to fill and found out that Harlow was right- there was a few holes in the tray. She filled a new tray and froze new ice, so we will take that out for our adventures next week. We will also be creating a wooden sign for our kingdom!
               
Inquiry Question: Why did the water for our fairy rink disappear?
Harlow- maybe there was a hole in the tray and all of the water drained out of it
Marshall- maybe the deer drank it
Kate- maybe the water fell out of it
Isaac Y- maybe the water melted after the water fell out
Griffin- maybe the fairies were skating too much or maybe people stepped in it
Claire- maybe all of those things happened or maybe something we don’t know happened
Georges- maybe it snowed and the snow melted the ice
Jaxson- maybe the water evaporated or maybe a deer walked through it and the water splashed out
Max- maybe the wind blew it out of the tray
Isla- maybe it got hot overnight and it disappeared
Taylor- maybe a dog stepped in it

Wow! The learning that took place in this winter wonderland was incredible this week! With a crew so eager to learn and explore, we sure are off to a great start to the new year!