Soil Samples

November 30th

Today, as one of our final experiments with Rocks and Minerals, we examined different types of soil. Students were challenged to describe the colour and texture of each sample and also to examine what kinds of sediments they could find in the samples.  We were trying to discover the answer to the question "What is soil?"

The three samples were: sand, potting soil and peat moss.

Some great descriptions I overheard were:  moist, damp, dry, gritty, dark, light, bumpy, lumpy.

Here are a few pictures of the students engaged in the experiment.

Choir at the Festival of Trees

November 27th

Several of our students are in the choir this year.  A huge highlight is performing at the Festival of trees and then taking in some of the fun at Candy Cane Lane.  I was thrilled to go along for the day with these amazing kids!

Moustache Day

November 27th

What a fun was to end MOVember; we had a Mustache Spirit Day!

Art-Line designs

November 25th

Today the students created beautiful line design paintings.  We have these hanging from our classroom ceiling.
Check out all of the steps involved in creating this beautiful finished product.

First:  Tape a design

 Second:  Add paint

Last:  Remove tape & Mount

Research on the Chromebooks

November 24th

This week we started a mini research project on author, Roald Dahl. Students are building a Google Slides "Biography" Presentation.  On the first day we received some excellent help from some of Mme Buckley's grade 4/5 students.  The students are all very engaged with this project and they are learning all sorts of interesting things about Roald Dah, but also learning all sorts of things about building a presentation.  (Parents, Students can log in from home to show you their work!).

Modelling numbers with base ten blocks

November 24th

Students have been working on modelling three digit numbers in a variety of ways.

For example: 329 can be shown as 3 hundreds, 2 tens, and 9 ones, (300+20+9) or you can regroup and show it as 2 hundreds, 12 tens and 9 ones (200+120+9). There are several different possibilities and combinations.

Playing with numbers this way will help deepen our understanding of how and why we trade and regroup when adding and subtracting larger numbers.  Here the students are practicing with the base ten blocks.

Testing Rocks and Minerals

November 23rd

We spent the afternoon testing the rocks in our collections trying to classify them and determine their hardness.

We did scratch testing and referred to Moh's hardness scale to determine how hard our rocks and minerals were.  We did streak test to figure out the mineral colours in our rocks and we did an acid test to find out if our rocks would fizz (meaning they may contain the minerals dolomite or calcite).  It was a fun afternoon.

Scratching with a penny

Acid test (Vinegar) 

Scratching Soap stone, 1-2 on the hardness scale.

Limestone fizzes!

Pumice floats!

Jersey Day

November 20th

We celebrated RBC sports day in Canada, as well as our school spirit last Friday!

Rangoli

November 18th

For art today we made our own simplified version of Rangoli.  Rangoli is a traditional Indian art of decorating the entrance to a home during Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights.  Traditionally Rangoli designs are symmetrical and are drawn free hand on a floor using rice grains, flower petals, coloured sand or flour,

Learn more here.

We made our Rangoli designs on paper with coloured sand.

Race to 100

November 16th

This week we started a new math unit on Numeration.  To help practice our skills with trading and regrouping we played the game "Race To 100".   The students play in partners. Each partner takes a turn to roll the die, placing that number of "units" on the place value mat, keep rolling and when you get to 10 "units" you trade them in for a stick of "ten" and so on until you have 10 tens that can be traded in for 1 one hundred.  The first player to get to one hundred wins that round.

Here it is in action.