Seeds & Spring Chickens

Seeds

Today we had a visit from a quirky character. You see, Mrs. Beliveau didn't return to class after recess. Rumor has it she was spotted at Starbucks. Rather, Dr. Discovery arrived in her place, challenging the students to join her in "seed surgery"!

As part of our Needs of Living Things Unit in Science, the students have recently begun exploring plants. This week's "seed surgery" helped us understand that not all seeds look the same! We were surprised that different fruits and vegetables have different amounts of seeds, too, and that many seeds are eaten. 

So many more hands on investigations are to come as we learn how to care for plants!

Spring Chickens

Our chicks continue to grow! We are well over halfway through the 21 day incubation process. We monitor temperature and humidity daily and are eagerly awaiting the chicks' arrival early next week!

Today we "candled" several eggs from our incubator by placing them up to a bright light. This allows us to see inside of the egg and check on development. Can you see the blood vessels? Can you see the shadow, on the right, where the baby chick is growing? God is so good!

We are having so much fun with our learning!

Books & Butterflies!

We've begun exploring the parts of a story in Language Arts!

• Beginning: The characters, setting, and problem are identified
• Middle: Main character tries to solves the problem
• End: The problem is solved!

Together we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. 

Then we identified the parts of the story as a team:

After enjoying the book by Eric Carle, we closely examined his illustrations. Mr. Carle has a unique method for making designed, textured paper and then cutting it into the pieces for his pictures. 

 

We followed Mr. Carle's paper-making technique to make butterflies! First we painted our paper. We added drips and drops in every colour! 

See? No shortage of creativity in our class! Beautiful paper designs, kiddos!

Once our paper dried, we used tracers to cut out the shapes to make a butterfly.  A little glue, and ta da! Colourful, Carle-inspired butterflies!

We'll continue to dig into the parts of a story and will move towards writing our own stories. What a wonderful week of reading, discussing, and creating! 

Living & Non-Living

We are beginning our Needs of Plants and Animals Unit! This week we are focusing on what it means for something to be living. 

We brainstormed ideas about what makes something living. Then we thought about something we knew for sure was living, such as a dog, and crossed off ideas on our list that didn't fit with what we knew about dogs. We also did this for other things we knew for sure were living, including a plant! 

To reinforce what makes something living, we enjoyed a clip from our pal on Sesame Street:

Then we studied a few examples using our criteria for what makes something alive:

To conclude our week examining living and non-living, students tackled an an up-close, hands-on observation! Thrilled beyond measure, our scientists compared gummy worms and earthworms. We were able to see many examples that demonstrated that the earthworms are indeed living and gummy worms are non-living:

Now let's hunt for examples of living and non-living things with a photo hunt at home!

First, give your child a camera (your phone would be perfect!). Have him or her take some pictures of things that are living and non-living.

Then, to share your photo(s) and/or comment on our "wall":

(a) Double click on our Living and Non-Living wall below

(b) A box will appear. Type in a comment. Upload a picture. Ta da! 

(c) Marvel at our learning!

(or just email me your photos/captions and I'll make it happen)

Thank you for not mentioning names as well as any other identifying information. 

We will check this wall often next week to see the pictures that we all post!

Egg-citing Week!

Let the adventure begin!

This week we carefully placed 22 beautiful eggs into a warm, humid incubator. We can't bring hens into the school, so the incubator acts as a mama hen, turning the eggs while keeping them warm and moist. Each day we monitor and record the temperature and humidity.

These eggs didn't come from the grocery store, they came from Mrs. Junck's family farm! Mrs. Junck is guiding our learning and hatching. Each week we are looking forward to a virtual lesson from her. This week, we got a tour of her farm, met her many animals, and even heard a story! We got to see "broody" hens, which are mama hens who are sitting on eggs. Our favourite part was hearing the sounds of the farm! Boy, are those roosters loud!

We noticed that the eggs in our incubator were many beautiful colours. They didn't all look the same. Mrs. Junck gave us extra eggs from her hens and suggested we crack a few open to see if the different colours mean the insides are different. We cracked open a brown egg and a white egg, and noticed they looked the same inside. Then we had a really powerful discussion about how WE all look different on the outside, but on the inside, we all have a heart and want to be loved.

We are only three days in and have already learned lots! Who knew a 22 eggs could be so exciting? This is sure to be a wonderful journey as we experience new life first hand!

Cookie's Week at St. Nicholas!

This past week, we read the story Cookie's Week, all about a cat who causes mischief all over his house!

To practice our ability to retell important parts of a story, we made our own "Cookie" puppets! These puppets helped us practice retelling the main parts of this story. 

Then we jumped at the opportunity to write our own versions of this story! In our own stories about Cookie, we imagined this tricky kitty spent a week at St. Nicholas. What kinds of mischief did this little trickster get into?

After a walk around the building, we brainstormed places he could make a little trouble. 

Then, using sentences frames, we wrote and illustrated our own stories!

These stories will take several days of diligent writing and creative, careful illustrating. 

We're having so much fun imagining the mischief Cookie would cause at our school! 

Watch for these stories, as well as a rubric, coming home soon!