The Mobile Dairy Classroom

Yesterday morning the school was buzzing, not with bees, but with cows!!  We had the Mobile Dairy Classroom visit.  This was a delayed tie-in to our Afternoon Program on farms.  There was a mother cow and a calf.  The presenter, Kelsey, taught us a lot about cows and milk.  The children had so many excellent questions for her.  Follow the link below for more information.

http://bcdairy.ca/dairyfarmers/dairyclassroom/

 

 

The Planets

Today the students created a mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets from the sun. 

This is what they came up with:

Monkies (Mercury)

Vs (Venus)

Elephants (Earth)

Makes (Mars)

Jacquie (Jupiter)

Sad (Saturn)

Until (Uranus)

Noon (Neptune)

 

 

Several students created their own.  Some were pretty funny.  Ask your child if they remember theirs!

Measurement Mayhem!

This morning the children provided ideas on the board for how we could measure around the school.  After discussing this, it was decided to use a person as the unit of measure - ME!  So the students worked in groups to trace me on paper and cut it out.  We then estimated how many it would take (using the referent of the length of the hall in bodies that was measured by a group last week). 

 

It took much longer than anticipated, and the total came to 101!  It was so great to see the entire class working together towards their goal.  We had many estimates close to the actual measurement as well.

 

Big Math Ideas for Measurement

(Carole Fullerton)

 

 

• When we measure, we compare.

 

• There are many attributes of an object that can be measured:

-length, mass, capacity, distance around, surface area (how much to cover).

 

• We can use any object to measure with, provided they are all the same size.

 

• The size of the object we use affects how many we need!

• If we only have a single copy of an object to measure with, we can use it over and over, making a baseline each time.

 

• Mathematicians estimate when they measure.

 

 

 

 

Descriptive Writing - Setting

First thing this morning, we wandered out into the school garden to sketch.  The children sat and zoomed in on something that they found interesting.  On the way out, we tried a pea from our garden bed.  They were so sweet and delicious!

After recess the children worked very hard on a piece of descriptive writing about the garden.  We began as a group and wrote one together so that they could see the process in action before trying out their own.  This is our cooperative piece of writing:

 

It was a peaceful spring day in the Dickens Annex kid's learning garden.  Snow peas, roses, apples, carrots, kale, trees and lettuce grew there.  The flower petals were ripply and prickly.  In the flowers there were beautiful, buzzing bees.  Slow, small, slimy snails were nibbling the wrinkled, green leaves.  We could smell the beautiful scent of the fuchsia roses.  That's why we adore our garden.