Our Grade 2 Wonders..

Today we talked about our most important wonders, wrote some in our sketchbook and each child shared one of their wonders aloud.

I wrote them down on chart paper and we decided our list looked like a poem, so we typed it up as a poem and it’s now posted on our classroom door to inspire others to wonder more.

This idea was inspired by a wonderful book that all early elementary teachers should read, called, “A Place For Wonder.”

Carving Soapstone with Children

As part of our exploration of the arctic, my grade 2 class and I carved soapstone. It was a wonderful experience.

The children chose one piece of soapstone that “spoke to them” and we sat in a circle and talked about our stones. I explained that it had come from the arctic and encouraged them to wonder about where in the arctic their piece of soapstone was found. What happened on your piece? The children imagined the arctic and came up with marvelous ideas about where their soapstone piece came from. One boy decided that his came from the side of a polar bear’s den in the arctic, and that perhaps the red markings on his stone was a blood stain from a polar bear battle. Another child thought her soapstone had been the sleeping grounds of a dinosaur millions of years ago. In our sketchbooks, we told the stories of our rocks.

That afternoon, we took our stones and began our carving project. I encouraged the children to carve their stone and change it into a treasure rock, focusing more on the process than on the product.

The process was relatively simple. First, we sanded our soapstones using coarse sand paper and files. Then, we used wet sand paper and water to smooth our rocks. After, we cooked them in a small toaster oven for 5 minutes at 250 degrees. Finally, we buffed our soapstone pieces with minwax so that they would shine.

At the end of our day, the children each have a special piece of the arctic that they can take home and treasure forever. 

Definitely a worthwhile project!

Do this

go get to know

one thing

as well as you can.

It should be something small.

Don’t start

with a mountain.

Don’t start

with the pacific ocean.

Start with

one seed pod

or

one dry weed

or

one horned toad

or one handful

of dirt.

- Excerpt from “The Other Way to Listen”

Using Light and Colour to make the Northern Lights In our Grade 2 Classroom

As part of our exploration of the arctic, the children became fascinated by the northern lights after seeing them in a documentary we watched.

We watched more videos of these lights, looked at photos and did many artistic representations of northern lights, but I really wanted the children to experience them first hand…

With that idea in mind, I posed the question, “Can we make the northern lights appear in our classroom?” With that provocation, the ideas came rushing in. Many children remembered using an overhead projector in kindergarten to make a rainbow on the ceiling. They thought that by using bowls of water and food colouring in the water, we might be able to make dancing lights on the ceiling, like the aurora borealis.

The following day, I brought in many materials: flashlights, prisms, 3 overhead projectors, a variety of glass and plastic containers, water, food colouring, coloured cellophane, coloured lights, overhead sheets and markers.

We turned the lights off, closed the curtains and played for a solid hour and a half. I was amazed at how the reflections and light the children created resembled the northern lights so well.

It was a wonderful investigation that the children were very invested in. Definitely one of my favourite class explorations yet!

Our grade 2 interpretation of the Northern Lights, inspired by arctic photography.

Our humble grade 2 classroom, 2011-2012.

What happens when you mix different liquids together?

My class became very curious about this question a few weeks ago, so we decided to embark on a liquid mixing adventure. Together, we made a list of all of the liquids we wanted to experiment with. Our list included soap, pop, water, vinegar, baking soda, mints and oil.

In their own jar, each child mixed two liquids at a time and watched them react together. Some combinations bubbled, others foamed or “exploded” in their language, and some appeared to do nothing much. The reactions that the liquids made was nothing compared to the reactions the children made when they combined their liquids.

A very simple experiment that the children absolutely loved.

What is important as an educator?

Is it to teach children to add and subtract, or is it to create a safe place for a child who is being abused? Is my most important task to make sure a child writes 5 complete sentences, or is it to listen to a child who hasn’t been heard at home in days? Is it my job to correct imperfections in these children, or is it my job to ensure every child constantly feels confident and able? Is my job to teach children to print neatly on a line, or should my focus be on making sure children have eaten breakfast? Should we become tangled in the pages of mandated curriculum and the tight timelines, or should we live with children, in the moment, wherever they’re at? Should we throw pages of homework at the child who goes home to take care of their 4 younger siblings, cooking and bathing them each night? Is it right that we become too busy with the days lessons that we cannot pause to hear a child’s thoughts or stories? Is it okay that we are constantly pushing children for more,  to be a better reader, a better writer and a better student, yet we do not focus on and celebrate where they are at that exact moment? The formal structure of education frustrates me..

Neat idea for teaching colour mixing - each child mixes colors to make their own color in a mason jar and then they get to name and label their color imaginative names like “morning sunset” or “princess pink.”

Some few years ago I was looking about the school supply stores in the city, trying to find desksand chairs which seemed thoroughly suitable from all points of view — artistic, hygienic, and educational — to the needs of the children. We had a good deal of difficulty in finding what we needed, and finally one dealer, more intelligent than the rest, made this remark: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are y all for listening.” That tells the story of the traditional education. Just as the biologist can take a bone or two and reconstruct the whole animal, so, if we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils and paper, and add a table, some chairs, the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made ” for listening”—for simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. The attitude of listening means„ comparatively speaking, passivity, absorption; ~^that there are certain ready-made materials which are there, which have been prepared by the school superintendent, the board, the teacher, and of which the child is to take in as much as possible in the least possible time.

There is very little place in the traditional schoolroom for the child to work. The workshop, the laboratory, the materials, the tools with which the child may construct, create, and actively inquire, and even the requisite space, have been for the most part Jacking. The things that have to do with these processes have not even a definitely recognized place in education. They are what the educational authorities who write editorials in the daily papers generally term “fads ” and “frills.” A lady told me yesterday that she had been visiting different schools trying to find one where activity on the part of the children preceded the giving of information on the part of the teacher, or where the children had- some motive for demanding the information. She visited, she said, twenty-four different schools before she found her first instance. I may add that that was not in this city.

Another thing that is suggested by these schooh^ rooms, with their set desks, is that everything is arranged for handling as large numbers of children as possible; for dealing with children en masse, as an aggregate of units; involving, again, >that they be treated passively. The moment children act they individualize themselves; they cease to be a mass, and become the intensely distinctive beings that we are acquainted with out of school, in the home, the family, on the playground, and in the neighborhood.

Our prairie town mural.

Melted Crayon Canvas Art and Science

Today we made this awesome melted crayon on canvas art in science to show that solids can change into liquids and back to solids again. It was pretty neat to watch the crayon melt down the canvas!