Arctic Games, Counting by 10's, and Arctic Buddy Building

This morning we reviewed what we have learned about Arctic games and watched a new video that showed some new games. Then we made a list of all the games we know so that we can add them to our Inuit History books. This is the last page in our books! Starting tomorrow, we will be working on finishing up our books instead of doing centers during guided reading time. We are expecting that we will need about one more week of center time to get all of our finishing touches done for each page so that the books will be done.

In math, we started practicing counting by 10's. For grade 1's we started making a counting by 10's game up to 100. For the grade 2's we are making the game up to 200 although our grade 2 friends should be able to keep the pattern going all the way to 1000!

After lunch we got to start building our Arctic Buddies. We did a good job following our plans and we are experimenting with different fasteners to make all the layers stick together well. We will keep working on building tomorrow so that we should be ready to test on Thursday.  After our science time was over we went to gym. The gymnastics equipment is now set up and we had a chance to try out a few different stations. We are working to try balances right now on the different types of equipment. Next, we will try jumps and turns.

Tomorrow is Winter Walk Day! We will be walking through the Whispering Woods and school field for 20 minutes as part of this national campaign. Please make sure you are wearing good boots for walking in the snow. 

Report Cards are coming home today! Please keep the report card at home but return the signed envelope so that we can use it again next time. 

Our helper tomorrow is: Levi

Journal Target Review

We started our morning on journals. Before we started our writing we reviewed our writing target. Because we are half-way through the year we talked about being able to meet the criteria of the middle ring of the target. Some of us are also working on pieces in the center part of the target with is a great bonus!



After recess we finished up our journals and then we did computers. We worked on Mathletics. If you were done the number section you were allowed to go to Mathletics Live.

This afternoon in science we worked on our arctic buddy plans. We were finishing our plans so that we can start building tomorrow. In order to have our plans approved for building we had to show a detailed picture of the layers with labels plus a list fasteners we plan to use to attach everything together.

After science we went to gym. We had gymnastics. Before we started we talked about the mats we use for our stations. We talked about how mats are designed for comfort, but not for safety. It is up to us to keep our bodies safe by thinking through our moves before we do them to make sure they will be safe.  Then we did some journal sharing. We did a different game for our sharing today. The game was Skill Testing Question. This meant that after each journal was shared Ms. Boyer would ask a question about the journal entry. The person who could answer the question correctly got to share next.

Today was also Bilal's birthday. Happy Birthday Bilal!

We have a new helper sharing category. The category is favourite book. If your favourite book is a picture book Ms. Boyer will try to read it to the class on your sharing day. If your book is a chapter book you will just share a summary of the book with the class.

Our helper tomorrow is: Dominic

Arctic Winter Games (Plus a little Quebecois fun!)

Today we learned some more about Inuit and arctic games. We started by making a stick and bone game that is used to help improve hunting skills. The game is made out of a stick, a string, and a piece of bone. The goal is to get the stick through the bone by swinging the bone on the string. It is a very challenging game but we got better at it with practice. Some of us seemed to be naturals and could do it right away!



After our snack break we went to three outdoor games stations. The first two were arctic games stations:

One game was called the Blanket Toss. In the real version of this game they use an animal hide blanket sort of like a trampoline and send the person on the blanket flying into the air. Don't worry, we didn't do that! We used mini-parachutes as our blankets and tossed balls into the air. It was tricky to work as a team to catch the ball in the parachute! Then, we tried passing the ball back and forth between two mini parachutes.

The other game was our own version of the Labrathon. A traditional event from the Labrador Winter Games where you have to practice the skills needed by a northern trapper. In our version we did a seal crawl to build strong arms. Gathered snow that we would need for water, played the stick and ball game, and raced a "dog sled" (sometimes we were the driver, sometimes we were the dogs).

 The third station was our scientific Cabane a Sucre. At this station Ms. Boyer was boiling maple syrup. We talked about a new term called flow rate. This means how quickly something flows when you pour it. We looked at water, maple syrup, and then at the maple syrup that Ms. Boyer was boiling. We could see that as the maple syrup boiled steam was rising off it. This meant that some of the water in the maple syrup was turning into steam and leaving the syrup. This was making the syrup thicker and making it flow slower when it was poured. Then Ms. Boyer poured the boiled maple syrup onto clean snow and we saw how it became even thicker and almost stopped flowing altogether. Then she rolled it up onto sticks and we got to eat it! This is a traditional Quebecois tradition called Tire d'Erable, or maple taffy. Delicious!

Then it was time to go home. What a beautiful day to be outside!

Have a great weekend!

Arctic Buddy Project

Today we spent most of the day focused on our new Arctic Buddy project. Here is the challenge for this project:

Can you keep your arctic buddy from freezing in the arctic? 

Our arctic buddies are small water bottles that we are pretending are tiny humans (we are mostly water, after all!). We are imagining that we will be dropping our buddies off in the arctic and we need to make sure they are dressed appropriately so that they won't freeze or get wet. We are using found materials like fabric, stuffing, tinfoil, plastic wrap and trying to figure out how we can design a wrapping for our buddy that will keep it really well insulated so that its body temperature will stay at 37C (human body temperature) even when we put them in the freezer.

Today we finished our materials testing by checking to see which materials would be good at waterproofing our outfits. We know from personal experience that when our warm clothes get wet they stop being warm very quickly! Keeping our insulating layers dry will be a very important part of keeping our Arctic Buddies alive.  We decided that the tinfoil, plastic wrap, and wax paper all seemed to do a good job of repelling the water in our tests.

Next, we started making our plans. We are each making a cross-section diagram to show our bottle and the different layers we plan to add. We are about half done this part of the project so we will keep working on this next week.



Tomorrow is Fresh Air Friday. We will be doing some activities in the snow, please make sure you have your snowpants with you. 

Fun lunch and PJ's Tomorrow!

We started the day with centers and guided reading. This is our last week of this round of centers. Next week we will find out about new centers. After guided reading and centers we worked to finish a few leftover questions we still had on some of the science experiments from last week. We were trying to answer these questions: 1. Why did we need to use salt when we made ice cream? 2. What happened to our balloons when we took them outside? These questions were from two different experiments we did last week.

In math today we finished our counting by 5's problem and our practice page. If we were finished both of those jobs we got to practice our counting patterns on the computer. There are some great counting games at http://www.abcya.com/.

This afternoon we learned about a new project. We are going to be trying to insulate an "Arctic Buddy" to keep it from freezing in the Arctic. An Arctic Buddy is a waterbottle that we are pretending is a tiny human. Our goal is to find ways to insulate our buddy to keep the water body temperature even if we put it in the freezer. We are also trying to figure out how to keep them dry as well.

Then we had library. After that it was gym. Today in gym we did gymnastics. We are starting with mats and are trying to do the moves on different activity cards at each mat. Please make sure that you are wearing gymnastics appropriate clothing for the next few weeks. This means leaving jewelry at home and not wearing tights with feet.

Tomorrow is Fun lunch AND Pyjama day!! 

Tomorrow our helper is: Ibrahim

Telus Spark Field Trip

Today we went on a field trip to Telus Spark. We did 2 activities while we were there and then we had some free time to look at the exhibits and play at the creative kids museum.  One of the exhibits had drums.

Our first activity today was: Spark Trek
We went behind the scenes at Telus Spark to learn how the building was heated and cooled and how water was used in the building. It was a bit chilly behind the scenes but we learned that the building is heated by pipes that carry hot water and glycol under the floor and past big fans that make the air warmer for the building.

Our second activity was: Boating and Floating.
We tested some different materials and then each group was assigned a different type of boat to build. We built catamarans, cargo ships, sailboats, tugboats, and barges. We learned that boats float because they have air inside them. Once we had made our boats we got to take them down to the earth and  sky exhibit and test them in the river!


Trip highlights:
Anjalika, Abdul Ahad, Ibrahim, Peter and Lily really liked playing at the creative kids museum.
Levi, Shawn and Jessica liked trying out the bed of nails.
Reid liked drinking from the toilet.
Evelyn enjoyed the craft center.
Ezra and Bilal enjoyed getting to use the lathe.
Sarah and Morgan really liked making the boats.
Ashton liked learning about static electricity.
Tessa liked the water exhibit.
Jasper liked the big jenga blocks.
Dhvani and Max liked playing in the theatre.
Addison liked making sculptures with the hot glue guns.
Katie liked the exhibit where she got to take electronics apart.

Fresh Air Friday

Today we started with big buddies. Our buddies read us a story and then we showed them our counting pattern games. After big buddies we started a new experiment. for this experiment our question was: What will happen when we take a balloon outside in the cold? We each had a balloon and we wrote our names and drew a picture on our balloon. Before we took the balloons outside we made some predictions.

Our predictions were:
1. The balloon will pop.
2. The balloon will float away.
3. The air will go out of the balloon.
4. The balloon will freeze.
5. Ice will form around the balloon.
6. The balloon will shrink.

Then we took them outside and tied them to the fence.

While we were waiting for our balloon experiment to sit outside for a while we went to look at our ice village. It was mostly gone!! Only a few structures were still there. We think this happened because it has been so nice out that the ice melted. In some spots we could see that the snow was coloured but in other spots even the snow was gone and all we could see was grass and dirt. With some of the structures that were still there the colour had started to disappear and the sculptures were white instead of clear ice.  We each did another diagram of the ice village and wrote down our observations in our Ice Village books. This was our last observation so next week we will be trying to finish our writing and complete our books.

During our snack break Ms. Boyer went back outside to spy on our balloons. When she came back in we met at the carpet because Ms. Boyer had some surprising news. She told us that she had done some research about this experiment to see what other scientists had found out and to learn the scientific reason for their findings. This is what she found out:
1. When other scientists did this experiment the balloon got smaller when it was outside and then got bigger when it was brought back inside.
2. This is because when the air inside the balloon gets cold the molecules slow down and take up less space. When the air inside the balloon heats up the molecules move more quickly and take up more space.

Then we went outside to get our balloons to see if we got the same results as those other scientists.

Here are our observations:
1. Our balloons did NOT get smaller.
2. They looked almost exactly the same.

So, we had to think like scientists and figure out WHY we got this unexpected result.

Here are our theories:
1. Our balloons were sitting in the sun. Even though the air was colder than the air inside the school the sun might have been keeping the air inside the balloons warm.
2. It just wasn't cold enough outside today for the difference in the size the balloons and the volume of the air to be that noticeable.


Next steps:
1. We are going to try this experiment again on a very cold day and see if we get a different result.
2. Some of us have volunteered to try this experiment again at home but with the balloon in the shade.
3. Some of us have also volunteered to try this experiment again at home over night when the temperature should fall and be colder than it was today.

Please remember that we are going to Telus Spark on Monday. We will leave the school at 9:00 am and returning at approximately 2:30 pm.  Please ensure that your child arrives at school on time so that our bus can leave promptly. As this is a full-day trip students must remember to bring their lunch with them.  Please ensure that your child’s lunch is nut-free, litter-free, and does not require heating etc. Backpacks are not encouraged so we would ask that students bring their lunch in a small labelled lunch bag.  We will be leaving our backpacks at school.

Ice Cream!

This morning Mr. O was here. Ms. Boyer was also at school but she was working on a special project for our school. After guided reading and centers we worked on our Inuit History books and tried to finish the food page. Isla found out that in addition to the animals we found yesterday the Inuit would also eat muskox, walrus, and moose. Thank you Isla for your excellent research!

After recess we had word work. Today in word work the grade 1's did some writing activities with the 8 spelling words for this week. After word work we did a counting by 5's problem. We had to try to figure out how many cards we would need to make a counting by 5's game that went up to different numbers. For example, how many cards would you need to make a game that went up to 205?

After lunch we did a very serious science experiment. This experiment was about temperature and heat transfer. We started with two ziplock bags. In the large ziplock bag we put ice. In the small ziplock bag we put cream, sugar, and vanilla.  Then we put the small bag inside the big bag and added salt to the ice.  Then we shook the bags until the ice all melted. The ice was melting the because the salt lowered the the freezing temperature of the ice. When the ice was melting it was actually getting colder and it was taking heat out of the cream and sugar mixture until the two temperatures were the same. This is called equilibrium. This meant that as the ice was melting the cream and sugar mixture started getting colder and started to freeze. Once it was frozen we had made ice cream! (But very scientific ice cream).



Then, we had library and gym. In gym we played a type of volleyball called Newcomb ball. After gym we got to eat our ice cream. It was really good!

Treat Day!

This morning we started with guided reading and our new centers for the week. After guided reading we worked on our Inuit History books. We read a story about an Inuit girl named Mikissuk and then talked about the types of food people traditionally ate in the arctic. We learned that they mostly ate meat because plants don't really grow very well in the arctic even in the summer thanks to the permafrost. Some types of meat that you could hunt and eat in the arctic are: Polar bear, seal, bow head whale, caribou, and arctic char. We weren't sure about Walrus but Isla has volunteered to research that for us. We also found out that you could eat eggs from birds like the ivory gull. In the summer you might also be able to gather berries.

After recess (today was treat day!!), we had word work time. The grade 1's continued practicing the 8 words on this week's list. We practiced by writing them down three times using our neatest printing. Our goal was to lock our spelling words into our minds and to focus on forming our letters properly at the same time. The grade 2's were working on creating word chains. Each word in the chain had to include the same vowel sound.

Next, we had math. Today we checked our understanding of counting by 5's by trying some work by ourselves. We had to complete some different counting by 5's patterns to see if we could figure them out on our own. If we needed help we used our hundred's charts and worked with Ms. Boyer or Mrs. Smith if we were still unsure.

After lunch we watched a short video about salt water and Ms. Boyer and Mrs. Hamby invited some students up to do a human demonstration to show what happens when we add salt to water. Ask me to do the demonstration for you! From the demonstration and the video we learned that when the salt is added to water it stops the water molecules from being able to bond (that means stick together). We learned that salt water has to become colder before it will push past the salt and freeze anyway. After the demonstration we went to our desks to answer this question:

What is the difference between salt water and fresh water?
We had to use the learning from our last two experiments plus today's demonstration to try to come up with our answer. Ask me what I wrote.

After science we had gym and music. This is our last week of volleyball practice.

Tomorrow our helper is: Shawn 

What a difference a weekend makes!

This morning we started our day with journals and guided reading. Lots of us wrote about the outdoor things we did this weekend thanks to the warm weather. Some of us went sledding, others went skating, and quite a few of us went skiing.

After recess the grade 1's did wordwork and the grade 2's did booktime. The grade 1's are working on a list of 8 words this week. The words are:
1.The
2. Of
3. And
4. That
5. Cat
6. Mat
7. Sat
8. Hat
Then, it was time for math. Addison, Morgan, and Isabel shared their answers from last week's home challenge. They discovered that when you could by 5's starting at any number the numbers in the ones place always alternate and make a pattern. Here is an example of counting by 5's starting at 3: 3,8,13,18,23,28,33,38. Can you see how the numbers in the one's place always go 3,8,3,8?

Home Challenge: Try counting by 9's starting at 0. Do you notice a pattern? Write down your answer and bring it to share! 

After lunch we went outside to see if the weather had done anything to our ice village. Before we went out we checked today's temperature (2C when we checked) and made some predictions about our ice village. Several of us predicted that the ice village might have melted because it was above 0C outside and we know that water freezes at 0C. When we went outside we noticed that the ice looked much smoother and had lots of cavities or crevices inside it. We also noticed that the colours had changed or moved in some of the pieces and we could see places where the the colour from one piece and dripped onto another piece. We also noticed that some of the snow was coloured. We think this was because the when the coloured ice melted it dripped onto the snow.  We will keep making observations of our ice village to see what happens.

Please remember that tomorrow is Treat Day! 

Our helper tomorrow is: Bilal