Chicks, Cedars and Ribbons

Here are a few photos from yesterday (I didn't have time to post...)

Today, we had some special visitors. The classes in the open area outside or classroom has been hatching chicks and some of them came to say hello to our class today.

We let them explore our carpet for a while.

We loved watching them experience new things for the first time.

We have been talking and learning about Aboriginal people and their traditional ways of life. In doing so, we learned about the cedar tree and its importance. We learned that cedars were used to build homes, canoes, to make clothing, baskets, sleeping mats, and bowls. Cedar is used to carve totems and decorative items. 

We went on a cedar walk today, learning how to identify a cedar. We found several on and around our school grounds. First we looked at the bark and noticed that it is stringy.

Then we looked at the branches, we noticed that the foliage is flat and smooth and kind of shiny.

Then we looked through the forest to see if we could find any more cedars.

We know this isn't a cedar, but it was interesting for other reasons. We talked about what could have created these holes and patches. Some of us thought it might have been a beaver, others thought it was a woodpecker. Through lots of questioning and wondering, we came to the conclusion that it must have been a woodpecker or other similar bird. 

We also noticed fungi on the forest floor.

We found a "baby" cedar and rubbed the leaves and then smelled our fingers to see what a cedar smells like.

We found cones on a cedar tree and talked about the fact that they are not called pine cones when they are on a cedar tree, they are called cedar cones. We talked about why trees have cones, what their important job is....

We found this tree in Gerry's garden and noticed that the leaves look very much like a cedar's. We examined all of the other aspects of the tree (shape, bark, cones, smell) and decided that this is not a cedar.

Two viking ships!

We had our first Km Club ribbon ceremony today. Everyone in our class received a 10km ribbon! Sorry for the blurry picture, I was trying to be quick....maybe too quick!

Have a great weekend! Next Tuesday is class and school panorama photo day.

Watching things explode

Today, the grade 7s were learning about different scientific properties and they were seeing what happens when dry ice and water are mixed together in a closed container (spoiler: the pressure builds until the container explodes). We went outside to watch, from a safe distance of course!

The top picture shows the plastic water bottle that is about to explode (not easy to see in the photo).

Here we are watching

another bottle

Then we moved to another section and watched what happened when another bottle was submersed in water. It was difficult to take a photo, but I did take a video. I have posted it below but I'm not sure it will work here (?)

A Whole Lot of Easter

This morning, as part of our arrival activities, we could choose to decorate and paint an Easter egg. I was amazed by the time, care and detail that the kids put into this activity. Not everyone chose to do this but everyone was engaged in interesting and focused work this morning!

We all made little Easter bunnies to bring home. The kids had to cut and glue and draw on a face. They were able to remember and follow all the steps to create sweet little bunnies. Please check your child's home envelope to take a closer look. Also in the home envelope today is your child's finished "Hello Spring, Goodbye Winter" booklet. We completed them today and I was, again, very impressed with everyone's effort!

We also had a guest reader come to our class today to share an Easter story with us. He did a fantastic job!

More Easter egg decorating at Centre Time.

Have a lovely long weekend! It sounds like lots of you have exciting plans!