Long, long ago, in a land far far away ...

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s my husband and I lived and taught in Pond Inlet, Nunavut (it was still Northwest Territories then).



I drove a skidoo, 
 
 wore caribou clothing out on the land
 slid down icebergs on skins
and found out how little I knew about teaching.

My five years (twenty-five years ago) on Baffin Island qualifies me (I guess) to be the Nunavut contributor for Reading With Miss D's party Booking Across Canada.  

I chose a book, written by a teacher who taught in a neighbouring Arctic community while we were in the Arctic. 



Out on the Ice in the Middle of the Bay
author: Peter Cumming
illustrator: Alice Priestly
publisher: Annick Press, 1993
theme: family, parent-child love, polar bears, Arctic life
age 4 - 7

opening lines
On a November afternoon, Leah's mother went visiting, leaving little Leah and her father to look after each other.  Leah's father told Leah not to go outside - there were polar bears nearby... Snow covered the land.  Ice covered the bay. The sun was starting to go down. The moon was coming up.  Out on the ice in the middle of the bay, a huge iceberg stood. 

summary
(from the back cover)
This is a story about 
the sun, which was going down,
the moon, which was coming up,
an iceberg, which was frozen,
      out on the ice in the middle of the bay,
a mother, who went visiting,
a father who was tired,
a polar bear cub, who was curious,
a polar bear mother, who was sleepy,
And Leah, a very little girl,
      who went outside to discover the world. 

why I love this book
Rereading Out on the Ice in the Middle of the Bay, I instantly go back to my Arctic days when I would "go visiting" (stopping by to visit with someone, walk in the door, no knocking, drink very strong tea with sugar), when the iceberg was a busy place in the spring time for "tea parties" (coleman stoves and tin mugs, not china and napkins) and when the roar of a snowmobile was normal.

Reminiscing aside - the story has a lovely balance-counterbalance in the stories of the dad and little Leah, and the polar bear and her cub.  We understand the love that each has for their child, and want the chance meeting of child and cub at the iceberg to end well for everyone.  

Alice Priestly's pencil drawings are perfect for creating the Northern atmosphere.  The human details are realistic - I saw many little girls look just like Leah in their Mother Hubbard parka, mitten strings included.  

resources
1. Enjoy the trailer for the book.
Blogger and YouTube do not seem to want to co-operate to post the video, so, please, click the link.  It's a beautiful trailer.


2. Work with a lesson plan.
Canadian Teacher Magazine featured a visualization lesson plan for Out on the Ice in the Middle of the Bay.

3. Learn about polar bears.
Kids National Geographic has their usual high quality, interest piquing multi-media information. 
World Wildlife Organization presents information about these fascinating creatures. 

4. Learn about Nunavut

5. Be artistic. 
That Artist Woman did this polar bear art project with a grade one class.  Stunning. 

6. Be crafty.
Little Leah wears a Mother Hubbard parka. (So did I - except when I went out on the land or was carrying my daughter).  Make a parka child with a body tracer and a parka made out of wallpaper samples or scrapbook paper, and a cupcake paper for the hood.

7. Enjoy some sensory play.  Make a winter bin and add some polar bears and other arctic animals.  Please, keep the penguins for the antarctic bin! Click on the graphic to go to the post. 

I am going to leave you with a picture that my husband took of me and our daughter just before we left Pond Inlet to move to balmy Vancouver Island.  We are helping the baby in the amautii move into a new house today.  I miss the time when my amautii hood was full. 






Moss.

A variety of shades of green.


Soft.  Springy.  Spongey. Slightly prickly.


Smelling of earth and spring time.


Lots of different colours.


Lots of different textures.


Readily available in a temperate rain forest.


A fabulous base for sensory bins.


I fill a veggie crate or clear plastic bin with moss that I harvest from the forest.


Add drift wood, rocks and tree cookies.


And then we decide who should live in the moss.


Sometimes insects make their home in the moss garden.




Toob insects, bug magnifying glasses and a bug eye invite kids to explore and create.  Bugs Life revisited.


Other times fairies move into the moss home.

They tend to bring a few more housekeeping items than the bugs.  They seem to like flowers, some water features - often with a submersible light, flowers, mirrors, shells, glass gems and a bit of sparkle.



When the fairies and bugs leave us for another year (I guess it gets warm enough for them outside), we recycle the moss in the compost and get ready for butterflies and summer.










You cannot raise butterflies without reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.



I firmly believe that it is not allowed.


And for good reason.  Kidlets  love the predictable simplicity, the Eric Carle-ian illustrations and the miracle ending.


(Don't we all eat too much and want to become a beautiful butterfly?)


It is a perfect story for retelling.  These girls took turns reading the book and putting the cards in the pocket chart.




And the story frame lends itself perfectly for creating a new story.

My kidlets love to eat.  So  we made a new book: The Very Hungry Kindergartener.

First job was to make caterpillar hats.  Thanks ItMom for the great idea. 


It was one of those moments when everything worked together perfectly.  A number of kidlets who had been struggling with making "curvy corners" figured out how to make them concave rather than convex.  They followed multi-step instructions, helping each other.  Basically making my heart sing.


Boy did they look cute in their caterpillar hats.




Next job was to decide what they were going to eat.  And what day of the week it was.  

And write about it.  We are practicing using environmental print in our writing, so they had to find the words in the classroom. They figured out where the food cards with the words printed on the back were pretty quickly!


Click on the graphic to download a copy of our class book page.



happy Sunday






            

sometimes I like to flirt with insanity

We have been reading, rereading, and retelling Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar this week.  


You just can't read  The Very Hungry Caterpillar  without enjoying a cool art project.  This year I found a project on Pinterest (Classified Mom) that I just could not resist.  Even though it was flirting with insanity. 


 

allowing (encouraging) risky play

Last week we walked to one of our forests.  (Yes, we are really lucky and have more than one forest within walking distance from the school.)


This forest is right in town.  It has define limits - sidewalks!  It also has trails, bridges, huge trees, a small creek and plenty of room to explore, play games and enjoy a bit of freedom.


We go with our big buddy class.  The rule is that the big buddy has to stay with the little buddy and the little buddy has to stay with the big buddy.  No going onto the sidewalk.  Come to the whistle blast as soon as you hear it and as quickly as you can.


On this visit, the main attraction was a log.  A log crossing over a little bit of a creek.




After a bit of exploring a few kids asked me if they could go across the log.

My answer was that they could IF they felt it was safe for them.  Kindergarten kidlets could go across on their bums and big kids could walk.  

This little guy scooted over the log countless times.  He was concentrating hard and mastering a new skill.  


The big kids could not resist jumping off the log.  Same rule.  Only if you feel safe.


The kids had to make the choice for themselves if they felt it was safe for them to cross on the log. 

Some kids felt totally safe, and could probably have cartwheeled across the log.  Other kids looked, thought about it, and decided that it was not for them.  Both options were perfectly acceptable.  

Making risk assessments and taking safe risks is an important part of self regulation.  And an important part of development.  

Life is full of risks.  Very little is learned without risk being taken.  No one would ever learn to walk if they were not willing/able/allowed to risk falling on their bums.  Kids need to learn to assess risk and take productive risks. Risks that have greater benefit than than the small dangers. 

Children need to be able to take reasonable risks.  Through risk taking they can develop self confidence, good judgement, persistence and perseverance, and resiliency.  Children learn to make judgement call through real life.  Through successes and challenges.  Through bumps, bruises, band-aids and trying again.    

When my son was 6 or 7, he loved riding his bike down a path on a hill.  He loved going as fast as his little feet could pedal - and then a wee bit faster.  A number of other mums were worried about him and asked if I knew what he was doing.  I had an understanding with my son - he wore a helmet and I carried band aids (big ones).  I wanted him to learn to take safe risks on a bicycle before he got behind the wheel of a car.  

I plan to go back to our forest a couple of times before the end of the school year.  It's likely that the log will be a major attraction again.  We will talk about safe choices.  I will carry band-aids in my first aid kit.  And we will have  a lot of fun, enjoying nature and the challenges  and opportunities it offers us.  

reading about risky play







we get mail from a fish every day

We have a pet fish in the classroom.


His name is Blue.




He has an extraordinary talent.


Blue writes letters.


Every night, after everyone goes home. Blue somehow wraps his fins around a marker, and writes a letter to the kidlets.





As I said, a very talented fish.


We read Blue's letter together everyday, looking for popcorn words, word chunks, alien words (that do not follow earth rules), and being excellent readers.




After a few weeks of writing letters to the kidlets, Blue felt that things were not really fair.


He was writing a letter every night.  And you know, it can't be easy to write with only fins!


And he never got a letter back.  He was fairly blunt with the kidlets.  He made it quite clear that he expected a letter every day.  Fair is fair.


The kidlets thought that Blue's request was quite reasonable.


The daily helper gets to choose what to say to Blue.  Everyone in the class helps stretch words to hear the sounds, and then tell me what letters to print.  Some kidlets know where in the class to find words that we need for our letter.  Others have the spelling of words "parked in their brains". We all chip in, because that's what Blue wants.


He's that sort of a fish.


And we love him for it.









Our caterpillars arrived last week.  I love raising caterpillars/butterflies.  It's one of my many favourite parts of the kindergarten year.

A box labelled, FRAGILE, LIVE SPECIMENS  was delivered to the classroom Tuesday afternoon. The grade 7 delivery boy knew exactly what was in the box.  But the kidlets didn't.


What's in the box.


Please don't shake it.


There are baby caterpillars in there.


Put the box down.  


Give me a minute.  Could you please get my teacher scissors.  Walk.


See, they are in this container.


I will put them into their own containers after school.  


Yes, The are tiny.


Yes.  They will get bigger.


In a few weeks they will be butterflies.  


But first they are caterpillars for a bit.



I was looking for a book about caterpillars to show the kidlets.  I know that butterflies are the main attraction, but I think that caterpillars are a bit overlooked.  Something we have to get through before we can have butterflies.  I wanted to find some way of sharing with the kidlets that caterpillars are pretty cool in their own right. I found a book that fit the bill. 




A Butterfly is Patient
author: Dianna Hutts Aston
illustrator: Sylvia Long
publisher: Chronicle Books (2011)
informational picture book
theme: caterpillars and butterflies
age range 6-10
beginning lines
It begins as an egg underneath an umbrella of leaves, protected from rain, hidden from creatures that might harm it ... until the caterpillar inside chews free from its egg-casing, tiny, wingless, hungry to grow. 

summary
Starting with the egg, A Butterfly is Patient takes the reader through the butterfly life cycle, focusing on various interesting butterfly facts. 

why I like this book
I was looking for caterpillars, so the first thing that caught my eye and imagination was the inside cover of the book.

Beautifully illustrated and detailed pictures of a variety of caterpillars filled the page.  I projected the pictures onto a screen, and the kids were amazed at the spikes and hairs and colours of some of the caterpillars.  

Here are some of our favourites.



The rest of the book carries on with interesting facts that kids take pleasure in remembering - eating and drinking habits, navigation patterns and even poisonous butterflies. 

The illustrations are spectacular and compliment the text perfectly.  They are incredibly detailed , yet still simple and uncluttered.  They invite investigation and stimulate curiosity.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review summed it up nicely:  A lovely mixture of science and wonder.

resources
Raise caterpillars.  We ordered ours from a school science supply company.  


Check out other books about caterpillars. Click on the covers to find more about the books.



Enjoy some caterpillar art. 

There are lots and lots of fabulous art activities for the Very Hungry Caterpillar.  But that is another book! 

Check out these un-hungry caterpillar art ideas.

thumb print caterpillars from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

toe print caterpillars from Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk

accordian fold caterpillar from Born free mum and dad
great small motor co-ordination and spacial awareness practice

 a caterpillar snack from Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons

I must have a thing for caterpillars.  Maybe they are the underdog stage in the butterfly life cycle.  

Last year I reviewed a different book about caterpillars.  Click on the book cover. It's a fabulous book.





            

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