Marvelous Mardi Gras

Today is the beginning of the Mardi Gras celebration. 

In French, Mardi means Tuesday, and Gras means fat, so it stands for "Fat Tuesday."

This is a practice of eating richer foods before the fasting for the traditional Lenten season. 

Mardi Gras is usually celebrated in New Orleans, Louisiana with a carnival. People build large floats and parade down the main street, giving out beaded necklaces. 

As a team, students build Mardi Gras floats in class. 

photos by Ms. Tulbure

We also enjoyed traditional King Cake, flown in from New Orleans. A big thank you to Mrs. Blumel who came and taught us about Mardi Gras and provided the cake, supplies, and pizza. 

Hidden inside the King Cake is a small trinket. Traditionally it used to be a bean. The person or persons who found the bean would be in charge of hosting the next year's festivities. 

What was your favorite activity?

Did you get the trinket from the cake?

Stupendous Stone Fox

The class read Stone Fox, by John Reynolds Gardiner, as our first novel. 

It is a story about a boy named Little Willy, who has to take care of the family potato farm after Grandfather takes ill. He soon finds out that Grandfather owes $500 in back taxes, and the farm may be taken away. Little Willy has to think of a way to save the farm, and when the opportunity to enter a dog sled contest is presented, Little Willy thinks he and Searchlight, his dog, have a chance. That is until Stone Fox, a man who's won every race also competes. Read the book to find out what happens. 

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

The class was inspired to research some main facts in Stone Fox, so they got into teams and took notes from Worldbook Online on:

Farming

Sled Dogs

Wyoming

Iditarod

Potatoes

Shoshone Indians

photos by Ms. Tulbure

Students made posters then presented the posters to the class.  

What was your favorite topic?

What else are you curious about researching after reading the book?

Breakout EDU-Valentines Day

Another Breakout EDU-Valentines Edition

Last week our class started our Valentine Celebration early with a Homework Love Potion. 

Some magic dust was set free in our class that made all our students fall in love with homework. 

Naturally, the students wanted to Break Out the antidote. 

So, students worked together to break all the locks....

All photos by Ms. Tulbure

There were riddles to be solved

And graphs to be evaluated

The equations even involved black-light clues

There were some great conversations about strategy

Students tried their best.....

Unfortunately, this time, students did not get to the antidote in time.....

However, through further discussion and collaboration, students contemplated what to improve on next time and....

the Homework love potion went poof! 


What was the most challenging part of the Breakout?

What would you do differently next time?

Mystery Skype Call With Kansas!

Mystery Skype Call With Kansas!

Mrs. Lofdahl invited Ms. Tulbure's class to be part of a 

Mystery Skype/Google Hangout call with her first grade class!

Two groups come together via Google Hangouts, but neither know the other's location. Closed questions, or questions that can only be answered with a YES or a NO answer, were permitted. 

Every third grader contributed and tried to solve the Mystery. Before the call, the class created some useful jobs and gathered resources that would help them be good geography detectives.

Mrs. Lofdahl's students invited us to play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who would go first. They won, so they asked the first question.

All photos by Photographers Marley and Samantha

We decided that four students should be our Questioners. They asked the yes or no questions. We also had two Question Helpers, who would also think of inquiries to make to the other team.

 Two Data Enterers  sat next to the Questioners and typed the questions and answers on a Google Doc that all could see. 

It was helpful to review the yes and no answers quickly. 

Others were Researchers. They used Google Maps and traditional atlases to zero in on the clues.

 A few students were Task Masters and Question Focusers. If students had problems, they would try and solve them. In addition, they would run facts and updated maps to the Questioners.

We also had Greeters, Closers, and awesome student Signers that made helpful signs. 

 It was a great game filled with fantastic questions. Mrs. Lofdal's students guess our location first. Well done! Our class continued to ask questions until they narrowed their location down to....KANSAS!

Below is  a slideshow and video of our first ever Mystery Skype 

What did you like about the game?
 

What job would you like to be next time? Why?

Global Play Day 2017!

Today, my class participated in Global School Play Day! 

Thank you to the Bedley Brothers and Twitter for introducing me to this project!  The power of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) triumphs again!

I was heavily influence to participate in #GSPD after listening to this eye opening presentation: 

The Decline of Play TED Talk from psychologist Peter Gray. 

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On Friday, I emailed parents, shared "The Decline of Play" video, and asked for games to be brought in for our #GSPD event. On Wednesday, we had a few curricular blocks, but we were able to have two solid play sessions.

The sessions were sensational!

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First, we talked about kindness in our Second Step 

lesson, and how to help one another. We talked about

 sharing and allowing all to play.

Let's Play!

We build Jenga towers and stacked them on trucks

 

 

We played multi-player games

Shared baseball cards and made an array

 

 

Legos

Guessed who'd done it in Clue

 

 

We played balancing games

We made a movie

We used our imagination to play

Created domino mazes

 

What is your opinion of Global School Play Day?

Would you recommend it?

Convince me!