Grouptime events

These days people keep in touch with one another through emails, chat lines and other forms of social media.  A long time ago the only way was to send letters by post. The children wrote letters and dropped them off to the nearest mailbox.  They were excited about the walk and predicted how many sleeps it would take till their letters arrived.  We also sent emails to our families and they figured it would be a whole lot faster than sending letters by post.  We constructed our own mail box and we'll be "mailing" letters to one another as each of the children take turns be the mail carrier of the day.

We learned that in the Pioneer days the children did a lot of work at home and it was expected of them to do chores to help the family.  Safety rules have also changed overtime on what children are allowed and not allowed to do by themselves. In our discussion they pointed out that although we don't do the same chores or have the same rules like in the pioneer days we still help our parents because it's important to work together as a family.  We enjoyed taking turns making buckwheat pancakes, whipped butter, oatmeal and washed our dishes after the feast was done.  We had so much fun didn't seem like work at all!

Today we began our exploration of then and now. The children were particularly curious about how it was like at home in the olden days cooking, grooming and the toys children. To get a sense of how different life was back then we watched a video about the Pioneers in Canada. They were amazed by the chores and activities children can do in the olden days. Aston noticed that "they did a lot of work but it might be fun" he thought . Using a Venn diagram we compared our daily activities to that of the Pioneers. The main difference was that people made and collected their own supplies whereas these days we buy most of our things. Children back then were involved in the family livelihood; they were independent and free. Some things have stayed the same. Simone pointed out that like in the olden days families help each other. In the next few days we'll act, dress-up and live like the Pioneers. We'll make our food from scratch and build things using tools from the olden...

Just like our surroundings people decorate their bodies with colourful clothing and accessories to make themselves beautiful and presentable. We looked at photographs of different cultural groups showing variety of ways people use headdresses, hats, necklaces and clothes to represent who they are and where they are from. The children made the connection between clothing and group identity. We thought of team jerseys and uniforms and as one child pointed out "it helps us sort out the people in their groups". The children were also intrigued with costumes and shirt logos so together we designed a t-shirt to represent the Earth group. Together they decided that a picture of the Earth will best describe their team.

Goodnight moon! Goodnight cow jumping over the moon! The children observed that people decorate their surroundings to make it nice and beautiful. Inspired by the story Goodnight Moon by WiseBrown the children transformed the drama area into a nice, cozy bedroom. They thought of their own bedroom decorations like the toys, stickers and patterned sheets, and picture frames which they feel are important things to have in a bedroom. We carefully looked at the illustrations of the story and identifies which ones are decorations and which ones are not. In our discussions we realized that we all have different criteria on what makes a decoration and that we all have our own perspective on what beautiful might mean. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKqV9uuXa0Y

Decorations are things which are shiny, sparkly, colourful, beautiful. According to the children, black colour in particular, is not a shiny colour therefore cannot be used as a decoration. We challenged this thinking and looked at different art artists like Franz Klein who did a series of work using only the colour black. After many experiences with the colour black some children began to notice it more in our classroom decorations and their clothing. One child even mentioned about decorating her body with something black on her t-shirt.

What a way to start the new unit... cupcakes galore!! After reading Max and Ruby Bunny Cakes the children got busy and eagerly decorated their own cupcakes. They loved poking the colourful sticks and pretended they were candles and some even made faces using marshmallows and chocolate chips. They were very careful in placing their pieces and were not tempted at all to eat while they worked. One comment was: "I want to decorate my cupcake and make it beautiful."