Weaving a Story

The Iroquois nation has a series of beads that are traditionally purple and white. They are woven together into belts which are the recordings of historical events. These belts are then kept by a wampum keeper, a girl who would have been trained at a very young age what the symbols on the belts meant and what stories they told. 

Today we created our own....

Inside The Planetarium

Well today was cool!  We sat inside an inflated dome and got to experience a travelling astronomy show! 

It looks small on the outside but it was big enough for all of us!  

We started off by getting to hold an actual meteorite. It's made of melted metal and it's very heavy. 

Then we moved inside the dome. First we went forward in time and watched tonight's stars come out. 

We learned how to locate Polaris, where the constellations are and we saw how stars move across the sky. 

Next we saw where Jupiter will be. We also got to zoom in close to see Jupiter's rotation and well as how it's 4 biggest moons revolve around it. 

We wrapped up by learning how our own moon revolves around us and what phases it goes through. Today we understand our sky a little bit better. 

Thanks to Dr. D and to Westglen School for inviting us. 

What a Drag!

As we come to the end of our flight unit we find ourselves experimenting with the effect of drag on paper airplanes (it slows them down so they don't travel as far) and parachutes (they will have a slower descent). 

Field Trip!

For some kids, this was their first experience with live theatre. Getting a chance to see a professional performance is worth the trip into the city. 

Having arrived early, we walked around Olympic Plaza for awhile and the kids came across the statue tribute to the Famous Five. They quickly picked out Nellie McClung, having studied her in Social Studies. 

And these steps gave us an opportunity for an impomptue class photo :)

Then we finally got to head into the theatre!

We got the entire second balcony to ourselves!  Including the box seats. It was a great performance. 

Science Explorations!

     Our learning about air continues!

Here we "submerge" a candle and watch it burn!  How is it possible?  The beaker traps the air and allows us to push the candle under the water. Once the air inside is burned up, the candle goes out.

Air is strong enough to lift objects!

Designing balloon powered rockets that propel along a string to the other side of the classroom. 

Designing hovercrafts that trap air and create lift!!

Proof of Air

We've been on a quest to prove that air exists. It's tricky because you can't really see it or touch it which is how we prove other things exist. So we have completed several experiments to try and prove that air:  takes up space, has mass, has pressure,  has volume, and that it can be compressed. 

Our experiments have been wet and messy but that's totally cool because often messy learning is the best learning. 

Here we were submerging a paper ball attached to the bottom of a beaker. When we pulled it out, the ball of paper was dry!!!  What does that prove?

Here a bottle covered by a balloon is placed in very hot water. Slowly the balloon inflates!  What does that prove?

Here we pull plungers out of syringes while covering the hole. One girl has her ears covered. Hmmmm?  What's about to happen?

Haunted House RIG

So I challenged my students with a RIG for Halloween. RIG stands for Rapid Idea Generation. Students are given a challenge with a tight time window. It's basically like physical brainstorming. Because they have such little time they need to dive into the project and work collaboratively to solve it efficiently. They don't have time to second guess themselves or for doubt to set in. Afterwards, one person explained their design in the sharing portion. Then the creations were dismantled which is also an important part of the process. 

Today's challenge was to build a model of a Haunted House and then walk the rest of us through it with their description. They could use anything from within the classroom. The creative chaos was super fun to watch and document. Kids create amazing things in 10 minutes......