We did the morning rituals…O’ Canada, prayer, calendar math, a reading about Samson and Delilah.

This is a difficult Old Testament reading to translate into grade two terms.  I did the best I could, but it was still tricky getting past the gouged eyes and the fact that the pillars were dropping on top of everyone.  However, we did our very best.

When we entered the room this morning, we saw an elf (and I’m afraid that I’ve missed out on the stories and the thoughtful handling of the elf up until this point…definitely a pop culture sort of experience) hanging from looped chain on the far side of the room. The children, in their excitement, wrote a journal entry responding to its location in the room and what they thought must have happened during the night.

From this point, the day became about caribou…also known loosely as North American reindeer.  You see the connection with the season, don’t you?

I projected this image…

From somewhere behind me, a young lady’s voice chirped in, “My Dad kills caribou!”

I let it be, as you might also, in the same situation.

Someone answered, “He does?”

I messed around with the zillions of chords that were puzzling me, thinking ahead to the little piece of film from the documentary, Being Caribou, that I hoped to show a little later on.  (I wonder how I will figure out the sound part of this?)

She piped in again, “He kills deer and moose too!”

I had no choice but to respond, “You must get to eat some very tasty sausage, right?”  She just looked at me.

We divided a large chart paper into two sections, one with the heading Deer, the other, Caribou.  Using the image as a reference, we created a list of physical traits that make the deer and the caribou similar and different.  I forgot to take a picture of this for the purpose of illustrating this blog.

Once we had a list of vocabulary accomplished, I gave the students each a piece of regular white paper to do a depiction from the reference.  They could use media of their choice, but I wanted them to include all of the parts that we had listed; hooves, beard and antlers.

Recess, Hymn Sing and Skip Counting by 2s, 5s and 10s and finally I had sorted out  the sound issue and set the movie to playing the most wondrous migration of the Porcupine Herd caribou herds.  The students verbally ooohhhhed and awed…and I remembered my reaction when I first saw this section of the movie some years ago.

I stopped the film when the baby caribou found its legs and then began to create our Caribou Migration.  It took a few minutes to learn that caribou run in herds and not in flocks.

How many caribou would be in our herd if each person in our room made ten caribou? (count by tens)

A beautiful creation!  Thank you, Tracy, for your beautiful class!