Week 38

As school is quickly winding down for the year, these last weeks have been jam packed with super fun activities! This week was no exception! Take a look at the awesome stuff we did!

Field Trip:

On Thursday we went on an exciting field trip, we finally went to The Calgary Zoo! We have been learning all about animals, their life-cycles, habitats and much more, so this was another great learning experience for us. It was a great opportunity to learn more about some of the animals that we have been learning about. We saw LOTS of animals including lions, red pandas, the dinosaurs, butterflies and much more. Some of us even saw our favorite animals!

Look closely... you might find a Mrs. Persaud in the enclosure!

Like mother, like daughter!

Run!!!! T-Rex!!

Some of us became paleontologists in the dinosaur park!

We got to see the pandas at the Panda Passage! This was very exciting to see the new additions to The Calgary Zoo. The pandas came from The Toronto Zoo, but originally they were all the way from China. They eat lots of bamboo and we even saw their poop.. it was filled with bamboo they had eaten. Some of us saw the pandas when they were wide awake and others saw them when they were being quite lazy and sleeping!

Some of us had some time before they went to see the pandas so we played around in the grass to burn off some energy! We played tag, did some jumping jacks and some of us did some gymnastics.

A friend in our class was VERY lucky and found money on the ground in one of the exhibits.... he hit the jackpot and he found $10!!! Go K!

We took turns exploring the zoo, going to a program and visiting the pandas. For the program we got to go to the Eco Lab and take part in a program that was called Flippers, Feathers and Tuxedos. This is where we learned all about the penguins, as well as some other animals. We know that penguins are part of the bird animal family. We know this because they have feathers! We learned there there are 5 different kinds of penguins at the zoo. There are the Northern and Southern Rock Hoppers, King, Humbolt and Gentoo penguins. As we were learning all about the different kinds of penguins, some of our friends from our classroom got to come up and get dressed up like the different penguins. We got to learn about each of the different types - we even found out that some of the penguins can be very bossy!

We also learned that penguins and polar bears do not live together. We were very surprised to learn this! One lives in the Northern Hemisphere and the other lives in the Southern Hemisphere. Penguins do not pass the equator on their own, unless they are coming to the zoo.

This was a very chatty bird that enjoyed being in the program with us!

Inside this program there were a bunch of stations that we circulated around. Here is a description of the stations that we got to take part in:

- The first station was were we were learning more about the five different types of penguins and about the life cycle. We had to match the different stages of the life cycles with the corresponding penguin that it belonged to. We learned that the penguins use their flippers to keep their eggs warm. When one of the penguins is eating, the other one is warming the eggs. When they switch, they use their flippers to transfer from one penguin to another. We had the chance to try and balance a replica penguin egg - we tried transferring it from one person to another using our "flippers." This was very difficult!

- The next station was the measuring station. We measured how long our strides were and our wingspan, and how high we can jump! We found out that some of us are taller than the Rockhoppers jump!

- Another station was where we were learning all about predators and prey of the penguins. We wanted to see if a fishing net or fishing rod was better so to learn more about this we got to use mini fishing rods and nets to see what animals would be captured if these tools were used. The fishing rods were better because it only caught fish and not the other animals. But still, this could be bad because if there was overfishing then the penguins would not have any food to eat.

- Another station we got to go to was where you had to guess the animals flippers. You had to match which flipper we believed to match with the right penguin.

- The last station we had to find out what penguins would think about some things such as overfishing, krill, sharks, clean water etc.  We put them into three different categories. The categories were: Is dangerous? Is this good? and what is this?

At this station we also got to play a matching game. This was a memory game where we picked up two cards at a time to see if they matched, if they didn't we would put it back down and then try to remember the matches. We played this in partners and tried to see how many matches we could get!

Science:

Last week we had the computers and we got to do research for an individual research project. Everyone got a different animal from one of the six animal groups (mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish or birds). This week we started working on our informational posters! We took all the information we gathered from our research and we transferred the information on to posters. All of them are very unique and they look amazing!

We had buddies Friday! We shared our informational posters with our buddies. Earlier this month we helped them with some research they were doing so this time we got to share our research guides and posters with them.  It was so much fun sharing the information we learned about our unique animals with them. We also got to share with them about our trip to the zoo, then they shared with us more about their research and the books they created as well as about the butterflies they have in their classroom!

Social Studies:

We finished up our "A Day in the Canadian Life" writing pieces. We wrote about a typical day in our life. We wrote about our routine, foods we eat, people in our family, how we get to school, what we do at school and celebrations that our family takes part in. After we wrote our first draft in our notebooks, we typed it out. We also drew pictures to go along with our writing pieces. Some of us chose to draw self portraits and some of us chose to draw a scene with some very Canadian things such as Tim Hortons, maple syrup, hockey and some famous landmarks.

We started watching a movie in Social Studies, it is called On the Way to School. It is all about how students around the world get to school. We have been learning about how kids in Tunisia, India, Peru and Ukraine get so school so this was a great movie to connect with what we have been learning about in class. We have learned that people get to school very differently than us, and their lives can be very different than ours in Canada. Some of us do not have access to clean water like us, this made us very thankful to have access to clean water. We learned that some kids around the school travel very dangerous routes to get to school and some even take 4 hours to get to school... one way!!!! It was very eye opening to watch this video. We were able to make some connections and think about the similarities and differences to our own lives and our school days.

Next up, we are going to be exploring more about the four communities that we have been learning about and write from their perspective about a day in their life!

  

Language Arts:

We had our last ICNR visit this week. It was a very special last visit as the Village Square library were so generous and gave us each a book to keep. The police officers also came and had a surprise for us. We got to go into the police truck! They let us go in the back seat, also in the front where we got to look at their laptop.. they even turned on the lights and sirens! Miss Klem and Miss Kolb got handcuffed!

First we signed some books for the 911 Dispatcher Tara and our constable Kim! We loved having them come into the classroom this year to read to us and teach us about being safe as well as a little bit more about what it's like to be a police officer!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Miss Kolb was away on Friday, we had a special guest, Miss Tuplin that came in to spend the morning with us :)

A reminder: Please look high and low for our library books. They are now overdue. We have lots of friends that have many CJFS library books that need to be returned. Also, if you have any Village Square library books, they are overdue as well. Please return them to the school ASAP! 

We finished up our symmetry art this week! We have them hanging up out on our bulletins outside of our classroom. They look amazing!

We have only a one and a half weeks left of school! Can you believe it? That means that next week is our last full week of school together.

Until next time,

Love,

Room 7&8

PS. Little friends are out in full force on our school field, watch your step!