SAR Buffalo Part 2

 The next day the children arrived to see the Buffalo had been

painted.  It turned out more orange than yellow but they didn't mind.

 The word RESCUE was printed on both sides and

we added maple leaf stickers that the pilots had given us.

 Then we had to figure out how to add the propellers to the wings.

 We encouraged the children to get involved but their interest laid in flying the plane.

 So two more dads designed and put together the propellers.

 Then one of their sons became interested and helped

attach the propeller to the wing.

 Yay, we have two working propellers on our Buffalo.

I've been spotted!

Do I need to be rescued?

Goodbye Passenger Plane Hello SAR Part 1

We were very lucky this week to have a tour to the air base to see the 

Search and Rescue aircraft.

 We went to tour the Cormorant helicopter

 and the Buffalo airplane.

Four pilots toured us through both and answered all our questions.

I gave the children a little booklet to record what they saw.

We saw how they turn the plane and helicopters, the bubble (observation) windows,

the seat, the wings, and the propellers. 

Back at school I took down our passenger airplane,

I didn't want to cut into that cardboard,

found another box

and started to build the Buffalo.

The box isn't pretty but we like to reuse as often as possible.

Inside is a raised platform which the children had to walk across to get to 

the pilot's seat.

I didn't get a picture of it but there is a ramp at the end of the platform.

That was a challenge for us, during our tour, to climb up the big ramp 

to get inside the plane.

Observation windows are located on both sides of our plane

just like the Buffalo.

As the children played the talk of 'where are the wings?' occurred.

Luckily one of the fathers works at the base and is very

familiar with planes.

I was struggling how we would attach the wings to the sides of the plane,

and still give the children space to play around it.

Then our 'technician' reminded me that the wings on a Buffalo

go across the top of the plane.

Which was brilliant because they will also help to stabilize the box.

As the dad worked on the wings, the children grabbed our basket of tools

and got to work.

Love this picture of how the girl inside is watching her dad work

and the boy outside is keeping an eye on what is happening.

By the end of the morning we finished work of putting the tail wing on

 and propeller placed at the nose.

Stay tuned.

Comes from an Egg–a Sorting Activity

           
During the past couple of weeks the children have been able to play in a
                    nest full of creatures that hatch from eggs.
             
There was lots of discussion around the creatures that we didn’t recognize
                   that came from eggs, like an octopus or a bee.
            
          This week I added mammals to further the discussion.
            
Two baskets provided the opportunity to sort the creatures and learn
                   more about how to decide where it goes.

       Parents, along side of their child, are both learners and teachers. 
            
They listen to what their child is saying and provide the support for them to take risks.  They work together to find the answers.  It’s pretty cool to watch.

Ready Set Learn

Ready Set Learn is an initiative by the Ministry of Education to support children’s early learning and to help families make connections with the school system and local community agencies.  In our district the StrongStart Facilitators help plan and implement Ready Set Learn events in all the elementary schools.  I participated in three this week.  Here is a glimpse of what was planned.

The activities were planned around the book “What a Treasure!”            

After reading the story to the group the families rotated through several centres. 
         
One centre was to retell the story using pictures on a magnetic board.

At each centre a tip sheet was provided for parents to take home.  These were copied from a parent’s handbook that the ministry use to provide.

Numbers
 

         
This activity encouraged recognition of the numerals as well as counting.

Books
  
Various books about treasure were available to enjoy.

Play
 
               
An opportunity for the parents to observe how their children interacted with the props provided.

Getting Along with Others
 
     
The children and parents took turns playing a matching game.

Talking and Singing
 
          
We were listening to the songs that I recorded into qr codes.

Healthy Snacks
 
      
Snack time incorporated literacy and numeracy skills by recognizing the shapes of the ABC pretzels, by sorting the fish crackers by colour and counting the raisins and orange sections.  Another focus was on independence by encouraging the children to try to peel the orange themselves.

At the end the children could pick a book to take home but first they crawled through a tunnel like the mole in the book.
  

The pictures for retelling the story and for the matching game were found here.