Our big fishing trip finally arrived! If you ask us what our favourite part was, most of us would answer "the ice cream" and "the drive there and back". But the fishing was fun, too. ;-) We didn't catch anything, but patience and coming back empty-handed are all a part of the normal fishing experience. Some of us even tried out our homemade rods! Thanks to GoFishBC, we learned so much about local fish, how BC lakes are stocked, how to tie knots, the various components of a fishing rod, how to cast, and so much more... Other fun from the trip... We did do some other things this week, too, besides the field trip!... including measurement with paper airplanes. Learning to fold a paper airplane was an exercise in patience and perseverance, for sure. But we all managed it in the end! Big "merch" to Lo for sharing her awesome design with us! We partnered up and threw our airplanes outside, then measured the distance between our plane and our partner's plane, using non-standard units (foot steps) and standard units (centimetres). Extra photos...
We're getting excited about our fishing trip next week! For our team challenge, we looked at the anatomy of a fishing rod and tried to find items around the classroom that could be used as a weight and a bobber. How could we put all of these things together to make a functional rod? We had some great ideas! Madame also brought in a real fishing rod and some of us had fun practicing how to cast with it. (Don't worry, the hook had cork on the end! Nobody was harmed in the making of these photos.) We talked about what Indigenous people used to use for fishing, before there were rods, and we learned that they would make their own spears and also weave their own nets and baskets out of grass, cedar bark, etc. Some of us tried out some weaving with hay from the guinea pigs and found that it's much more difficult than it looks! And speaking of Indigenous themes, we had an author from the Ahousaht Nation on Vancouver Island come to visit us this week. He brought his drum and sang some songs with us, and also read us a book that he wrote all about when he got his first drum. We were so excited when he gifted us our very own copy! In French, we have been learning about a new grammatical concept - nouns! Sneaky Madame has actually been teaching us subliminally all year about this concept through Show-and-Tell. Every day, we ask the presenter about the item hiding in their bag: "Is it a person? Is it an animal? Is it a place? Is it a thing?" Guess what!... these are all nouns! It was time to try out a new park for our weekly walk, and we were all begging to go back to this one! Big thanks to Aiden's grandpa for bringing extra snacks and water to share with us! At first he tried to convince us that he had brought BROCCOLI!!!... but the truth was much more exciting - gummies for everyone! Extra photos...
Our butterflies emerged from their chrysalises over the weekend and, since this particular variety of butterfly (called "painted ladies") only lives for 2 weeks, we needed to set them free right away! We loved how they tickled as they landed on us and sometimes flew away, only to circle back and land on us again. We watched a movie called "Flight of the Butterflies" and learned all about the migration patterns of monarch butterflies. We also talked about the concept of symmetry... What if we divide Callum in half?... Will he look relatively the same on both sides? We had fun using a mirror to look at various axes of symmetry, and then worked with a partner to create symmetrical designs outdoors. After learning about the butterfly's life cycle, Madame let us pick out some 3D-printed caterpillars generously given to us by Mme Cameron. We had so much fun making little habitats for them! One of the Math themes this week has been measurement! We started out by learning about non-standard units. What does it look like to measure the classroom with bodies? Why are bodies not a great unit of measurement? (Would our measurements be the same if we measured with babies? What about full-grown adults? Or NBA basketball players?) We decided that we needed some units that were consistent and tried out measuring items with paperclips and unifix cubes. From there, we were able to transition to the necessity of having a universally accepted system of measurement. We noticed that our rulers had two different types of measurement listed on them - centimetres and inches. Madame explained that centimetres are typically what we use in Canada. (Although most Canadian adults will agree that we're pretty confused in general about whether we prefer the metric or imperial systems!... a topic for when we get a little older.) We enjoyed working through the measurement of various objects on paper, and then some of us put our measurement skills to the test on this week's forest walk! For adult entertainment purposes... In French, we have begun learning about the elements of a story - beginning/middle/end, a problem/solution, characters and setting. Madame had us draw up a storyboard plan and then begin to bring our story ideas to life by coding them on Scratch Jr! Extra photos...
Well, the sad day has come in which we must say "au revoir" to our beloved chickies. They definitely brought us a lot of love, and a lot of mischief! We came in Thursday morning to find that they must have escaped the bathtub at night and partied with the classroom toys, only to sneak back to the tub before Madame arrived the next morning. They left their little footprints everywhere and we even found photographic evidence of their antics! "Hey, let's back this thing up, Marty!" Things got intense when Madame got a panicked text from the custodian that one of the chicks had managed to fly out of the tub Thursday night and get stuck in the wood chip bag. Apparently the rest of the chicks all clamoured onto the heat lamp, squawking at him, "Where did you goooo?! How did you do that?!" That was when Madame realized that it was definitely time for the farm life for these chickies. Maybe we will get to visit them some day! Au revoir, les poussins! We've been working on question words in French this week and enjoyed learning this catchy rap... We are working on how to use question marks appropriately, remembering to put a capital letter at the beginning of each new sentence, and sounding out words independently. We have also begun to learn some coding skills, with the help of a program called "Scratch Jr."! We had soooo much fun playing with the program and learning how to give various characters coded commands to do the actions that we wanted. Madame has plans for us to use it for story-writing purposes once we become familiar with all of the basic features. It's beginning to look and feel like summer this week! We loved basking in the sun on our walk to the forest this week, but then enjoying the cool shade the whole time we were there! Extra photos...
Hatch day came early! We were counting down the days to Wednesday's "due date", but were surprised when we arrived Monday morning and found a baby chick in the incubator! Since then, two more chicks emerged from their shells. "Sir Valiant", "Minuit", and "Fluffball" are all enjoying their new home in our class bathtub. They have many adoring fans. But it gets better... Farmer Crystal was wanting more chicks for her farm and it just so happened that a new shipment arrived at Bruce's Market this week. Since we have temporarily stolen her heat lamp for our classroom, she brought the new babies in to share in the bathtub love. Allow us to introduce: - Bolt - Donkey - Fluff - Poofy - Icy Pop - Wally - Hawes - Marty It has, naturally, been a chicken- and egg-themed week in class. We did some egg investigations involving measurement, weight, and would an egg float in water? How about salt water? We had fun making hypotheses, testing our theories, and adapting our tools based on different challenges that arose. We also did a directed draw of a mother hen and her chick, and are using it as a title page for the little stories we have begun writing about chicks. This week's STEM challenge was also brought to you by eggs...and birds... Can you build a nest out of materials in the forest, just like a bird? We started out by watching a video on different types of bird nests, then examined some real nests and discussed the types of materials that could work well. We decided we would need stuff that is "souple" (bendy/pliable), and "dou" (soft). Madame also told us about how Indigenous people used to use cedar bark to weave baskets, blankets, nets, etc. because it's so soft and pliable. With the help of our big buddies, we then went to the forest and attempted to construct nests of our own. The main challenge was the construction, itself, which we found out was surprisingly difficult, even with opposable thumbs! Imagine doing this with just a beak! The bonus challenge was: can your nest hold a raw egg for the entire walk back to school from the forest? Our constructions were actually pretty solid and most of the eggs made it back unscathed! Extra photos...
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