Science Inquiries

Some of our little friends brought interesting things from our outdoor environment. Noah collected some leaves in our school yard. The children looked at his leaves and made the following observations with some prompting questions:

What can you observe about the leaves?

- They are yellow, red, orange, purple, green.

Why are they different colours?

- Mrs. Gregory explained that leaves already have fall colours, but it is the green chlorophyll that makes the leaves green as it provides food for the trees in the summer. In the fall, when they stop making food, leaves show their real colours because the chlorophyll is gone. Trees go into a type of hibernation during winter. They feed from their sap reserve like bears feed from their fat reserve.

What is happening to the leaves?

- They are dying because they can't drink.

Why do leaves fall during autumn?

- They fall before winter to protect themselves. They hibernate.


Rose brought a few items at school. She had a big leaf.  Here are some observations:

- It is bigger than Noah's leaf.

How much bigger?

Colin, Giuliana and Preston wanted to measure Rose and Noah's leaves for comparison.

Preston wanted to measure the leaves with grass.

Giuliana wanted to measure the perimeter of the stems.

Colin wanted to measure with Popsicle sticks,

All three concluded that Rose's leaf is bigger than Noah's leaf.

Is it a maple leaf? Yes or No.

We did a survey and most of the children voted yes that Rose leaf was a maple leaf.

Rose also brought a long floral object. Roberto wanted to measure its length with Popsicle sticks.

Noah collected another leaf and measure its steam.

Ivy, Mahmoud, Ibrahim, Noah, Evallie, and Alessio collected real leaves and matched them with the picture that was closest in similarities.

We also looked at Rose rock and Evallie rocks and leaves and tried to identify their shapes.

Rose's rock:
Shape like a triangle (Rose)
Evallie`s rocks:
1. Shape like a circle (Ivy, Ava), a sphere (Kaitlyn).
2. Shape like an hexagon (Giuliana).
3. Shape like a pyramid (Giluliana). We counted the sides and decided it looks more like a pentagon.
 4. Shape like a triangle  (Ayvah).
5. Shape like ovals (Preston).

Rose, Evallie and I looked on the iPad to try to identify flowers.  We searched for Canadian Wild flowers and compared their flowers to pictures on the iPad. We found out that Rose flower is a red clover.  Evallie's purple flower is called a turfed vetch and her other flower a black eyed susan.

Here are pictures of those flowers found on the iPad:

Red Clover

Turfed Vetch

Black Eyed Susan

Evallie brought in another wild flower. The leaves and the purple flower helped us identified it as a purple violet. 

Purple Violet

Trick or Treat

This week, the children chose a name for our new classroom pet.  The children voted for their favourite name from a list of names they chose themselves. "Trick or Treat" is the name that got the most votes. 

Trick or Treat is swimming in his new home.

Names suggested by the children.

Trick or Treat is taking a nap.