Pointing North: The Bear Cub Olympics and Making Compasses

The Olympics

are taking place right now just north of us, in Vancouver, B.C.

So we decided that we would have our own "Bear Cub Olympics." Our idea captivated our P.E. teacher and she decided to "do Olympics" with each class in the school. We may have been the last class to put on our event, but our obstacle course earned us gold medals!

First, climb up, then slide down,

run through the playhouse and scurry through the elevated tunnel,

get through the maze of the geodesic dome,

and crawl in or on the tube,

then cross the finish line!

We each were given a gold medal and had a handshake of congratulations!

We all cheered for one another and we all won a gold medal...

We learned about being good sportsmanship!

(And we remembered to thank Nancy for helping us and Judith for finding these fantastic medals!)

Believe it or not, we are all really happy!

Science: Exploring the world of magnets!

We are feeling very "attracted" to learning about magnets. We enjoy being able to experiment, build, and create art with magnets!

We all have explored an experiment to learn what objects the magnet attracts,

built with magneatos,

found a magnetic wand with magnet marbles rather enchanting,

cand created sculptures with magnetic shapes.

Then we made our own compasses!

First, we magnetize a needle by stroking it one direction on magnetic north.

We put corks on the end to help the needle float, then gently placed it in a bowl of water.

And we patiently watched as it turned and ''found" its way to North-South alignment.

We know this works because the earth is a big magnet!

We can't wait to show our families!

Have fun!

Judith

Welcome to the Year of the Tiger!

Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Chinese)

Chuc Mung Nam Moi! (Vietnamese)

Happy Lunar New Year!

2010 is the Year of the Tiger!

We made "Chinese scrolls" to celebrate the Lunar New Year! We noticed that Chinese writing looks completely different than English letters, and learned that the characters are traditionally made with a brush and ink. Fortunately, we had stampers with Chinese characters on them and used these as a "finishing touch" on our scrolls.

Thanks to Uwajimaya for the New Year brochures that we cut up to use for our scrolls!

The photo above is a view of our Lunar New Year wall, complete with all our scrolls.
At Snacktime and Literature Circle we read lots of books about children celebrating the Lunar New Year in different countries. We learned that the color red is considered good luck, that children often get haircuts and new clothes, that families clean the house to prepare for the new year and "sweep out the old year" with a broom.

They cook lots of special foods, such as dumplings. Dumplings are symbolic of happiness, wealth and family togetherness.

We found that making dumplings brought us great happiness!

We filled the dumplings with yummy fillings that were fruity and sweet or a little spicy.

Then we steamed them... Every child ate the very dumplings that she/he made!

Thank you, Laurel, for creating this wonderful creative, cultural and culinary experience for us!

Many of the children couldn't finish eating all the dumplings that they made, so we will be sending them home for your child to have with dinner tonight. Enjoy!

Judith

Thoughts on Love: In Our Own Words

What is Love?

How do you show others your love?

Who do you love?

"Hugs, Kiss. Mom and Dad. Be happy with my mom and dad."

"Love is when you can play with each other. You can hug. I love my mom and dad."

"Love is giving a gift or someone kissing you or giving hugs. I love my mommy and my daddy and Jash. I love laughing with my sister."

" I love Mommy and Daddy and and my sister and all different friends playing with us. Different people can have different eyes. I love being different."

"I love my mama and daddy and I love my brothers, too. I love my Nanny and Bapu and Papa Jim and Brenda [grandparents.] Love can be giving someone a kiss or reading a book together or helping when someone needs it. I love myself!

" When you love a person your heart is in your body and helps you love people. We love the earth. I love Clifford, The Big Red Dog, too! "

"Love is hugging. I love my mommy and dad."

"Love is kisses, hugs, being friendly. I love my mom and dad and my whole big family."

"Love is hearts and hugs with each other. I love this school!

I love Judith. I love all of my friends. I love my daddy and my mommy and my sister."

So much love to life, so much life to love...

I love celebrating life and love and learning with your children! Thank you for sharing them with us!

Judith

Building ourselves, Building the world

Just Me and My Shadow,

Strolling down the Avenue!

Ground Hog Day gave us an opportunity to talk about light and shadow... and literally, see where we stood! Our beloved Beacon friends ran outside with us at the moment the sun did shine to help trace around our shadows. Our plan was to do this several times, at different times of day, to see how the measurements of our shadows changed... but there was too much cloud cover to make comparisons possible. We'll revisit this science/math project in a sunnier season! Thank you, Beacons, for your sunny smiles of enthusiasm and encouragement! Thanks, Cathy, for dancing between the light and shadows this week!

A Sneak Peek into Literacy Under Construction!

Painting and drawing are some of the first forms of "written" communication--- think of the ancient and eloquent cave paintings left by First Peoples, for us to admire and learn from. This was an exciting day for the child in the background, as he made his first independent effort at writing his own name! (See below on top left of paper.)

Similarly, sculpting, rolling, shaping, gives a dough form a life of its own. Another great activity to strengthen and coordinate the hand to prepare for writing!

Carefully constructed, intricate and time consuming work communicates information about self, feelings and the world!

Sequencing self-correcting story pictures teaches us the structure of beginning storytelling, with clear beginnings and endings as well as aiding in vocabulary development . We also learn about forming sets: every pair, put together so the puzzle pieces fit, is a set.

With the Sound Cylinders, we learn to discern between varying sound levels and qualities. There is only one red cylinder that sounds exactly the same as its blue counterpart.

It takes lots of attentive listening to find the matching pairs!

At last, discovering the matching sets and pairing them down the middle...

Wow, I really concentrated!

An extension of this activity might involve grading the paired sounds (from loudest to softest.)

Sounds, sounds, sounds are all around us...

Letter sounds are the smallest units of phonemic awareness, upon which spoken and written language are built. We enjoy learning about sounds, at first orally with spoken word and singing games, rhymes, story books, literature circles, etc. Later, we explore the forms combined with the phonetic sounds of individual letters, still keeping it playful and always fun.

Below: "Can you put the m-m-m by the maps? The f-f-f by the fish? The c-c-c by the cars? Jump up and down 10 times, do a somersault, and touch your nose 3 times. Now go find the m-m-m."

No "drill and kill" of the love of learning at Seabury School! Learning is fun!

There are so many ways to develop the dexterity to manipulate writing tools. Handling implements and tools, such as basters and tongs, are a great place to start; Tracing is wonderful for the child who is already practicing with a pencil. With Valentine's Day upcoming, heart tracing motivates many of us!

Heart to heart happiness...

Putting sounds together, blending them, decoding, recalling... many gradually developed skills unite as we begin to read. We love starting with word families, in this case "am," such as jam, Pam, ham, ram, Sam, tam, etc. As reading individual words becomes more familiar and comfortable, we'll make and illustrate our own story books using the words we are learning to read!

And then we enjoy bringing our own books home to read... we love surprising our families!

Building a safer world

Since we heard about the earthquake in Haiti, the Bear Cubs have truly taken it in with their whole beings. Raising money, learning about tectonic plates and exploring how easily blocks can fall when the "plates" below are moving, have caused us to do an analysis of our outdoor playhouse. The Bear Cubs decided that we would practice our building skills, just in case we were called to Haiti to help rebuild the country. We are busy with the "tools of the trade," joining hearts and hands to build a world of hope...

Healing our heart's home, one hammering heartbeat at a time!

Judith