This week in Lakeshore the grade 7/8 class had 5 days of anticipation for Halloween, an event scheduled for next week on Tuesday. In other news instead of having a spelling test, we wrote horror stories to share with the class on the following Monday and Tuesday to get in a thematically appropriate mood for…
Month: October 2017
Novel Study and Clubs
This week we did a lot of work on our novel study, Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin. On Monday we were given our books and our reader response journals. We read the Prologue and answered questions about the stanza from Langston Hughes’s poem that J.H.G included in the start of his book.…
Special Visitors in Our Classroom
Special Visitors in Our Classroom
The Grade 1/2 students have recently enjoyed several presentations by special guests. Fire fighter Clinton taught us about fire safety. We learned how to stop, drop, and roll, and how to stay low and get out in case of a fire. We made fire escape plans with our families and marked our emergency exits and safe meeting places at home.
Mrs. Prasad visited to share information about Diwali. We learned about the celebrations and traditions of the festival of light, and sampled some of her delicious cooking! We love having visitors in our classroom! Would you like to visit us?
Science is Fun!
In Science we have been learning about Soils. We have been exploring the different layers of soils, and we did an experiment where we used food to represent the different layers of the soil. We had a lot of fun doing this experiment!!
This week we did another experiment where we learned about where water travels inside soil. We used water, rocks, and soil and explored ground water, and precipitation. We observed how the soil absorbed the water and noticed that some of the soil was dry the next day.
We have a lot of fun doing our science experiments!
The Grade 3/4’s
Level Up: Junior Scientists
As part of our expanded Creative Campus after school programs, some of our Grade 2 and 3 students are working on science experiments using easily-obtained kitchen supplies. Our focus for the past few sessions has been Atmospheric Pressure, Acids and Bases, and Chemical Reactions.
Hot water from a kettle heats up the air inside a plastic bottle, and adds water vapour into the air. When you seal the bottle and put it in ice water, the water vapour condenses and the air cools down, creating a smal vaccuum inside the bottle. Here, the bottle is being sucked in by the vaccuum.
Vinegar reacts with the calcium carbonate in an egg’s shell to create little bubbles of carbon dioxide as it dissolves the shell. After 24 hours of soaking in vinegar, a raw egg’s shell is fully dissolved and it feels soft when you touch it. The egg’s membrane is surprisingly strong!
Vinegar also has a chemical reaction with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and reacts very strongly by making lots of fizzy bubbles containing carbon dioxide. We performed several experiments with carbon dioxide gas (CO2) such as extinguishing a candle and blowing up balloons.
We also used pH strips and Red Cabbage Indicator to investigate kitchen chemicals and classify them as Acids or Bases. We learned that acids and bases react with each other and some can make very poisonous gases!
The next few sessions of Level Up: Junior Science will investigate things that float, and how ships sink!
INTO THE CORN!!!
On Friday, October the 13th, the entire school travelled to Wolfe Island to the very windy corn maze. We started the journey by venturing onto the ferry where we all got a bit wet because the waves were so strong. We decided to go inside the ferry to enjoy the sights and the waves behind…
Hiking and the Corn Maze
In this class blog I’m going to tell you about the trip to Frontenac Park that the 7/8 class went on last week and the corn maze trip that the whole school went on. The hike in to Campsite 8 where we where staying was usually 2 Km, but we took the 12 Km route instead. We stopped multiple times for water breaks. When we stopped at campsite 12, we did some water color painting and filtered more water for the hike ahead. We took our time hiking in and got to camp site 8 at around 2 pm. When we got to camp, we put our packs, which had all of our gear, in the tents. Then we just hung out around the campground until it was dinner time. Dinner was fajitas. Once we had all had dinner, we filled our water bottles up and had smores around the fire until it was time to go to bed. In the morning the forecast was for rain at lunchtime, so we left camp at about 10 O’clock in the morning. Since we didn’t know what the weather was going to be like, we took the 2 Km hike out and did more watercolor painting at campsite 11. After campsite 11 it was about a 30-minute hike out. Once we had hiked out, we got in the trucks, got ice cream, and went back to the school.
The next week we went to the corn maze on Wolfe Island. We left school at around 8:45 and got to the corn maze at about snack time. After we had a snack, the owner of the corn maze told us the rules and gave us walkie-talkies so we could communicate when we were in the maze. We split into different groups. The primary classes split into groups with teachers and so did the 5 /6 class. The 7/8 class split up into two groups. We got walkie talkies and went into a different maze that had 26 wrong ways rather than 12 wrong ways which is where the primary classes went. It took the 7/8 class about 30 minutes to complete the whole maze. The primary class took a bit longer. When we all finished the maze, we all had lunch and then got to see the two goats and rabbits that were at the farm. Once we’d seen the animals, we found out that the ferry had been backed up by an ambulance call. So, we had to leave right away, and we barely caught the ferry. When we were on the ferry, we got to go up to the top section of the boat and see the view. We also got splashed by the waves on the boat.
By Anders
Falling Into Fall!
Fall is here, and we have been busy exploring it! We have been talking about all of the changes that are beginning to happen and the changes that will be happening in the next few weeks.
We started with Thanksgiving. We discussed what being thankful means and brainstormed things that we could be thankful for. We had some great things to be thankful for! We made placemats and wrote down what we were most thankful for.
Then, we made turkeys for Thanksgiving!
We visited Little Cat Creek for the last fall session. Queen Autumn came out to join us and shared some autumn tea. We climbed on rocks and went for a beautiful autumn hike. What a gorgeous day!
We played some fun fall games in Math, focusing on shapes, measurement, and counting skills.
We learned a poem called Dingle, Dangle Scarecrow and made scarecrow masks . Each child had a turn pointing to the words as we learned the poem. We also picked out words that we already knew to help us read the poem.
We went on a fall hunt to find any signs of fall.
Lastly, we went on a trip to the corn maze! We took a ferry, completed a corn maze, petted a few bunnies, had a snack, ate a picnic lunch, and learned about corn. When we returned back to school, we coloured a corn picture and practiced copying the sentence under the picture. It was a great day!
The Kindergarten Class
We Are In The Corn Maze!!
We were in a Corn Maze, and we GOT LOST!!! This week we went to the Corn Maze on Wolfe Island. On our way to the corn maze, we were able to look at the Kingston skyline from the Wolfe Island Ferry. When we we arrived at the corn maze, we went through the small…
Week 5 Academics!
After an action packed 4th week of school and returning from our backpacking trip, week 5 proved to be a bit more normal where we really focused on school work and moving ahead in our studies. In Science, we explored satellites in the solar system, and completed an internet scavenger hunt to find out more…