Brain Breaks with Go Noodle

We've been learning that our brain needs to take breaks in order to work it's best.  Brain breaks can be many different things from moving, to turning and discussing something with a neighbor or even something as simple as breathing.  If you want to learn more about what brain breaks are and why they are important, click here.  Our teacher learned about a website with lots of different movement activities, called Go Noodle.  Now, doing these brain break activities is our favourite part of the day!

One of the first things we had to do is choose our Classroom Champ.  The choices are:

Photo Credit: Teach It With Class

 

Then it was time to start moving!  One of the choices is to do track and field events -- yes, in the classroom!  In each event, an Olympic athlete tells us about the event and helps us warm up.  Here's a video of us warming up for the high jump:

 

 

Then it's time to do the event!  Here we are doing it with the Olympic athlete:

 

Another one of our favourite activities is to dance!  We can choose different Zumba dances.  Check this one out:

 

We also enjoy doing activities with Maximo. 

Photo Credit: EduKate & Inspire

He leads us through stretching and yoga type exercises.  Some of them are really hard!

 

After all of that movement, we need to settle and refocus.  Airtime helps us do that.  In this video, you can see us doing the breathing exercises with Airtime:

 

Probably the best part of all, is that with every activity, we earn minutes.  Here you can see what our Classroom Champ looks like today:

When our minutes reach the top, our Classroom Champ has to go to the "Transmogrifier", where he transforms.  It's so exciting to see how he changes!  Once our Champ has gone through all 5 levels, we receive a certificate that our teacher prints off and puts up in our classroom.  Here's our most recent certificate:

 

 

Some of the students in our class have even signed up for their own free account so they can do these activities at home on their own!  There are so many awesome things about these brain breaks!

 

We were wondering...

Have you used Go Noodle before?

What types of other brain breaks do you use?  (Adults--you need brain breaks too...what do you use?)

 



Picture It Collaborative Project Using Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

When we got back after spring break, we noticed a change in one of the bulletin boards in our classroom.  This is what it looked like:

Later in the week, we learned that our teacher had signed us up to participate in a collaborative art project, using Van Gogh's "Starry Night".  Before starting the project, we watched this video:

We found out that our class had been put into a group with 23 other classrooms from across North America.  Each class got to color one section of "Starry Night" and then send one copy to every other class in our group.  Our class was assigned section 1 to color.  In these next pictures, you can see us hard at work coloring them.

Our teacher sent off our completed sections to the other classrooms.  We were very excited to find out that we had been receiving quite a lot of mail -- sections that the other classes had been coloring!  Our teacher put up the ones we have already received and now this is what our board looks like...

What's amazing is that these pieces have come from so many different places...like Florida, California, Texas and even Hamilton, Ontario!  Our teacher has started a map showing us where each piece has come from.

We can't wait for the rest of the pieces of the picture to arrive so we can see the final product!

We were wondering...

Have you seen any of Van Gogh's artwork before?
Have you re-created any of Van Gogh's artwork?
Have you ever participated in a collaborative project like this before?

For any teachers out there...if you'd like more information about this project, visit Jen Wagner's Picture It 2014 website.