Our Field Trip to the Vancouver Aquarium!

Last week we went to the Vancouver Aquarium!  We traveled by bus and many of us thought it was a long way!  Once we arrived we met with our guide for our "Staying Alive" program.  Celine and several volunteers began by talking about animal adaptations with us.  We learned that animals need four things to survive: food, water, oxygen and shelter.

 We also talked about the many body parts that animals have that help them adapt and survive in their environment.  Next we split into three groups.  Each group got their own tour guide!  We got to tour many exhibits, learning about specific animals and how they adapt to their environment.  We learned about the beluga whale, the sea otter, the sea turtle and sea urchins! 

 Celine let us try on a turtle shell!  It sure was hard and heavy!

 Learning about animals and how they adapt to their environment.

Did you know that the beluga has bumps on its back to help it break the ice so it can get up to the surface to breathe.  It also has a blow hole on the top of its head so it doesn't have to turn its nose up to the surface to get air!  

 We also learned a lot about the sea otter.  Do you know why sea otters make so many splashes?  They are creating bubbles that they trap underneath their fur which helps them stay warm.  They also have molars in the back of their mouth to help them eat sea urchins (which is their favourite food!)

 The sea otter also has LOTS of fur.  We pressed our thumb into a sea otter pelt and Celine told us that their were more hairs underneath our thumb than we had on our whole head!!!!!!  That's a lot of fur - another way for them to stay warm.

 After our tour we had some time to explore the many fascinating exhibits and animals in the Aquarium.

 The jelly fish were amazing to watch.  They were so peaceful.

 The colours in the tropical exhibits were stunning.

One of our favourite activities was the "touch" pool.  Everything felt so different than what we thought it would feel like.

Some of us even got our faces painted!

Back at school we webbed all the things we learned and then wrote about our trip.  Mrs. Betts was very impressed with what we had learned! 

Have you ever been to the Vancouver Aquarium?  Do you have a favourite exhibit?

Building Our Number Sense!

Last week we practiced making numbers in different ways!  We used our place value blocks and our recording mats to show our thinking!

Mrs. Betts wrote the learning intention for the lesson on the board. This made it easier for us to know what we were to be able to do after the lesson was over.


When we met as a group after the lesson many of us felt very successful and thought we had met the learning intention.

Did you know you could represent one number in so many ways?

The Spaceship Has Landed!

On Monday we visited the STEAM room -that's a room that involves using science, engineering, technology, art and math thinking to create, build, design things.  Our challenge today was to create a spaceship to safely land a person (which was a raw egg!) on the ground when it was dropped from space (a ladder).   The students were very excited to accept this challenge. We started by choosing a partner to work with and then creating a plan on paper of how we wanted our spaceship to look and what we thought would help keep our astronaut safe -which means we didn't want our egg to break!

Once our plan was sketched out we chose what materials we wanted to use to build our spaceship. The ideas were flowing! There was lots of designing, redesigning and testing of ships (without the egginside) going on.

Once everyone was finished designing their spaceship the testing began.  Mrs. Soo stood at the top of the ladder and dropped each spaceship.  The students were excited to see if their person (the egg) survived the landing!  Some students were very upset that their person crashed!

 I think their plan worked!

Do you think their plan worked?


Tomorrow we are going to review what we learned with Mrs. Soo.  I wonder if anyone would change their plan after doing this once.  Can you think of why some landed safely and others didn't?