Winter PE

Well it just doesn't want to get any warmer here yet.
We still have plenty of time for winter activities with all this snow and ice.
Our PE lesson today was again cross country skiing.

I then played two different games with the other half of the students that were with me. 
Again we played the food chain game. This student was the fox and she had found two hares.

The last game we played was a vole and weasel game. We first all had to pack down the snow and make paths that crisscrossed. Then once that task was done, the game rules are as follows:

All students are voles, except those that are chosen as weasels (tagers). Voles dig tunnels under the snow in winter, and weasels are clever since they too go into the tunnels to find food in the winter. Since the weasels are hungry and want to eat the voles, they are going to chase and tag the voles. Once a vole is tagged, it turns into a weasel and the game continues until everyone is tagged. Now the new weasels help catch the voles that are left. The game ends when they are all weasels. Then they come back to the starting point, and we chose new weasels and start again. Oh and everyone needs to stay on the paths at all times!
They enjoyed this game very much. It is good physical exercise running through that snow! It is also a good game for teamwork: how to capture the voles with your team mates. If on a path that joins another, then they needed to trap a vole from both sides instead of chasing the vole only from behind.

More Solar System

So this week flew by, but it still felt great! Woo hoo!
We finished up the week with some moon phases cookie activity. I'm sure you all have seen this before. Once students had made the 4 phases I required, they ate the cookies. I told them though that they now needed to draw those phases on their paper, after the cookies were eaten. They all thought this was the best day ever! Don't you love the enthusiasm?

Then for art students had a choice to make a rocket or an alien spaceship picture from scrap paper. We have made many projects lately, and I wanted them to use up the scraps left over. See the large bin of scraps!

We didn't have much time today to work on them, but here are two that are almost ready.

Another activity for art we did was critiquing art. I looked up some art from the Met, showed them to the students and we told what we liked about the art. Then I had in advance put one number (1-21)under each students art work, which was hanging on the classroom walls. Then I handed out a slip of paper that had one number (1-21). Once the students received the slip of paper, they were to go and give a POSITIVE comment about the art piece. The other rule was that it had to be specific, not just "It is nice".
Today's photos were taken with my iPhone since a fellow college had borrowed my classroom camera.