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.

Hansel and Gretel

Our mats arrived in a very big box and of course we wanted to turn the box into something fun. We decided to have the children recreate the setting of the Story Hansel and Gretel.

We started by reading part of the story. We stopped when the children were left in the woods for the second time, and the birds ate the bread crumbs. We asked the children to make a prediction on what would happen next. Here are the children predictions:

Mahmoud: "Mom will be angry because kids came back and were hungry."
Ava: "They will come to a candy house."
Rachel: "They will get lost. They will not be able to find a way back to their house."
Roberto: "Hansel and Gretel will be lost...they will not be able to find their way back home."
Steven: "Birds will eat the bread crumbs. Children will not be able to their way back home."
Clara: "The birds ate the crumbs. Children were lost in the woods."
Krishna: "Children will go to the witch's home."
Anthony: "Children will not find way home because birds will eat the crumbs."
Joanna-Lee: "Parents will be back to pick up children."
Giuliana: "Children will find their way home."
Colin: "Mom is going to get lost too."
Alessio: "Children will find their way home."
Kaitlyn: "Children will get lost. They will not be able to find their way back home."
Preston: "Birds ate the crumbs. Children will be lost."
Ivy: "Children will sleep."

We finished reading the story.  We talked about the story being real of not real (fictitious). The children said it was not real. Here are their reasons.

Giuliana: Witches do not exist.

Preston: House made of candies does not exist.

When asked if the story reminded them of another story, they responded:

"The Three Little Pigs" because in the story the wolf tried to eat the little pigs. In Hansel and Gretel the Old Lady (witch) tries to eat the children.  Furthermore, the wolf burned his tail and ran all the way home, and in Hansel and Gretel the Old Lady was pushed in the oven, burned herself and ran away (we changed the ending to make it more appropriate to the children's age). Ava mentioned that it reminded her of "The Old Lady that Swallowed a Fly". Joanna-Lee said that in both stories there was an Old Lady. Roberto found that it reminded him of the story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" because Goldilocks was trying to find something to eat.

The next day, we had the children creating the setting (where is the story happening?) of the story. The children said that they needed a candy house, a hen house where the children were kept prisoner, and trees because the story happened in the forest.  Here is the setting created by the children with the help of our co-op student, Beth.

Noah is gluing candies on the house

Steven is adding trees

The hen house

Being Thankful

For Thanksgiving the children were encouraged to write or draw what they were thankful for:

Our class collected 32 items for the Food Drive

Some children made posters for our Food Drive.

Volcano

During our Dinosaur inquiry the children demonstrated an interest in learning how to make a volcano. We asked the children if anyone wanted to share with their friends how to make a volcano.  Clara and Roberto demonstrated with their body how a volcano erupts. After more discussion, the children mentioned that a volcano is a mountain of rocks with a hole from which lava comes out during an eruption. We explained that we would create an eruption by mixing baking soda, dish soap, food coloring and adding vinegar to the mixture.  We went outside to the sand box, the children built volcanoes using sand. They created an eruption by putting a container containing the mixture of baking soda in the hole of their volcano and by pouring vinegar in the mixture. We brought out dinosaur figurines so the children could develop their pretend play.

To learn more about our Dinosaur inquiry go under the tab Our Inquiries.

Here is a video of a dinosaur dance that the children have been enjoying.  Ask your child to dance for you! 

The children also created their own dinosaur dance. We asked the children if they had any suggestion for a song and Colin suggested they dance to "I Like To Move It" from the movie Madagascar. Not every children wanted to dance so we gave them the choice of playing the drums or singing the song. Some wanted to do it all!! The videos for those who decided to perform are in their ePortfolios,

Construction Vehicles

To learn more about construction, we had the children look at pictures and watch videos of vehicles and other equipment used on construction sites in the school neighborhood.  We talked about the function of those construction vehicles and equipment.  I know that Kaitlyn`s home is under renovation so I asked her parents if they had pictures to share with the class.  Here are the pictures and a video.

Dumpster

Cement Truck

Go Hut

 Construction has also been going on around the school. Here are pictures and a video of two construction sites.

Here is a video of a construction vehicle working in front of the school.  

Construction vehicule in action

Construction

Last week, we had taken a construction table out to see if the children would be interested in playing with the tools. The children seemed to enjoy the table so we decided to extend the activity by turning the house into a construction site. We added an activity of Screws and Bolts, some wood, poly-b piping and cones. The children said that they needed hard hats, vests and tool belts to wear. We talked about safety signs that can be found on a construction site. Roberto, Preston and Colin wanted to make stop signs, and Noah made a No Children Allowed sign. We decided to have a site manager. His or her job consisted of making sure that workers signed in for work and that the safety rules, that we wrote together, were respected. We also had the children write popcorn words to put on the wood blocks that we added to our construction site.

Our construction site.

Joanna-Lee, Giuliana and Ava are writing popcorn words for our wood blocks.

Krishna is making a tool sign to identify where to put tools during tidy-up time.

Noah`s No Children Allowed sign

Making patterns with screws and bolts.

Savera is making a tool belt.

Taylen is our site manager. He is making sure workers are signing up for work.