Hi everyone - Happy Friday!
This week, as part of our religion curriculum, we learned about the Hindu/Sikh celebration of Diwali which began on November 4th this year. We read some stories and watched some videos about Diwali and learned that it is also called the Festival of Light. We coloured our own "rangolis" which are traditionally made with colourful sand or rice and are meant to welcome others into one's home during Diwali. Today, we used modeling clay to create "diyas" or small lamps that symbolise goodness and purity, and lighting them denotes dispelling darkness and going into light. They came out so beautifully - we used beads and glitter to decorate them. I asked students to leave them at school over the weekend to harden a little bit, but they will be able to take them home early next week. Have a look:
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This morning, the French Immersion Kindergarten classes went on our very first field trip to the Suncor Energy Fluvarium. We feel so fortunate that we were still able to go on this outing, despite the new restrictions being mandated in schools. We did our very best to maintain social distancing and keep our classes cohorts separate - and we made sure to wear our masks both on the bus and throughout the session. I can tell that our friends really enjoyed learning about living things and being able to get up close with real live ducks, fish, and toads. I was impressed with how well our class was able to follow the rules - only a few reminders were needed to use our indoor voices, wait our turn to share, and use walking feet indoors. Way to go! The weather cooperated and overall this morning was a great experience for our first field trip! Thanks again to Harrison's and Callarose's moms for volunteering to join us. Here are some photos taken during our outing to the Fluvarium:

As soon as we arrived back to school from our field trip, we headed to the library for a special STEM activity with Ms. Borden and Ms. Keating. We learned how to code using an app called Scratch Jr. and worked in pairs to create our own "sprite" that we could animate using simple coding. The class caught on so quickly! It was definitely a very fun and engaging activity. Feel free to learn more about Scratch Jr. or download it on your own device at home by visiting their website. Here are some photos of our friends using the iPads in the library to make their very own animations: