New Learning Activities for the Week of April 16-23

Belonging and Contributing:

-April 22 is Earth Day. All throughout the month of April, we can do things to help conserve energy, avoid waste and help keep our neighbourhoods and community clean. Here are a few ideas to consider doing over the next several days/weeks… 

1. Help out the family by tidying up your yard. Rake up dead leaves and bag them, collect and bundle sticks and small branches which have fallen from the trees, tidy gardening beds and prepare them for planting. You might also help a parent plant grass seed if there are bare spots on your lawn that need to be filled in with grass.
2. Turn off the tap when you are brushing your teeth to avoid wasting water.
3. Turn lights off when you leave a room in your home.

-Be a recycling helper in your home this week. Help organize and sort the materials which will go out for recycling. When sorting waste items, keep in mind to place paper and cardboard together in the gray bin. Place plastics, glass containers and metal cans together in the blue bin and organic waste in the green bin. By doing this, you are not only helping your parents, but you are taking care of our planet, too.

Self-Regulation and Well-Being:

-Learn how to be safe around strangers in your neighbourhood. Join the Berenstain Bears as they Learn About Strangers by watching this short cartoon on YouTube. Follow this link:

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY7NMg-DrdI

Afterwards, have a conversation with a parent or guardian about how you can stay safe around strangers.

-Earlier this week, Mr. Smelle posted a song/video which has been uploaded on our Parnall Website. He wrote a song to accompany the Parnall Pirates Collage Photo Message sent out to all of our Parnall students. If you haven’t had an opportunity to see the picture or hear his song, log onto www.DSBN.org. Search Parnall School under the ‘Schools’ hyperlink. There, you will find a link to our webpage at the top of the screen. Click on that link and you should see the song posted on our website. Know that we are all missing each other and looking forward to a time very soon when we will be able to reunite and be together again. Until then, know that you are loved, cared about and thought of often by your teachers and principal.

Demonstrates Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours:

-This very special time in our world is a historic event. Think about making a ‘Time Capsule’ or ‘scrapbook’ with pictures, lists, stories and photos of various things that are happening in your life right now. Here are some things you might want to write about or collect for your capsule/book: Make a list of games that you and your family are playing together. Write about some of the things that you learned about while doing school work at home. Write about your ‘at-home’ school experience. You might want to print off this list and place it with your collection. Take pictures of yourself and other family members wearing gloves and masks if you have them. Make a list of the foods you particularly like eating at this time. Take pictures of some of your art creations you are making and include them in your collection. Have family members write down something that they have enjoyed about this time at home and something that they have found challenging/difficult. Have a parent cut out newspaper articles about CoVid 19 so that you can add them to your collection. Talk about WHY we are having to stay at home and WHY it is important. As you collect various pieces to keep, either place them in a shoebox or put them in a scrapbook. Add a title to your collection and MAKE SURE you write the date somewhere so that it will be obvious to someone coming across it years from now. This SPECIAL TIME  is ‘history in the making.’

-This week, plan to do a survey. Remember that a survey involves asking a question in order to collect information or ‘data.’ You can decide what you want to learn about. Here are a few suggestions to inspire you…

   -What is your favourite house pet?

   -What is your favourite ice cream flavour?

   -What is your favourite sport?

   -What is your favourite colour?

   -What is your favourite season of the year?

There are an endless variety of topics that you can choose from in order to come up with your question. After figuring out what you want to learn about, decide how you are going to collect and show your information. Usually, we show data on a graph. We can use pictures, tallies, stickers, clothespins or other objects to create the graph. Ask ten people your ‘survey question.’ You will want to ask your question to people who live in your home and/or call grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. on the phone and ask them. You could also have a parent help you email your question to important people in your life like...your teachers! Collect your data (the answers that people give you when you ask them your question) and show your data on your graph. Once you have collected all of the information and organized it in a way that is easy to see and understand, what does it tell you? What have you learned? Talk about this with a parent. Write down one ‘conclusion’ you now know from the answers that people gave you. For example, Most people liked chocolate ice cream. OR  Less people liked basketball than hockey. 

Have fun and post your graphs on REMIND. I will upload them onto the BLOG. 

Problem Solving and Innovation:

-Here is a problem for you to solve:  On Monday, you get two letters in the mail. On Tuesday you also get two letters in the mail. If this pattern continues each day thereafter, how many letters in all will you have gotten in the mail by Friday? Show how you know. 

-Using small marshmallows and toothpicks, create a structure, object or animal out of them. Write a sentence about your creation. Take a picture of it and share it on REMIND. I’ll upload it to the BLOG.