Recently we received letters from a grade 2 class in Finland. We wanted to find a school to buddy up with in Finland because of the Finnish history of our town.
Our new friends go to Oulu International School. There are 289 students at OIS from preschool to grade 9. We only have 42 students in kindergarten to grade 7.
Here is a great You Tube video they have posted on their website all about their school:
From their letters we learned that:
Many of the students like to play Minecraft. Many of the students in our class love Minecraft too!
They only have PE once a week and we have PE for 30 minutes every day.
Our school day begins and ends at the same time every day, but they start and finish at different times.
We study many of the same subjects in school.
Many of the students at OIS are from different countries around the world and can speak several different languages. Only one student in our class can speak more than one language fluently.
We decided to make a video to show our new friends a little about our school. This first video, will show you the outside of our school and some of the things we like to do (we are working on a second video that shows the inside of our school). We hope you like it!
We hope that you will be able to leave us a comment!
Our Science topic this term is Air, Soil, and Water. We are going to start by learning all about soil. First we brainstormed what we already knew and then we looked at some of the different materials that you might find in soil. Then we tried to make some soil of our own. We added sand, gravel, pebbles, and humus.
Here is a picture of what our soil looked like once we added all the different materials:
Once our soil was made we tried to separate the soil back into the different parts. We used different sized screens to sift the soil. Some of the parts were easy to separate, but we noticed that the humus was in all of the containers.
Next we tried to separate our soil using water. We added a sample of the soil to a plastic vial and filled it with water. Then we shook the vials and left them over night. Look what we saw the next morning!
Next it was time to go and collect soil samples from around the school to investigate. We couldn’t believe how many different types of soil we were able to find. The soil samples were all different colours, and they all felt and looked very different from each other.
We’ve also been reading some very interesting books about soil. Here are a few of the facts we’ve learned: Jacob-When it starts raining the worms come up out of their holes to breathe. Brooklynn-When the trees fall down or get cut down the soil gets all loose and the soil erodes. The soil can wash down hills and wreck stuff. Linden-Decomposers eat all sorts of stuff that goes into the soil and the plants get what they poop out. Lily-Without soil earth would not be the same. Lainey-The water is good for plants. Jorja-In clay you need a microscope to see the grains because they are so small. Kezra-Some dirt is really hard because burrowing animals don’t burrow in it. Teagan-Animals poop and then it helps the plants. May-Worms don’t like it when water goes in their holes. Solomon-Different rocks make different types of sand.
This week we are going to study the soil samples we collected and compare them to the soil we made.
If you could build a house anywhere in the world and money was no object what would you build? This is the question the students answered last week when they imagined their dream houses.
We started by looking at Mrs. Watson’s pins of dream houses on Pinterest. Next we brainstormed locations and the different rooms we might want to include in our own houses. We had a chance to talk about our ideas with a friend and then we set off to make a plan. On our plans we tried to add specific details that would make our writing interesting.
The next day, we started to write. We were trying to focus on using descriptive language and on adding sensory details. We wanted to make our readers feel like they were walking through our houses on a tour.
Finally we drew pictures to go along with our writing. Here are the pictures we drew:
You will be able to find our stories in this month’s AJ Eagle and on our individual blogs shortly.
Where would you build your dream house?
What would it look like?
Would there be any special rooms you would be sure to include?
On Friday we finished our birdhouses. On the first day we sketched our houses after looking at several examples on the internet. The following week we painted them using tempera paints. We practised mixing colours and techniques like double loading our paint brushes. On the final day we outlined our birdhouses with permanent markers, added a wash for the background, and made our birds using painted paper and scrapbook paper. We love how they turned out and hope you do too!
The idea for this lesson came from Deep Space Sparkle (a fantastic art blog).
On Tuesday, the whole school travelled to Rough Bay Creek to release our Coho Fry. We hope you enjoy the video we made about our salmon. It was our first time adding voice overs to a video.
Here is a link to the post we wrote when the salmon arrived in January click here.
Last week was the school Science Fair. This year, every student in the school did a science project. The students did a wonderful job on their projects. The judges and community members who visited the projects were all very impressed!
Each student had to come up with a question they were interested in answering. They then did background research and formulated a hypothesis. The next step was to write their procedure and list the materials they would need to complete their experiment. After completing their experiments at home the students recorded their observations and data, and then wrote their results and conclusions. Each student also had to list the sources they used for research and thank anyone that they received help from. Doing a science fair project is a wonderful way to learn about the scientific process while studying about something each student is interested in.
This week, in our global blogging project, the classes are talking about animals from their countries. Here is the post we added:
Here in Canada we have many different kinds of animals. Canada is a very large country and there are several different habitats that animals can live in. We have arctic, temperate rainforest, grassland, desert, coniferous forest, ocean, mountain, lake, river, and pond habitats.
We each chose a favourite Canadian animal to learn about and share with you. We will tell you about their length and height in centimetres or metres, their weight in grams or kilograms, and their lifespan in years.
We just thought that we should let you know that even though all these animals call Canada their home, hardly any of them live on our island! In Sointula, you will find White-tailed deer, Killer whales, and the occasional bear or cougar that swims across from the main land (this hardly ever happens).
Which Canadian animal is your favourite?
What kind of habitats are in your country?
Do you have any of these animals where you live or any animals that are similar?
This morning Flyin’ Bob visited our school. Flyin’ Bob is a one man circus! We were treated to balancing, juggling, unicycle riding, and high wire walking. The show was amazing and the students were talking about Flyin’ Bob all day. After watching our slideshow we think you’ll be talking about Bob too!
Lily-I think it was pretty funny when his clothes got stuck on the high wire and his pants fell down showing his Hello Kitty underwear. Jacob-I think it was really cool when he was on the unicycle. Brooklynn-I thought it was funny when Daddy and Mr. Neilson had to march after him and then they had to lift him onto the high wire with their hands. Jorja-It was really scary when Shirley was throwing the pins and then he jumped off the unicycle and it went through her legs! Merissa-It was cool when Karin did a chin-up on the high wire and she balanced without any help. Kezra-I thought it was really cool when ping pong balls kept coming out of his mouth and there were like 6 in his mouth! Teagan-I thought it was cool that Lorren was juggling with two balls on top of his shoulders. Koa-I thought it was really cool when he balanced things on his nose. Taegan-To me it was really scary because he was going to catch ping pong balls in his mouth and I thought that he was going to choke. May-I think it was funny when he said that two chairs together was good for locking kids. Lorren-I thought it was cool when he had the feather. Bronwen-I thought it was a bit funny that he hung by his clothes, but he had hooked himself to the wire and he could swing back and forth. Solomon- This is going to be about Flying Bob. I liked it when he got hung up on the wire. He got a volunteer that did stuff with him.The volunteer juggled hats. He was super funny .The whole show was super funny.
Would you like to learn any of the circus skills Flyin’ Bob shared with us?
Today we had an opportunity to watch a live chat with Commander Hadfield and students from Bert Church High School in Alberta. The intermediate students who didn’t go on the ski trip joined us for the 20 minute question and answer session. We thought the students asked some great questions, many of which, we hadn’t heard Commander Hadfield answer before!
You can watch the session too:
Lily-I thought it was pretty cool that everyone in the school got to watch the Livestream with the ISS.
Brooklynn-I thought it was really interesting that the radiation from the Sun can affect the people on the ISS. Jorja-I had forgotten that they go around the Earth 16 times a day.
Teagan-I thought it was really cool that Commander Hadfield could hang upside down and do somersaults. Kezra-I learned that it takes 2 days to get to the Earth to ISS or you could go there in 6 hours if you go quick.
Sharon-I thought it was cool that you sleep with your arms sticking out of your sleeping bag. Solomon-I think it is cool that they bring food up in the Soyuz.
Taegan-I thought it was cool that they could get food from Earth to space. May-I wonder if when you bring water in space in a thermos whether it will leak out or not.
We would also like to send a huge congratulations to Commander Hadfield! On Wednesday he will take over as Commander of the International Space Station!
This afternoon we took what we have learned about structures and started to build our own bridges. We have learned about joints, how to strengthen materials, forces (compression/pushing and tension/pulling), what shapes are the strongest, and different types of bridges (beam, truss, arch, and suspension).
Groups could follow a set of plans for a truss style bridge or they could try to come up with their own design.
We will continue to work on our bridges next week. We are looking forward to seeing how strong they will be!
What types of bridges have you been on before? Have you ever built a bridge?
Entries (RSS)
