Celebrating International Dot Day (Week)

We were so surprised when we got to our classroom this past Monday morning.  Our teacher had done a little redecorating over the weekend.  This is what our door looked like...

 There were also balloons and a tablecloth...

We started the day by watching a video of the book "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds.

We talked about the message behind this story and how Vashti showed many different habitudes...imagniation, courage, passion, perseverance, self-awareness and adaptability.  That was almost all of them!

Throughout the week, we did many different "dot" activities in all of our subjects.  In math, we were given the challenge to write as many fact families as we could.  Some students challenged themselves by writing fact families with bigger numbers and some even did multiplying and dividing fact families.  Here are some pictures to show you some students' work... (Sorry for the sideways pictures)

In math, we also did dot to dots to practice skip counting, drew pictures of equal groups (circles with dots on them) to practice multiplication and the best math activity was doing some graphing using packages of Skittles.  The best part was eating our dot candy after our work was done!  (Oops...our teacher forgot to take pictures of this!)

Since our school and classroom try to be "bucket fillers", we also spent some time brainstorming ideas for what "bucket fillers" and "bucket dippers" do.  Here are some of our ideas...

 On Thursday afternoon, we really had a chance to "make our mark".  Our town is updating some playgrounds and we were invited to come and help!  It was so much fun to help out in our community and we can't wait to play there when it's done!

We started with a safety meeting with one of the town employees.

 

Then it was time to get to work!  We had to place these big black Lego-type pieces around the park.  They weren't heavy, but were kind of awkward to carry.

 

After our work was done, we sat and watched the cement truck and adult volunteers do the cement work.

 

The town was kind enough to even buy Tim Horton's Smile Cookies and water for us as a treat and a way to say thank you!

 



 

The hard working "Braybrook's Bunch".

 

In art, we did a couple of different "dot" projects.  For the first one, everyone designed and colored a dot.  Then, everyone's dots were cut into 4 pieces and each piece was put with 3 other students' work to create a collaborative dot masterpiece!  Check them out...

 



For the second art project, we learned about Kandinsky and his piece called "Color Study of Squares with Concentric Circles".  This video helped us understand how to do the project.

It was finally time for us to try it on our own.  We just nicely got started today, so we will have to work on them more next week.  They are looking pretty impressive so far!

To end the week, told us about a song that has been written to go with this book.  We read the lyrics and then enjoyed singing it together.

It was such a wonderful week celebrating!

We were wondering...

How did you (or how could you) celebrate International Dot Day?
How will you "make your mark"?

The Culture of India

We had another exciting day today!  We had a guest speaker (the Dad of one of our classmates) spend most of the day teaching us about the culture of India.  We started the day with our teacher reading us the book "Elephant Dance" by Theresa Heme.  It was a good review of some of the things that we've already learned about India but also introduced us to some new information.

Photo Credit: Barefoot Books

Throughout the day, we watched a number of different Youtube videos.  You can check out this webmix to see them. 

Did you know that zero was invented in India?  So was chess and yoga.  We were led through a few different yoga poses.

While we were outside for recess, our teacher got a henna tattoo!

 

Isn't it beautiful?!?

 

She had to wait for a while and let it dry.  After, the black just rubbed off and this is what was left...



 

Our guest speaker's daughter also got a henna tatoo...

Our principal also showed up and got in on the fun!

 

 

In the afternoon we started by reading "Gandhi" by Demi.  Our teacher had told us a bit about this peacemaker and this book helped us understand more about his life and his work.  We noticed a lot of similarities between Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and Wangari Maathai--other peace makers we had learned about earlier in the year.

Photo credit: Appleby Books

 

We watched a video about how to put on a sari and then all of the girls got to try on a sari.

 

 

Then it was the boys' turn!  After watching a video on how to put on a turban, the boys got to try one.  To make them into Rajasthani men, they needed a mustache!

 

 

Wait a minute...those last two weren't Rajasthani men!

 

We learned about many different festivals -- Diwali (festival of lights); Festival of Colors and Eid.  For many of these festivals, as well as weddings, many families will create a "rangoli" on the steps of their house.  Rangoli are ancient symbols that are made of colorful patterns that are meant to be sacred welcoming areas.  We used chalk to create some at the entrance of our school to celebrate the end of the school year.

 

And with that, we have just one more thing to say...