Monthly Archives: December 2008

Holiday Cheer Through Silly Gifts

On the last day of school we held a Wacky Gift Exchange. The rules were simple: bring a wrapped, non-store bought gift, and secretly give it to Ms Smith.
Ahead if time we talked about the difference between Wacky and Junky: ie a Barbie is ok, but a Barbie with hair cut off and marker on her face is not. The gifts ranged from helpful to hilarious, and there was a lot of laughing.
Here’s how the worked:
  • The pile of gifts was placed in the middle of our circle of chairs.
  • Student names were randomly drawn.
  • The first person chose a gift from the pile and opened it, saying: “Wow, I always wanted a…..”
  • The group responds with ooohs and aaahs.
  • The rest of the people, in turn, can take from the pile or “steal” from another person, who can either take from the pile or “steal” from another player.
  • Gifts can be stolen only three times.
  • The very last player can take any gift.

As you can see in the slide show below we had a blast and everyone had a great attitude about the “gifts” they received.

(I am experimenting with different slide show formats–let me know what you think of this Image Loop. I do find ads & logos distracting, but is this tool still worth using?)

So You Think You Can Dance?

Break Dance, that is!

We are taking part in a friendly Christmas challenge with Mr. Kirkpatrick in the UK. His students have been playing with Pivot stick figure animation, and so has Huzzah. We used Creative Commons images and music–and a bit of creativity–and voila! Christmas cheer on the dance floor! So this is a friendly exploration of creativity–not a competition like “So You Think You Can Dance”!
Below are two videos, both by Sam. One was posted to YouTube, the other to Vimeo. Can you notice a difference in quality?  Students have started to embed the videos on their blogs. Take a look at Sophie, Nicholas, Blake, Micheal G., Chelsea, Haley, Kris, Daniel C. and Max, who got their videos embedded today. The rest of the class will be loading the rest of the videos onto their blogs over the next few days.


Break Dancing Pivot from Jan Smith on Vimeo.

(Temporary) Winter Wonderland

Well, it didn’t last.

(Spoke too soon: 24 hours later–now have 15cm of new snow!)

We are back to green grass and snow-free skies. But that’s ok, because we can see the snow accumulation on the mountains (where it belongs!). While it was here we enjoyed it. We dashed around the soccer field and then came in and wrote poems. Look for the results on student blogs soon. And enjoy our first snow of 2008 in the video below.

Winter Wonderland

It doesn’t snow much here in the Valley.

The accumulation of the white stuff stays on the mountains for the most part, and I for one like it that way.

But when I read this wonderful post by Conner, I almost got to wishing… Yes, secretly, even teachers pray for snow days. We haven’t had one yet, but keep your fingers crossed!

So what’s on your list? What do you like to do in winter? Drop by Conner’s post and tell him, or write a post of your own. And to our friends in Australia and New Zealand who are heading into summer, what were your favourite ways to spend winter–way back in July and August?

Image Monochrome Close-Up by Nebarnix

This just in! Could this mean…?

WOW! We have been nominated!

I try hard not to over-use adjectives, but sometimes there is only one best word, and I find myself saying it again and again.

The past few days have been thrilling. Webcast with Yes I Can! Science Canadians in Space and astronaut Clay Anderson: thrilling. Having long-time blogger Paul Hamilton visit us: thrilling. Skyping Hobart & Miss Wyatt’s class: thrilling. Soon you’ll read great posts about these experiences on the student blogs.

And then we learned (during the webcast, actually) that we had been nominated for an Edublog Award–woot! We are in some pretty amazing company: take a look at the nominees here. Of course we would love it if you (friends, family, blog readers, pet rabbits, paper clips) voted for us–but there is that democratic right to choose we learned about.

There is only one vote per IP address. The school shares one IP address, so we have voted our one vote in that category. That means students vote from home, and parents vote from work… or from iphones, apparently, but don’t ask me how!

Voting closes Saturday, December 20 at 4pm Pacific, so go take a look at the ballot and cast your vote!

Image: Scared? by brocha