First full week of teaching!
Another busy week for the books!We were at Missabay on Monday introducing ourselves to each of the classrooms, getting more and more excited to get to know the kids better. By Tuesday morning we were back helping with breakfast club at Crolancia, excited for our first full day of teaching. This week at Crolancia we worked on self-esteem with the 4/5/6’s and started bu
ilding our wall of self-esteem, each brick represents something the students feel confident about, or a compliment they received from another student. They have been adding to the wall throughout the week, we are excited to see the wall and their self-confidence continue to grow.In the 1/2/3 classroom this week we learned all about hand washing! By the end of the lessons the students were experts, coaching John and I through the whole hand-washing process!With the kindergartens we also taught hand washing, and played games to learn WHEN to wash our hands. In the photo below Laura and the kindergartens were doing 5 pushups before answering the question "Should you wash your hands after sneezing on them?"
With the grade 7/8’s and high school students we began with teamwork and leadership initiatives. In the photo below, the high school students were arranging themselves in order from shortest to tallest on the benches without touching their feet on the ground. We were really proud of the teamwork we saw taking place. 
We held sports club after school on Tuesday and played some basketball and hockey with the kids, this was a lot of fun!On Wednesday we were at Missabay teaching nutrition to the kindergarten, grade one, two and three classes. We talked about the different food groups, practiced organizing foods into the correct group using our modified medicine wheel and tested their knowledge with a fun food group/physical activity relay. In the 6/7 classroom we introduced the idea of self-esteem and how it relates to the individual, family, community and so on. We had the students reflect on their own strengths, gifts and talents, and share compliments with their classmates. While we were teaching we weren’t sure how engaged the students really were, but we were happy to find positive feedback in the question box at the end of the lesson.Thursday was a particularly busy day starting with an early breakfast club, continued lessons on hand washing, self-esteem and teamwork, helping with bannock dogs for hot lunch and host
ing a girls night in the evening. The girls from Missabay were driven to Crolancia for a few hours after school. We had a photo scavenger hunt, decorated cupcakes, ate spaghetti for dinner and played dodgeball.We finished off the week at Crolancia by wrapping up the different lessons in each classroom. In the high school foods class we were asked to present about fitness and wellness in Southern Ontario, and how it might be different from the North. We shared some personal experiences with CrossFit, Tough Mudder, rock climbing, slacklining, yoga and green smoothies.We woke up early Saturday morning, excited to restock on nutritious food and teaching supplies! Before leaving the
house en route to Dryden, our roomie Eugene advised us to ‘look out for the critters! some of them can be pretty big’. Well, Eugene was not wrong. We were lucky enough to see two moose on our way down (neither of which had antlers, because they lose them in the winter and haven’t regrown them yet this spring..they look very different might I add). On the way back to Pickle lake we saw 1 brown bear cub, 1 beaver and 5 different black bear cubs! We were so excited to catch so much wild life up close, not bad for a trip to the grocery store and back!Today we are planning lessons, relaxing and wishing all the rockstar moms out there an amazing Mother’s Day! We are certainly missing our own moms a little bit extra today. We would not be the people we are today without the unconditional love and support of our moms so we’re sending lots of love their way today from the North!With love from Pickle,John and Laura