A Walking Field Trip

To finish off our community unit we did a walking field trip of our local community!  We were welcomed by many businesses!  We saw so many things. . . . here we are investigating and learning about our local community.

 We actually got to go into the bank vault!

Learning all about the bank!

Have you ever wondered how they store all the food that appears on the shelves at the grocery store?  Behind the scenes at Safeway!

Learning all about how clothes get dry cleaned!

Off to the next store!

The pharmacy . .  we learned all about storing medicines safely and how people get their medicine.

Off to another business. . . .

The deli . . .   there were some delicious foods in there!

 Just before we were to go the library for our tour we came across a fire truck. . . it was so exciting.  They stopped to talk to us.  They gave us lots of information about fire safety.

 Some of us even got to go inside the truck!

Snack time before our library tour. . .

The fabulous librarian at Ocean Park Library.  She is an amazing storyteller. . .  If you ever have a chance to visit when she is there you are in for a real treat!

Checking out a book!

 Reading is always a favourite activity of ours!






















Thank you to all the business in Ocean Park who took the time to talk to us and teach us about their jobs!  We had a great time!

A Day of Fun!

Wednesday June 4th was our annual Sports Day!  Each year we choose a theme and this year it was PIRATES!  We started the day with a bike parade.  Anyone who wanted to decorate their bike and bring it to school could.  The rest of the school watched and cheered them on as they traveled around the school.  Here are three of our bikers!

Once the parade was over we met in our colour groups and shouted out our cheers!  Everyone in the school is on a colour team ~ purple, gold, white and black . . .  We dressed in those colours to show team spirit.

Black Thunder!

Purple Storm

White Blizzard

Gold Lightning ~ they sure have lots of  spirit!

Once the bike parade was over we broke into our stations to try out all the fantastic activities that the teachers had planned for us. . . .

Digging for a key to find the treasure!

Found the key . . . now let's hope it opens the treasure chest!

X marks the spot!

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Is that a cannon ball you had to carry?

Go Purple Go!

Another purple team member!

Everyone showed great sportsmanship and had a great time!  Thank you to all those who helped to make our sports day so much fun. 

Do you celebrate Sports Day at your school?  What kinds of things do you do?

Genuises at Work!

Many weeks ago we started our genius hour and we are almost finished!  Every Wednesday afternoon we meet with our buddies!   Before spring break we looked at questions and the difference between red light and green light questions.  Do you know the difference?

Red light questions are questions that make you stop and think, to ponder and to wonder.  Green light questions are questions that you can answer really quickly or that you can find the answer to easily.

After we did this we had to write as many questions about a basketball as we could think of. . . wow! did we ever have a lot of questions.  We then sorted our questions into red light and green light questions.  We also decided we needed a category that we could put questions in that weren't really relevant to our topic.  We called this the "Trash Can."













 Once we had a good understanding of questions and how they can help guide our learning we began to investigate our own wonders.  We started with a sheet to guide our thinking.

We had to choose a topic we were interested in and then begin to narrow our focus.  Once we had chosen our wonder topic and developed our guiding questions we began to research and find out the answers to our wonders.  Some of our topics included:  how to make glue, who would win. . .  a mandrill or a leopard, rock climbing, space, dolphins. . . And the list goes on and on!

We watched a short YouTube video made by a student explaining genius hour a bit more.  It reminded us that sometimes it can be hard work and that it doesn't always go like we planned.  We also got some ideas on how we might present our topic.  We are very excited to explore our wonders and can't wait to share them with everyone!  Here are some pictures of us working with our buddies!

Finding out how to rock climb safely and where you can do it!

Learning more about space. . . .

Researching how to make glue!

Lots of discussion between buddies!

 Learning all about Jupiter. . . they decided to make a model using plasticene and a poster to explain what they had learned.

Recreating the Battle of Gettysburg.  

Using the app Book Creator to make their own "Who Would Win Book"

Sometimes our little buddies teach our big buddies how to use the apps!

Life in the Knife

Teacher's note: This post is from our friends in the Great White North!  One of our projects this term was to learn about our community and compare it to a different one.  We decided to blog with the students of 3B in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (that's Mrs. Betts' daughter's class!). We sent them a blog post about life in Surrey(see our earlier blog post) and they replied by sending us this post about their community.  It sure sounds like a fascinating place to see!  We now plan to compare our community to theirs . .  looking for similarities and differences.  

Dene Culture

Dene people are a group of First Nations people who live in the NWT. Dene people like to live off the land, which means they go hunting for their food and make their own clothing. Dene people have many beliefs and stories that they share with us at school. We even have elders who come in to share their teachings with us. Dene people have their own games that they play with materials from the land. We had a few Dene adults come to our school to teach us some games. They taught us snow snake, which is a game where you throw a stick into the snow as far as you can (it wiggles along the ground like a snake). Another game they play is leg wrestling. This was one of our favourite games.

Fun Activities in Yellowknife

Yellowknife has similar activities to most cities. We like to play sports at our Multiplex or our Fieldhouse and go swimming at our swimming pool. In Yellowknife we do a lot of outdoor activities for fun as well. We have lots of trails and lakes. We go hiking and fishing in the summer. We love to go to the lake in the summer to swim, tube and hang out at the beach. In the winter the lakes freeze over so we go ice fishing and snowmobiling. We also go cross country skiing. Sometimes when it isn’t freezing cold we can play ice hockey on the lake!

Animals in our Community

We have a lot of the same animals that you find in BC. When we go on road trips out of Yellowknife we see a lot of Bison crossing the road. Bison are HUGE! We have to make sure that we stop for them or we will CRASH!! We also have lots of foxes in Yellowknife. They run across the street a lot. You can see them in backyards, forests and parks all the time. Ravens in Yellowknife are very annoying. They pick out your garbage and make a big mess! This sounds like raccoons that you have in Surrey! Ptarmigans are a type of bird. They are very hard to see in the winter. In the summer female Ptarmigans turn brown first to blend in to our rocks to hide from the predators and protect the babies. The males stay white to distract the predators.

Transportation

In Yellowknife we use cars and trucks to get around town. Yellowknife is very small and it only takes us about 10 minutes to get anywhere!! We use trucks in the winter to make sure we don’t get stuck in the snow. In the winter we have some unique ways of getting around. We use dogsleds and snowmobiles. They are very entertaining to ride! In Kindergarten we got to go to a dogsledding camp. It was a little chilly. There are also lots of boats and sea-doos in the summer.

Food in Yellowknife

We grow some food in our gardens, but most of our food comes from the grocery store. We have a few different grocery stores. Most of our food in our stores comes by trucks from suppliers in the south. We also get food from hunting and fishing. We can get nice pickerel and white fish from Great Slave Lake. Our class made Duck Soup a few weeks ago. The Ducks were hunted in Yellowknife and we made soup from the meat. 

Landscape and Weather in Yellowknife

In Yellowknife there are lots of rocks and trees. There is barely any grass. Our trees are short and skinny because our growing season is so short they don’t have a lot of time to get big like the trees in the south. In Yellowknife we can hunt in winter and summer. There are lots of things we can hunt like caribou, duck, ptarmigan and muskrat. In Yellowknife it is really cold in the winter. The temperature is around -30 degrees. Here we have indoor recess at 30 below (which means we have it A LOT!!). Spring comes very late. We usually still have frost in May. In Yellowknife we have a city garden in June. When you drive past it you can see lots of lettuce, sunflowers and all sorts of vegetables. 

Tourism in Yellowknife

People always come to Yellowknife to visit. Lots of people love to see the northern lights. There is a place called Aurora Village and you can go out to see the northern lights and go dogsledding and warm up by a fire. Other cool things to do in Yellowknife are travel on the Ice Road. The Ice Road is a road on Great Slave Lake that you can drive on to get to Dettah in the winter. It can be a scary feeling driving on the ice! Another reason people may come to visit Yellowknife is to go dogsledding. You can go on tours around Yellowknife on a dogsled or watch the dogsled races that take place. There are lots of other reasons to visit Yellowknife like fishing on Great Slave Lake, swimming and experiencing Dene Games! Yellowknife is awesome; you can even see Folk on the Rocks.

Festivals that happen around town!

There are lots of festivals in Yellowknife. Two of our favourites are Folk on the Rocks and the Long John Jamboree. Folk on the Rocks is a music festival that happens every summer. Musicians come from all over and some of our local musicians get to play too! We also have The Long John Jamboree. It is a winter festival. There are ice sculptures, a sugar shack, games and much more. At the sugar shack they pour maple syrup onto ice so it freezes to a Popsicle stick. It is delicious! The Long John Jamboree is one of the best festivals in the world.