Bike Trip to the Gallery

Habitats Games

Between the lessons in class, our trip to MacSkimming and getting to watch some clips of Planet Earth, room 310 is fast becoming experts on animal habitats. 

Today in the lab you will get a chance to look at some fun online games to help us show what we've learned so far, and to help us learn some new things about habitats.

Where do I live? challenges you to choose where in the world a variety of animals live. Think about what you know about the animals, even if you don't know all that much. Where do you think they would be able to survive and thrive?

Build a Habitat gives you a chance to change the vegetation, precipitation, biome and animal selected to create a perfect match. Pay attention to the compatibility scale to see how you are doing?

After trying out the first two games, take a look at Catch the Moment. This game gives you the chance to try to take perfect pictures of animals in their own habitats. Be sure to read the instructions so you know how to operate your virtual camera.

Take a moment at the end of the lab time to post a comment on which game you enjoyed the most and why.

Have fun!

MacSkimming

This past Thursday, the grade fours and fives went to MacSkimming at Forest Edge. They had many fun activities planed for us. The grade fours were focusing on habitats and the grade fives were working on mapping grounds.

The grade fours started of by playing a really fun game called Predator and Prey. The whole class really enjoyed it even the teachers and parent volunteers got involved. The class split up into three kinds of consumers [herbivores, omnivores and carnivores]. The adults got to play the role of poachers, natural disasters and minivans! Owen had a little too much fun getting to hunt all the consumers!

After playing Predator and Prey we did a salamander search. Our instructor at MacSkimming, Marni, told us that salamanders live in damp areas under logs. Salamanders are unique because they have such small habitats. They spend their whole life within a 2 meter area. We found salamanders, toads, frogs, millipedes and lots of fun!

After a quick lunch we went to the wetlands dock to catch a whole bunch of aquatic creatures. Things that we found included: tadpoles, predacious diving beetles, leeches, water spiders and much more.

We also had a chance to catch some other creatures. We went into an open field with lots of tall grass and used big butterfly nets to catch lots of insects. Before heading into the field, Martha transformed into a giant insect with wings, compound eyes, a thorax and antennae.

We want to say a big thank you to all the parent volunteers and to our great instructor, Marni.

Division practice

We have been working really hard on division recently. Being able to multiply numbers quickly really makes division easier and more enjoyable. Today in the lab, you can take a few minutes after completing IXL to check out these multiplication games.

Folk Art Vernissage

For the past month, our class has been working on our folk art paintings. We are very thankful for all the effort that Lyne has put into helping us and showing us the process of this wonderful type of art. All of the students worked very hard on their paintings, and the class truly enjoyed the time.

Before even picking up a brush, we learned all about the history of Canadian folk art and about folk art of today. Folk art is art created by untrained artists, like us. It is often inspired by nature and the personal interests of the artist. We took time to draw out a plan for our paintings. Our plans included both the foreground, middle ground and background. While we were drawing our plans, we took time to think about colour choice, use of patterns and subject matter. We learned about the different themes of folk art; whimsical, realistic, humourous, fantasy and tells a story.

To begin our paintings, we each started with a piece of plywood. We sanded down the boards and covered them with gesso. We used a sponge brush to paint our base colour before we were able to paint our background. Then we painted another layer for our background, middle ground, and foreground, all the while using our drawings to guide us. After that we started adding more detail and colours and our paintings started to come to life!☻

When we finished our paintings and had our vernissage and ate our fill of snacks, then we became true artists! We are very thankful to Lyne and all of the parents who came to our vernissage. Without them it would not have been as big of a success!

Making sense of food labels

Here is the video about food labels. Use the information in the article and the video to complete the Google Form that has been sent to your email.

Nutrition Games

Here are a few games you can play to help remember what we have been learning in Health these days

Kids Health - What Kids Say About What They Eat

Take some time in the lab today to read this article about healthy eating for kids.

Kids Health

Today in the lab we will be taking another look at a great website that answers all kinds of questions about how kids can stay healthy. You will use this website to answer the questions that have been sent to you on the Drive as a Google Form.

After completing your form, you can return to the blog and continue on to the online measurement games posted below.

Measurement games

In order to get more comfortable with our different units of measurement, take some time to explore these great online measurement games.

Given the fact that we have started our measurement unit with Linear Measurement, be sure to start with Metric Length and Ruler Game- Metric.

Stop Motion

We had such a great time on Thursday at our Stop Motion Film Festival.  For those of you who were not able to see the film at the Mayfair or at Nepean, here is a link to see the video from the comfort of your own home!

Simplifying Fractions Video

Today in the lab you will start by watching this great video on simplifying fractions. After you have watched the video, you can continue to complete the fractions activities on IXL. At 10:55 you can choose to keep working on IXL or you can spend some time on typing web.


Fractions in lowest terms: Fractions in lowest terms

Interactive Fraction Number Line

We have started working with fractions in math. Take a look at this great helpful tool for understanding equivalent fractions.

Study Jams

Today in class we took some time to look at a great resource for reviewing some multiplication facts at home. Understanding multiplication really makes understanding factors much simpler.

Looking at FACTORS

This is a wonderful video to help explain the concept of factors. After beginning to look at decimals last week we will be starting to look at fractions. Understanding factors makes fractions SO much easier to grasp.

Finding factors of a number: Finding Factors of a Number

symmetry game

test out your knowledge of symmetry with this little game

Stop Motion Movie Madness

Take a look at some of these amazing stop motion films to get inspired for our own stop motion.

Post a comment below telling us what you liked about the videos and why you like it!

Living Museum 2014 -

This year's Living Museum was very successful. Last Thursday, January 30th, the students from grades 4, 5 and 6 turned the gym into a time machine to teach people about how our characters lived in societies of the past. All of the students were very engaged and clearly learned a great deal of information about their topics.

Each group had a board with information and images of their subjects. As well, students dressed up in character to teach audiences about different time periods.

Participants thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and our visitors seemed VERY impressed. Our class is already looking forward to next year!


Below you can find a link to Kate Settle's photos of the museum as well as some other photos below.
Kate's Dropbox photos