Where Did Our School Get It’s Name?

Part two of learning about ‘where names come from’, we are focusing on our school.
Our school use to have another name when it was a middle school.  But about six years ago our district reconfigured and removed middle schools sending the grade 8 & 9 students to high school and the sevens back to elementary.  Our old school became too small so we moved into the vacant middle school.
     
The middle school was given an Aboriginal name and during the opening it also received a totem pole made by a local carver.
    
Part of our re-dedication ceremony, that will be held at the beginning of May, is to learn about the Aboriginal name and the pole.  Every student in the school has drawn a picture of the pole either from memory or looking at it.
     
This morning was our turn to sit in the foyer, look, talk and draw the totem pole.   We talked about the shapes and lines we could see.  We guessed what the pole looked like.  Here are a few drawings.

We also did a survey.
 
The majority of the families didn't know that our school had an Aboriginal name. 
     It’s Dux'solas meaning a place to look from. 

The pole is Kulus, little brother of Thunderbird.  In the next couple of weeks the carver will be visiting a couple of the older classes telling the story of the pole.  Then a few of those students will share the story with us.

Pond Study Week 3

Third week visiting the pond and it was another beautiful day.
         
Each week I’ve been adding a job for us to do.  The first week we marked the water level.  Last week we noticed that it receded quite a bit.
       
This week was another big change.  In the second photo you can see the sticks we used to mark the water line.  The first photo we are measuring how many foot steps from the sticks to the new water’s edge.
 
Each child has a nature booklet that they use to record their observations.
          
Here is a child’s booklet where they drew a picture of the water and their grown up wrote how many steps they measured last week and today.

Our second job was for each child to find the tree they picked last week and record what changes they saw.
 

As we were checking our trees we also found something new.
          
We found a small group of pussy willows growing.  I was tempted to pick them to bring back to the centre but there were only a few branches and it’s important that we learn to leave live nature in it’s place for all to enjoy.

     
           A mom also spotted this little nest of caterpillars. 
            So small that most people would walk right past.
  
I had brought a box of Loupes which were perfect for getting a closer look
                         at the tiny caterpillars.

         Our third job this morning was to discover moss. 
Where does it grow?  How does it feel?  We found it growing…
on trees,
on rocks,
on old stumps,
and on the ground.

As we were discovering the moss a lot of descriptive words were being spoken.  Soft, short, rough, scratchy, hard, smooth were a few.
        
     I came prepared with two swatches of fabric for each child.
            
They could choose to glue one or both pieces in to their books depending
                on what moss they felt on our exploring.
   
    Read these wonderful comparative sentences the children made.
        
     Another child decided to draw a picture of the moss they had found. 
The children are enjoying recording their finds in their books.   It is a journal that we can refer back to each week, next month or even during the summer when they are off with their families.

Moving the Spuds Outdoors

         
Last week we measured our spuds to see if they were ready to move outside. 
      
Yes they were around 15cm over the rim of the tub so we put them on
                   little dollies and pushed them outside.

Once we got outside though we had to carry them to the garden and into
the green house.  The children worked together and helped carry the tubs.
          
We decided to keep them in the green house for a bit longer because
         there are still some mornings that have frost.
                   
  
We gave them a good water before going back inside to play some more.

A few days later we went out to check if they needed to be watered again.
      
                 Look how much they have grown!

Where Did You Get Your Name?

Our school will be hosting a name rededication celebration in a couple of weeks so to make it more personal for the children we started a project to learn about our own names.
                
During our Spring Break I traveled to visit my mom and I asked her “Where did my name come from?”  I brought that story back to StrongStart and shared it with the families.
     
          
Soon families began to share their name stories and we created a bulletin board.
   
As we learn more about each other we will start to learn more about  our school name.  Where did it come from?  What does it mean?

Sensory Table – Wooden Board Idea 2

Week two at the sensory table using the piece of wood that my husband made. 
                
I placed funnels in the holes in the wood and partially filled the tub with water.
   
The children and grown ups loved it.  Scooping up water and pouring it into the funnels over and over.  The water disappeared through the funnels but there didn’t seem to be much interest in where it was going.
      
I saw a couple of adaptations; the first was using a chopstick to prop a smaller funnel above the larger funnel.  With this structure the children could see the water run from the small to the big funnel then disappear.
 
The second adaptation had the funnels stacked inside each other with the chopstick coming out the bottom.  This structure slowed the progress of the water through the funnels and allowed them time to see the water coming out the bottom.