Grade 5 & 6 Class Blog: Joseph

Friday, 1 May 2015

Nerd Day.....'Cause We're just cool like that!

Or maybe not so cool......but we had a lot of fun!!

--Miss Leonard

Cup Tower Challenge

50 cups. 8 minutes.

Who can make the tallest tower......?

The winner....17 cups high....

Which of these four groups do you think was the winner?

--Miss Leonard

Vancouver Aquarium Field Trip #3

Our last field trip this year was to the Vancouver Aquarium. We left the school early and started our program as soon as we arrived at the aquarium. In groups, the students got to learn about, touch, and perform some experiments with sea urchins (Experiments with no harm to the animal, of course!). Some students tested whether the creatures preferred light or darkness. Some found out sea urchin food preferences. The coolest thing was touching the urchins! Pinkies only, please!
Here, Tory enjoys touching the spiny creature! Everyone expected them to be slimy, but they were not gross at all!

This group listens attentively; and below, you can see our instructor and some of the aquarium volunteers reviewing the scientific method with the students.

Jeremiah posed with a magnifying glass, looking very official!

After our classroom experience, we went on to the Wet Lab. Here, there were four tanks, each with a different variety of creature. As the students visited each tank with their aquarium volunteer, they got to learn about and touch creatures in each of the tanks.

All of our volunteers were very good. They were very interesting and kept everyone very engaged in learning about the underwater animals.

After about an hour in the Wet Lab, it was time for the class to explore the aquarium! Each group could pick the parts of the aquarium to explore and what shows they wanted to see. I think the favorites were the 4-D show (Which I loved as well!), the dolphin show, and the beluga show. Here are Zack and Justin in the 4-D show with their awesomely cool glasses!

The Amazon display with all manner of snakes, frogs, and spiders was another favorite. Above, Gideon checks out one of the frog displays.

The day was over all too soon, and we headed back to BCA. Everyone had a great time and wrote the next day in their school journals that it was an awesome day and on of the highlights of our year.

A special thank you to our parent drivers and to the students who were so enthusiastic and represented our school so well.

--Miss Leonard

Sunday, 15 February 2015

New Pen License Awards

Congratulations to these three students: Gabe, Joseph, and Tory. They have been working for a year to earn their pen license. Due to their neat work and excellent penmanship, these students are allowed to use a pen on their written work in class. I am so proud of them, all their hard work, and their super accomplishment!!

Good work, folks!! I'm so proud of you!!!

--Miss Leonard

Thursday, 15 January 2015

Map Design

This week the students studied maps of Ottawa and the major government landmarks there--we are studying the Canadian Government this term. After we had studied the map of our capital city, the students were able to design their own cities with significant landmarks. They were so creative and enjoyed this assignment so much! We spent longer on it than I had anticipated, but they were having such a good time and doing such a great job....I just let them go! You can see some pictures here. Not all the maps are finished yet, but they will be ready to go on the wall by next week. Moms and Dads feel free to come up and see them after school next week!

I'm very proud of all the student's hard work and creativity on this project! Good job, folks!

--Miss Leonard

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Gingerbread houses and Christmas party!

We headed off to Christmas break so quickly, that I never got our last Christmas blog posted! That last week was so busy and FUN! We got to help the Pre-K to 2s with their gingerbread houses again this year. The room was super crowded and full of sugary kids, but they did a great job on the houses.

Each younger student was given an older student (or 2) to work with them and be their buddy. Our kids worked so well with the younger ones--guiding them on their designs and helping them not eat too much candy!

I also have to comment on how well our class helped clean up the HUGE MESS that was left in Miss A's room after the younger kids had been cleaned up and sent to lunch. Several students in our class gave up part of their lunch to help myself and Miss A deal with the crumbs and sticky tables. We were so grateful and appreciated the help!

I hope the little ones had as much fun as our class did!

The next day we had our class party. Thank you so much to the moms who were in charge. Here you see our class playing a game.

And after games and yummy snacks.....Everyone's secret buddy revealed themselves, and they got to open their gifts! We had everything from stationary to Nerf guns! Everyone was very excited and thrilled with their gifts. It was a great wrap-up for our secret buddy activity.

I love looking at these pictures to see all the excitement and happy faces. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I would like to thank everyone for the sweet gifts that I was given. There are so many wonderful and thoughtful families in our class! I appreciate you all!!

We are off and running with all sorts of Term 2 excitement including the BCA Social's Fair, Book Reports, Studying the Canadian Government in Socials......the list goes on and on! Looking forward to a great term 2!

--Miss Leonard

Monday, 15 December 2014

Door Decorating Contest--Merry Christmas

Christmas time is just around the corner! We started all the festivities and decorating at BCA with our annual door decorating competition. Our class had a bit of a rough start. We realized after we had done all of our planning and gotten all the supplies, etc., that we had the same idea as the Pre-K class. Since they have the "cute factor" going for them, we didn't want to compete with that!! We reconvened Monday morning to come up with a new idea. You can see the result of our vote and the sketch of our idea below.

Our door started off with great vim....but not without a HUGE mess!!

This is a bit of the work in progress....You can see the gradual stages of the work.

We worked hard--Monday with glitter! Yay!!--all week until Wednesday at 3:30 when the judges arrived.

Well.....most of us worked.....Some of us clowned around and made faux beards instead of snow and icicles!

Here we go! Here is a hard worker--the winner in the argument for who got to run the vacuum.

And another hard worker under the direction of Miss Dingwall.

This was the competition across the hall in the 3/4 classroom.

SO proud of the finished product!!

Each little snowflake had a different student's picture on it.

Jack with our super cool snowman.

Here you can see the full effect of all the pieces together.

AND the bonus of all this?....We won first prize in the competition!! Our class won donuts and thoroughly enjoyed our little victory party! The students should be very proud of all their work and team effort. We had a great time and enjoyed using everyone's special talents to their fullest.

A special thank you to our judges who gave up time to look at all the doors.

--Miss Leonard