June 8th

Friends from the Town of Devon came out to teach us all about the watershed.  They had an incredible model of a town similar to Devon.  The students got to sprinkle on examples of different substances that get in our water system - such as oil, garbage, animal feces, soap - then they sprayed the model with water to simulate raining.  The students watched how the water all flowed down into our river and were shocked at how dirty it became. We learned that the trees can act as a water shed, as the roots and soil soak up a lot of the substances before they get to the river.  When the demonstration was over, we each got to paint a wooden fish, which will be put on the fence with dozens of others.  Thank you to the Town of Devon and all the parents who came to help us.

We learned all about the famous artist Claude Monet.  We learned that his type of painting was called Impressionism and that he used lots of bright colours and his paintings were blurry. Here is our version of the Bridge Over Water Lilies. We used a finger dabbing technique to create the blurry effect.

Our plants that we planted with the Grade 4 class have been growing like crazy!  We have lots to record every day that we observe them.  Some of the plants are as tall as 93 cm!  The kids are just amazed.

Over the last several weeks we have been conducting an experiment.  We planted 5 seeds with different growing conditions:

Pot #1 - no air

Pot #2 - no soil (rocks instead)

Pot #3 - no sun (in closet)

Pot #4 - no water

Pot #5 - received all 4 basic needs

Our inquiry question was:  Does a plant need the 4 basic needs to grow?

We recorded our predictions and waited....

On Friday we took a look and most of our predictions were true:  Yes, a plant needs all 4 basic needs to grow!

We have been learning about the 6 types of animals by reading books, viewing videos and having conversations.  We sorted our labelled animal sketches into categories , which we glued to our paper under the correct category. Next week we will learn about the habitats where these animals belong. 

Jasper's cockatoo, Snowy, came to visit our classroom!  What an experience that was!  He can talk and dance and he even pooped in the garbage can, which amused everyone.  Jasper's mom told us so many interesting facts about cockatoos.  Snowy is 26 years old and will live for around 100 years!

Our math focus this week has been measurement.  We learned about measuring length and height for a few days, estimating how long or tall an object is, and measuring and comparing sets of objects. We used non-standard objects to measure, such as cubes, yarn and paper clips.

The students have just been LOVING the fairy tales.  They have so much fun reading the stories to each other, and jump at any chance they get to read.  It is great to sit back and watch and listen to them read!

Students like to pick a mini fairy tale book, read it and then complete a variety of activity pages that go with the each book.

 Our focus fairy tale this week has been The Three Little Pigs.  We have read many versions of the story, including this one by Jan Brett. The kids went in small groups and created a similar fairy tale with different characters and settings and endings. They planned it together and wrote their ideas in a graphic organizer.  They created black puppets on straws and then presented their shadow puppet show to the class.  They were all excellent!

We are beginning our planning for writing our own fairy tale.  The first step was to choose a character as your main character, draw it and then use the graphic organizer to add detailed descriptions of the character.  I modelled how to do it by using the Paper Bag Princess. I was impressed by the students' descriptive words. We will continue onto our planning page where will sketch more ideas, and then begin the writing process.  So many steps, but it will be worth it in the end.

Having lots of fun at Drumfit and Multiples Day!