A beloved Christmas time treat comes from so many places far and wide. Grade 2 students learned about the ingredients needed to make gingerbread cookies. Students first task was identifying the various ingredients using pictures. Each student was handed an ingredient either in its natural form or prepped for cooking. Working with their friends they had to decide what the ingredient was, and whether it was natural or man-made. Students were shocked when they discovered that each ingredient originally came from earth.
The next job that students were tasked with was determining where the ingredient came from. On a map, students stuck their ingredient where they thought it came from. To simplify this activity, we highlighted Canada and anywhere else on the map was deemed 'away from home'. Once again, students were in disbelief at the number of products that are grown close to home.
The final and most rewarding step of our exploration was combining ingredients and baking the cookies. Unfortunately with all the sickness in our classroom, Miss H combined and made the cookies to keep everyone safe. We all enjoyed the cookies the next day!
Some students wanted to try Molasses, here are a series of photos to showcase the experience.
Synopsis: Did you know that a sunflower head can contain more than 1000 seeds? Grade 2 students were put into partners and tasked with breaking down a sunflower head and counting the seeds. Studetns quickly learned that counting by 1 would take forever. Therefore, we put the seeds into groups of 10 and then counted by 10s to get to our final number. Students were tasked with representing that number in many ways (using base ten blocks, expanded form, and number words). Students measured the height of the sunflower heads using a ruler and blocks as well.
We also took our seeds and practiced spelling our sight words with them, as well as wrote about our sunflower heads using our senses and instructional writing.
The final piece of the puzzle was using our harvested seeds to create artwork inspired by the sunflowers them selves. Sunflower seeds spiral outwards from the center, our artwork reflects this.
Program of Studies Connections
Math: Number Sense
Math: Measurement
LA: Sight Words
LA: Sentence Writing
Art: Pattern
Charter Connections
Gardening
Life Cycles
Food Production