Christmas

Christmas Countdown


Christmas is almost here! If you are interested in tracking Santa on his trip around the world, here's a link to the official NORAD Santa Tracking site: NORAD tracks Santa

I hope everyone has a great holiday! See you in the New Year!

The Nutcracker and Other Fun

It's been quite the busy couple of weeks for our class. Last Friday we attended The Nutcracker  performed by the Royal City Youth Ballet.



We've been working on our Christmas art. Check out the intricate snowflakes created by Division Five students hanging above the Santas.



Tomorrow students will preform our holiday play which they've been working on for the last several weeks. It's always amazing to see it all come together.

Next week we should be finishing up our Science projects. Check back to see some projects posted to our blog.

More Britannia Mine Pictures

Here are some more Britannia Mine pictures. Thank you so much to the parents who took the pictures and emailed them to me!

This is a dinosaur footprint fossil. If you look closely in the upper left corner, you'll also see the imprint of a leaf.

The pictures above and below are of the mill. This is the building that looks like steps that you can see from the road.

Mineral samples.

The metal structure shows the atomic structure of a diamond.

Today's trip to the Britannia Mine Museum was fun and informative.  Students were able to view and touch mineral and rock samples, travel on a mine train through a preserved stretch of tunnel in the old mine and peek into the old mill.
A highlight for me was learning about the conditions miners used to work in before electric light was readily available in the mine. The picture below shows the mine all lit up, but the guide turned out all the lights and held up only one candle to show students what it was like for miners when the mine first opened. Until he lit the candle, I truly couldn't see my hand in front of my face!

More pictures will be posted next week.

Thank you so much to all the parent volunteers!

Field trips are one of my favorite parts of teaching. I love seeing how excited students get when experiencing learning in an authentic environment. Unfortunately, we can't go everywhere during the school year since we have to get our classroom work done, too. If you are looking for something to do, the Pacific Museum of Earth located at UBC also houses a collection of mineral and fossil samples. In a separate room, the Pacific Museum of Earth houses a giant globe which shows pre-recorded information such as weather patterns. The museum is small (about the size of large lobby plus the extra room for the globe) but if you are heading towards UBC anyway, it might be worth looking at. Admission is by donation. Pacific Museum of Earth

More Word Problem

Today's word problems:

Kevin went to the store.

He had to park his car.

In the parking lot there were 10 rows of spots. There were 14 spots in each row.

49 spots were full.

How many spots were empty?

In the store, Kevin bought:

·         Milk $3.59

·         Eggs $2.99

·         Bread $4.25

·         Butter $6.75

About how much did he spend?

He paid with a $20 bill.  About how much was his change?

Science

Last week, one of our students brought in a number of rocks for students to study. Many of these rock samples held fossils. Students spent their science time breaking rocks apart with hammers, cleaning up the the samples and studying the fossils they found. The following pictures show some of the students as they worked through the project.  A great big THANK YOU to Evan and his family for donating the rocks and materials!

More pictures will follow.

Little Brown Bat unit

Over the month of October, our class and our buddy class have been learning about the little brown bat in the library, classroom and community through our Stanley Park Ecology Society field trip.

Last week, the two classes used their notes from our various lessons to help create a Little Brown Bat Glog. A glog is an online poster. Check it out at this link!   Little Brown Bat