This morning we wrapped up our unit on maps and pirates by going on a treasure hunt! We figured out ALL of the clues, had a great time, visited many “islands ” (offices!), got tricked by sneaky pirates and their fake plastic gold, and got a sweet treat!
A HUGE shout out to the Shabinsky family, Glenview homes, the JK class, and all of our helpers for helping us with Joshua’s lemonade standemonium! The biggest thank you goes out to all of our patrons – THANK YOU!!!!
We will be counting your total donations to the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation tomorrow morning so please Stay tuned!
Here are some photos of us getting ready and hosting the lemonade stand!
Thank you! Todah! Merci!
This morning we had the pleasure of a visit from Mr. Josh Ray in our classroom instead of going down to the maker space! We started investigating the states of matter and how to change them. Today’s topic was “melting” and we remembered that there used to be a TON of snow and ice on our playground and then it melted because hot temperatures are here! Our activity is creating a masterpiece using our many skills. To name a few: fine motor, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, patterning, and… PERLER BEADS!!!
We’ve still got a lot of work to do on our creations before we fuse (melt) them together (with high temperature!) but here is a sneak peek:
JK has been hard at work learning about how to take care of our “Big Blue Marble” – planet Earth. We love this song. We even used a big blue marble to do some marble painting!
What an awesome morning we had, continuing our explorations of density and our sink or float investigations. We kicked off our week by following the scientific method. We asked a question (Will it sink or will it float?), made predictions (hypotheses), conducted experiments, made observations, and discussed our conclusions (what we learned).
We then started discussing density: What is it? Can we see it? How does density make something sink or float in water? We used bingo stampers to show what density looks like: lots of dots very close together means more dense, and dots that are farther apart are less dense.
We experimented with all kinds of objects that we found around our classroom. This morning we got to test out our hypotheses/predictions with our guests!
Then, we progressed to asking if we can change the density of water so that an object that previously sank would now float. We tested it out with an egg (an egg-cellent egg-speriment, if you will). We discovered that eggs will sink in water. We talked about how we can try to change the density of water by adding something to the space between the “dots” (from our density art). We poured in some salt, and let it dissolve and the egg… SANK! So we added more salt. LOTS. And the egg still sank! Because we are great scientists, we didn’t get discouraged, and we didn’t give up! After our guests left, we added EVEN MORE SALT and finally…. The egg FLOATED!!!!
If you’d like to recreate the egg-speriment at home, we highly recommend using a tall glass.
The inspiration for our experiments came from learning about the story of Passover, when baby Moses floated in a basket along the river. We also noticed that we were using salt water for our egg-speriment, just like we have salt water at our seder! JK didn’t want the experiments to stop, so, tomorrow they will be bringing a package to use at home. Send us your photos or comment below so we can share with the class!
JK has been very busy getting ready to celebrate Tu Bi’shevat on Monday! We talked about the importance of trees to people, animals, and the environment, and created some beautiful handprint tree art. We also started to germinate some beans and lentils, and learned about the life cycle of a seed: seed – sprout – root – plant. On Monday, we will join our grade 4 reading buddies and have a Tu Bi’shevat seder and a little surprise project!
Stay tuned!
This week in JK we finished our ‘animals in the winter’ unit. We learned about hibernation, migration, and adaptation. Please check your child’s backpack for artwork, a game, and a song! To wrap up our unit, we had Let’s Talk Science from Ottawa U visit us for a fun workshop where we compared how well fur, feathers, and fat kept our hands warm in the snow compared to an empty bag. JK decided that the best one to keep their hands warm was the fur (also because that’s the coziest!)
This morning we got to hatch a fossilized dinosaur egg. It was made out of baking soda, water, and food colouring. We helped the egg dissolve by pipettes and vinegar, and found a T-rex fossil inside! Then, we got to make our own dinosaur eggs and hatch them! We used our 5 senses to check out all of the ingredients – except taste because that would be yucky – and throughout the reaction.
(Listen with the sound on.)
We had so much fun! If you’d like to repeat the experience at home, here is the link to the experiment.
Comment below when you try it at home!
Today we listened to the story “Dinofours It’s Snowing!” by Steve Metzger. The dinofours are dinosaurs that are four years old, just like us! We were inspired by the footprints that they made in the freshly fallen snow in the story and we created our own dinosaur footprints using our classroom toys and some paint. Check out our awesome work!
If you’d like to listen to the story again at home, here it is! Enjoy!
Today I learned (TIL) about dinosaurs:
Netasaurus: Dinosaurs were HUGE!
Reuvisaurus: Kentrosauruses lived millions of years ago.
Joshuasaurus: I forget what the name is but I liked looking for dinosaur bones (paleontoligist).
Livasaurus: One of them (herbivore) cannot bite people because their teeth are not sharp they are flat.
Joeysaurus: Bones are the only part left of them. (Fossils)
Moishesaurus: Finding the bones was the best!
Ivrisaurus: You can’t touch them because they’re not alive anymore.
We had a visit from Isabelle and Ahmad from Ottawa U’s ‘Let’s Talk Science’ program. We talked about fossils and became paleontologists. Then we went hunting and found a dinosaur skeleton in our class. We collaborated to put it back together and named it “Rex”. We then made two dinosaur puppets (check your child’s backpack!): one herbivore and one carnivore, and we talked about the different shapes of their teeth. Then, we used toothpicks to dig fossils (chocolate chips) out of rocks (cookies). It was so much fun! We can’t wait for their next visit in the winter!
