Last week on our way to Garden View, we noticed that the helicopters from the maple trees were starting to sprout on the ground.
On our way back we collected 2 maple keys each so we could plant and observe them.
We stopped by to look at the maple keys again today and many of them have taken root in the ground.
I read “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” then “Chicka Chicka 1 2 3” to the class and we decided to do a coconut vs apple exploration. 
We used our 5 senses to explore both of them and we also decided to see if they would sink or float.
The kids each tried some coconut meat and coconut milk.
And of course some of the more familiar apple.
This led us to playing with our food and seeing what other items in our lunches would sink or float.
We talked quite a bit about an apple and a pear that were the exact same weight, but the apple floated while the pear sank.
We tried to think of reasons why this might happen such as weight and size. They weighed exactly the same (lucky coincidence!), but the pear was slightly smaller when we measured them using yarn. We even measured their stems!
Once we eventually cut them open ,we discovered that the pear seemed to be juicier. I was trying to figure out how to explain density and this seemed to be the simplest and easiest explanation of density to 5 and 6 year olds! This was a lot of fun and it really got them thinking about the scientific method without actually calling it that. It sounds like a lot of them came home talking about it too 🙂
Check out our hallway bulletin board and class door for some of the other little activities we did to tie into the Chicka Chicka theme.
Last week I brought in a pumpkin that I purchased at Centex. First we started off by brainstorming words to describe the outside of the pumpkin such as orange, green, smooth, bumpy.
Next we counted the number of lines around the outside of the pumpkin. Our pumpkin had 19 lines.
We also measured the height of the pumpkin using unifix cubes. It was 16 cubes tall.
Finally, before we cut into the pumpkin, we took a vote on whether the pumpkin would sink or float. Way more kids thought that big pumpkin would definitely sink, but it floated! 
I cut the pumpkin open under the document camera so all the kids could see what I was doing without gathering around me. We brainstormed words to describe the inside of the pumpkin such as orange, stringy, goopy. 
Our last job with the pumpkin was to scoop out all those seeds! I had a couple of little troopers who chose to get all those seeds out for me!
I soaked the seeds overnight and we roasted pumpkin seeds the next day. Before eating them we started counting them up to see how close we were with our estimating. The finally tally? 423! Not all kids wanted pumpkin seeds, but the ones that tried them said they were really good!
On Tuesday we made pumpkin scones (using canned pumpkin). Everyone helped out with some aspect of measuring and mixing and everyone loved them! We made a double batch and even had enough to have a second scone on Wednesday! I posted the pumpkin scone recipe in the Recipes section of the blog. 🙂
We did a little science experiment using leaves, rubbing alcohol, coffee filters and my Magic Bullet!
First we found as many different colours of leaves as we could on a nature walk. We ended up finding dark red, green, yellow and orange-brown. Next we took each separate colour and group by group put them in the cup for my Magic Bullet and I added rubbing alcohol. I turned on the Magic Bullet & chopped up the leaves.
We ended up with four beakers of chopped up leaves and added a coffee filter that just touched the top of the leaves.
We let them sit for a couple of days to see what would happen. We noticed that the colour of the leaves traveled up the coffee filter. Some leaves separated out into different colour bands. We’re going to try this again in the spring to see if we get the same results!
It was pretty chilly outside, but we had a lot of fun harvesting the carrots from the garden yesterday! Many students told me that they have helped out with harvesting fruits or vegetables from their home gardens. Some kids lost interest pretty quickly, but others were helping out until the very end! Some even asked if we could come out again to finish up 🙂 On Monday, the plan is to get back out there and divide up the potatoes and carrots so everyone in our school gets to take something home from our school’s first garden season!
Look at our dirty hands! Sorry about the dirty coats that came home! It was for a good cause!
We’ve gone on a number of nature walks to notice the signs of Fall or to collect leaves for our different classroom activities.
Walking with the grade 2s to find the colours of the rainbow.
On a neighbourhood walk to find leaves for our Fox Leaves art project.
Making patterns from objects in nature. So far we’re focusing on A-B patterns. Ask your child if they used size of leaf, type of leaf or leaf/pine cone for their pattern.
Mrs. Pakenham added sugar water and watermelon for the butterflies to drink and eat until we released them.
We took them out to the green house and said our goodbyes before Mrs. Pakenham set the net cage down inside.
Mrs. Walkley, a retired teacher, came to our school to present each class about agriculture. She started off by asking our class ‘What is agriculture?’ Some students knew it meant growing produce while others knew it meant raising animals.
Next Mrs. Walkley shared a cute story called ‘Mother Bruce’ about a bear that accidentally ends up raising ducks.
Then Mrs. Walkley asked us ‘What animals come from eggs?’ Today she brought eggs from birds. She showed us all the different kinds of eggs she brought with her while I showed the type of bird on the white board.
Quail
Guinea fowl
Chicken
Silkie
Turkey
Goose
Finally we got to touch and pass around some really big eggs! Mrs. Walkley said we could pass around these ones since the egg shell is thicker and less likely to break when we touched them.
Emu
Ostrich
Since there wasn’t a lot of action with our butterflies, we took both K classes down into the Lois Creek trails to go on a Bug Hunt. Students partnered up between our two classes to find four different types of bugs. They could draw the bug and, if they felt like challenging themselves, start to sound out the name of the bug, too!
A couple of interesting and colourful little bugs.
Mrs. Keiver shared Eric Carle’s story of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” using puppets. Each student got to hold a different piece of food that the caterpillar ate in the story while Mrs. Keiver acted out the part of the caterpillar. The kids loved it! There was a lot of giggling!
The caterpillar
The chrysalis
The butterfly!
