Reader Rock Garden

Yesterday, we walked to Reader Rock Garden. It is SO beautiful there! We took time to do scientific sketches of some of the flowers. There were so many different types of flowers; you could take two steps and see ten different kinds. We saw a big variety of flower colours, a huge bee, and a caterpillar. The caterpillar was on its way to become a beautiful moth. Everyone should visit the Reader Rock Garden this summer!

"It was impossible to not see one flower colour." ~ Oliver

"My Grade Three teacher Ms Harris said that nature is never just one colour and I believe it!" ~ Cora

"More than half the garden is just flowers." ~ HC

"We had a lot of fun and I noticed that the caterpillar was soft and smooth." ~ Ekagra

"I observed that none of the flowers looked the same. Some had jagged leaves, some had smooth leaves, some had simple petals and some had compound petals." ~ Wynn

"Everywhere I walked, there was flowers everywhere. You couldn't walk anywhere without seeing so many different kinds." ~ Effie

"Everywhere you go, there was wildlife: mosquitos, bees, and more." ~ AA

"The caterpillar that we found had fluff that makes you itchy and it's supposed to protect the caterpillar." ~ Gillian

"I had so much fun looking at the flowers but I got like 20 mosquito bites and now I'm very itchy." ~ EF

"I noticed that an ant crawled out of a small hole so I'm guessing there was an ant colony." ~ Viaan

"My favourite part was the waterfall." ~ Davyd

Back at school today, we sorted our visual journal sketches into different categories based on the features of the plants. For example, we came up with sorting rules like: petal colour, smooth and jagged leaves, value of the colour of the leaves, simple and compound leaves or flowers, and thorns/no thorns.

In all, this was a great final Community Walk!

Poetry and Earth Day

 Poetry

Another belated blog entry. Better late than never?

1. Poetry is very different from other types of writing. What was interesting about it?

• I liked that there werent any rules it was free - Jackson
• there are so many different types of poetry its a lot of fun to explore them all. - EF
• I liked that there wasn't a strict way to write. - Wynn

2. Together, we did a writing workshop to revise and put together parts of our poem into our Earth Day poem "Sometimes we feel like the earth and all it's creatures." What did you like about this?

• The workshop thing was cool because i got to listen to other peoples work and that was kinda cool. - CL

3. Explain why you chose the animal you chose to represent you.

• Why i choose a lion is because it gets angry and hungry hangry and it represent a few other things - Fatima

4. We all made art to represent our poems. What did you like about the art project?

• I liked the art we did with our poem because it showed our animal and what it is, it also gave a hint on what our poem is about. - GH

5. Why is Earth day important?

• Earth day reminds us about  what we have done to the earth and it teaches us what to do to help the earth - Oliver 

• Earth day is important because we live on the earth so we need to understand the importants of helping and cleaning the place we live on - Wynn

• Earth day is important  to me because it is a day to thank the EARTH for what it has done for us for a trillion years! And so on earth day every body should give something back to nature that it would like so like cleaning up. - Effie

Each line in our class poem came from a line in a students' individual poem.

Sometimes we feel like the earth and all of its creatures.

We eat like animals.

Tigers can be ferocious when they eat, just like we eagerly gobble up pizza, cheese smearing all over our faces, pepperoni all over the walls. 

We have skills like animals.

We quickly slide the puck down the slippery ice and slap it into the net, like a beaver smacks their cool designed tails across the water, cheering us on.

Like a cat lurking in the night with its glimmering eyes, our eyes navigate and peer through the blackness of our deep dark basements.

We communicate like animals.

For the sake of our family, we love shouting so loud, scaring our siblings out of our rooms, like a tiger roaring to keep others off its territory.

Bees buzz loudly like us. We love to engage but are shy when it comes to new people. Weaving through the grass, we cautiously approach the new Queen Bee.

We protect like animals.

As lions are protective of their cubs, we hover over our stuffies and books, claws out, never letting anyone touch or go near them.

We use our deadly spikes to scare enemies and protect our friends. As we grow up, our spikes get sharper, learning more about how to resolve conflict.

We learn like animals.

Our minds are as long as a rat's tail, there is always room to grow. We're always expanding until our thoughts reach from head to toe, full of knowledge. 

We rest like animals.

When the sun shimmers above, we are lazy. We like to sit back and relax, as a cheetah lies down in the grass, sheltered in the shade of a tree.

We are extremely idle when it’s winter, cuddling in our den of blankets, recharging, just like a lion sleeping for 20 hours a day after a big long hunt.

We love nature like animals.

Green anacondas love the color green like us! So, they must love nature, warming up in its heat, while we’re enjoying the warmth of melting snow, the smell of flowers blooming in the spring.

We frolic like animals.

We are as playful as a tiger cub. Just how a tiger cub wrestles with its siblings, scratching and pouncing, rolling around, we like to tackle as we play football.

Dolphins are playful like us. We're silly and creative like them when they do stunts. We dive under the water, not scared of what’s underneath.

We’re resilient like animals.

Our hearts can grow as big and fierce as a cougar in our little bodies. They reach up to 5 meters, always getting us up when things get hard. We shred the uncomfortable  feelings that come with not doing well on a test.

Tardigrades can survive ferocious environments without water, so they can conquer anything earth throws at ‘em. We are also small but very tough.  When people tear us down, we roll up into a protective ball and get back up.

We’re caring like animals

Just like dogs we are warm blooded, but even when our heart becomes closed, the warmth of friendship seeps in for life’s warm hug, reviving us.

Sloths climb trees but for me, I don't climb trees like so many would expect. We are the trees, strong and embracing many animals like the sloth. We surround our friends, but most importantly our roots reach down grounding us.

That’s why we feel like the earth and all of its fuzzy, smooth, scaly, feathery creatures.

Zoo Designs

In Math with Ms Elder, we are using our Multiplication skills to calculate the area of rectangles. We are using our creativity and art skills to design zoo enclosures. For the Math, we calculate the dimensions and area of each enclosure. Here are some photos of us working: 

Multiplication Work

A Class Favourite: Multiplication Luck!
Rules are posted on the Google Classroom

Over the past five weeks, we have been learning what Multiplication is, how to represent it, and how to solve problems related to it. While doing so, students have explored patterns in the Multiplication table and gained fluency when solving equations up to 12 x 12. We will now be moving on to Area, which reinforces an understanding of Multiplication arrays, and then larger Multiplication equations, up to 3-digit by 1-digit numbers.  

It is essential that students know their times tables up to 12 x 12. As we build on this foundation, the problems will increase in difficulty. If they cannot skip count yet, they need to practice at home. 

On Google Classroom, there are a plethora of resources for helping students. Some kids learn best by singing their times tables, some enjoy card or dice games. There is an interactive Multiplication Grid where students can highlight multiples of each number and colour-code them. In class this week, we started creating one more tool for helping: a "Multiplication House." 

Students chose the times table they most need to practice. They created their own design that has flaps, such as a school bus with windows that open, a pizza with pepperoni flaps, or a cell phone with swinging keys. On top of each flap, they wrote the factor they are multiplying by. Under each flap, they wrote the answer (the "product"). This is a tool students can use independently for practice. Stay tuned for more pictures next week of our finished product! 

Parents, thanks for your help in ensuring your child knows their times tables up to 12 x 12! :)

Art that's Out of this World!

We have been learning about Space in Science this month. We have learned vocabulary like: constellation, Polaris, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Orion's Belt, galaxy, lunar, earth, rotate vs revolve, and solstice. 

As we learn, we add our new understanding on to our Non-Fiction flipbooks! Here is a picture of some of our flipbooks so far.

Today, Ms Elder taught us how to make a piece of artwork that looks like a galaxy. We know galaxies can be shaped like spiral, elliptical, pinwheel, irregular, or more!

We used different media to make our paintings. We painted with paintbrushes for the background, then with sponges to make the galaxy shape, then we used a splatter technique to create the stars in the background.  It was lots of fun!

"I liked this because we get to learn about things that aren't a part of Earth." ~ Effie

"I liked the artwork because we got to be much more messy than we usually can be." ~ Kaira

"I liked the art with all the cool shapes the galaxies are formed in and all the cool colours." ~ Cora

"I liked the art because we can use our creativity to put the colours and stuff." ~ HC

"I liked the artwork because I like learning about Space and galaxies are really cool." ~ Viaan

"I liked the art because galaxies are really cool and we tried making them realistic." ~ Fatima

"This artwork is really cool because it shows how hard it is to actually form galaxies." ~ Oscar

"The best part was, if we made a mistake, you could just wipe it all off and redo it." ~ Jackson

"I think we did this artwork so that we could have fun and learn about galaxies." ~ Kaira

"I really like the galaxy because I'm going to be a scientist when I grow up." ~ SA

"Some of us didn't like it at first but we just wiped it off and redid it." ~ Oliver

"I used a tissue so when I cover the artwork, then remove it, the artwork looked good." ~ Davyd

Master's Art Gallery Field Trip

Yesterday, we went on a field trip to the Master's Art Gallery in Mission. We started by exploring the gallery and picking a painting that we wanted to learn more about. We learned facts about the artwork like what it's made out of by reading the information plaque beside the artwork. In our journals, we had to critique the artwork by explaining how the artwork made us feel, and what we thought was good about it. For one question, we even pretended that we were IN the painting and writing what we would hear, taste, and smell.  

 

Then, we gathered as a group, and got to listen to a real-live artist speak. Her name was Amy Dryer. Normally, in an oil painting, artists work from dark colours to light colours, but Amy usually works from light to dark. She starts by painting reds, browns, and yellows on the canvas, and after they dry, adding blues on top. She is famous for her "starry night" skies which have large, circle-ish shapes, which she hides designs in, like a constellations. Her favourite subject is the canoe. Amy said she was very inspired by a famous Canadian artist named Tom Thompson, who lived over a hundred years ago.

Amy said she started drawing when she was three years old, and her parents collected her art and put it into journals. She attended several art schools, and started working with her favourite medium: oil paints around the age of 20. Some things we liked about her art are: 

"She hides stuff in her art. She gets inspiration from other artists." ~ Viaan

"Her art style is very unique." ~ EF

"If she draws a canoe, she doesn't just do red, she puts other colours in it." ~ Gillian

"Her favourite time is night and most of her paintings are of night time." ~ AA

"I like that her stars aren't just regular stars; she put her own twist on it." ~ Wynn

"I like how she doesn't really paint small paintings, most of them are big." ~ Jackson

"I liked that in her paintings, they're not like what other people do, she does all different techniques." ~ Effie

"When she is drawing a person, she draws the head first." ~ Fatima

"I like that she's creative and not totally realistic." ~ Oliver

They gave us a big strip of paper to draw on!

"It was my first time seeing art live. It was beautiful and some were wonky." ~ AA 

"I now know that sometimes the art is historical and sometimes it's new." ~ HC 

"I liked the all the different artist's art had different shapes and colours." ~ Effie

"I liked that I got to see all the different ways you could draw things. Like the canoes, were not just red but also yellow and green and orange." ~ Gillian

"I liked that even though every painting in the gallery was different, they all kind of went together." ~ EF

"I learned that there is a painter called Alexander Young Jackson." ~ Oscar

"I liked how they make some of their art cartoony." ~ Fatima

"I liked the pin art explosions." ~ Jackson

"I liked that some of the lines make it look like there was texture." ~ Oliver

"You can hide other drawings in your art." ~ Viaan 

"I liked colouring." ~ Dima

Mandala Writing

After drawing personal symbols to share who we are and what we like in our manadala art with Ms. Elder (not to mention learning about radial symmetry!), we then learned how to write a paragraph with Mrs. Jamroziak.

We did a rough draft on paper, typed them up, received feedback and worked to improve our topic sentence, supporting details and sentence structure!

Here are some of our stellar topic sentences!

When you think about a mandala, do you think about learning other people's ways of thinking? - Effie

My mandala is like a puzzle. Every piece you place you learn more about me. - Jackson

My mandala is like a tree and every leaf that falls teaches you about me! -Oliver

This mandala shows how unique I am. It's like everything hidden is revealed head to toe. A photo of me is made in your mind. - Cora

This mandala will be like a compass. It will guide you through my identity. - Oscar

This mandala is like a map leading you to a treasure but instead of money or gold it is the knowledge of who I am. - GH

1. What did you enjoy about writing your mandala paragraph?

• I liked sharing what I love. - Jackson
• I liked that it was a big project so we had a lot of drafts. - Wynn
• I enjoyed sharing my likes and it was the first time in a long time that I thought about what I liked. - GH
• I liked that we could write about the things we like and other stuff. - Oscar

2. Why do you feel proud of your mandala paragraph?

• I feel proud of my paragraph because I put a lot of hard work and it was challenging which was kind of fun! - Oliver
• i feel proud of it cuz i worked really really hard on it. im proud of everything I did in my paragraph. it was really hard. im proud of my hard work. - Fatima
• I think that i am proud of myself because i tried my hardest to feel good about what i did and i feel really proud of myself now. - Effie

3. What is a topic sentence? 

• A topic sentence is a sentence that tell you what the paragraph is about - Cora
• a topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph and it just describes what the entire paragraph in like 5 to 10 words one of its main purpose is to hook the reader. - EF

4. What are supporting details?

• Supporting details wipe the confusion from the reader's mind. - Kaira
• supporting details are details that follow the captains order and the captain is the topic sentence so supporting details are just following the topic sentences orders and supporting details are the crew. - Viaan