Week 6
What an incredible week of discovery in our classroom! From trekking across the Canadian wilderness to diving into hands-on science, math, and creative writing, our young learners have been busy exploring the world around them from every angle.
Our Around The World unit took us north to Canada, where we kicked off our journey by exploring the country's diverse landforms and wildlife. We took a special deep dive into Canada's national animal—the beaver—learning all about these master architects of the natural world. Put to the test, our students became engineers for the day as each child constructed their very own beaver dam to see if their design could successfully hold back the water.
We kept the Canadian momentum going by diving into the sweet history of maple syrup. Students traced its origins from traditional Indigenous collection and processing techniques all the way to how it’s produced on a large scale today. Naturally, we had to taste maple syrup for this lesson! Together, the class wrote out a buttermilk pancake recipe, carefully measured out ingredients, and took turns at the stove flipping pancakes. The best part of the lesson was, without a doubt, sitting down together as a class to enjoy our freshly made feast topped with real maple syrup.
In science, we set out to study the main types of clouds. We had planned a trip to the park for a live cloud-watching session, but nature decided to play a little joke on us—there was not a single cloud in the sky!. We’ll be taking round two of our park trip next week so the students can spot those cloud formations in real life.
During our math block, our mathematicians kicked off addition using number bonds. Recognizing that this foundational concept takes time to master, we are extending this lesson so everyone gets plenty of extra practice and feels completely confident. Meanwhile, our authors spent quality time exploring describing words to bring their Small Moments stories to life. Up next, we’ll be focusing on transitional words to build out the main "meat" of our story bodies.
Finally, we officially wrapped up our very first Curiosity Club project! It was inspiring to watch the students take total ownership of their learning as they chose their own topics, read, researched, and shared their discoveries. This week, they finalized their work, presented to their peers, and spent time reflecting on what they would do differently next time. Curiosity Club is such a powerful vehicle for growth—it stretches their reading, spelling, tool-use, and communication skills all at once. For our next project, we'll be aiming to deepen comprehension and encourage students to present with a little less reliance on their notes. We can't wait to brainstorm our next round of big ideas!
