Maple syrup season

With the warm weather, many friends are telling us about tapping or they have at least visited a sugar shack. We are so fortunate to have several maple trees on our school property that can be tapped. 

We noticed that the tree was warmer on one side than the other. That was the same side that the bucket was on.

J

We talked about how the tree took sap from it’s roots to it’s branches once it got warm. It did this in little things much like our veins.

Finally, we got to try the sweet sap.

Someone described it as tasting like “watermelon”! Yum!

Tales of Peter Rabbit

We saw our theatrical performance today. I hope your child told you about it. It was so well done. There were only 3 actors/actresses, and they used a combination of puppets, shadow puppets and acting to retell the stories.

Making Fossils

This week, we have made our own salt dough fossils. The students mixed the dough.

They rolled the out, and then gently pressed in a desired item. 

Once dry, they painted them.

Then, we prepared them for our dinosaur museum, by labelling them.

K

Dinosaur Museum

Throughout the week, we have developed our classroom “dinosaur museum”. We made a large skeleton and labelled it.

We worked on a sign.

They have been taking on many roles, such as cashier, museum worker, tour guide and palaeontologist. The students made their own workers badges. They have also made tickets, recording the value of the ticket.

The workers have been putting together bones of different varieties!

There is a lot of excitement, and learning going on. Next week, we hope to be able to make our own fossils!

Building bird feeders

Our green group got together with their reading buddies this morning. Each pair made some bird feeders using some of our pine cones (or paper tubes), shortening and bird seed. 

Once we had tied a string onto the cones, the shortening was spread into the cones, and then we rolled it into the birdseed. We joined our grade 4 buddies and hung them outside our windows.

A fun morning had by all!

Happy Valentine’s Day

All the kids were so excited about today’s festivities. The blue group made only one valentine for a classmate and then enjoyed some delicious treats. Thanks so much to everyone who helped to make a card to give to a classmate, they were proud of their efforts. Also, thanks for the scrumptious treats! It was a memorable day!

Pinecone investigation

The green group is preparing to make bird feeders from pine cones with their reading buddies. Ms. Behnke helped us by going to get some of the abundance of cones from our spruce trees outside our windows.

The cones were very tightly closed. We brought them indoors and we have discovered that they have opened up in the warmth. 

Once they opened up, we noticed tons of “helicopter” seeds come out. We are hoping to plant them later.

We decided to see what would happen if we put the opened cone in cold again. We speculated that it would close again. We put some in a jar of cold water. Sure enough....

The students then asked to see what would happen if we put them in hot water. Nature provides the best experiments!

Volcano

The green group made their own volcano. They made many guesses as to what products we would need to combine in order to make a volcanic eruption. We tried soap, shaving cream, salt, food colouring, vinegar and baking soda.

They were ecstatic when the chemical reaction occurred and the “lava” started flowing. 

They continued to investigate and explore the volcanic eruptions during our activity time.