There was excitement in the air Friday morning as students entered our classroom. Since coming back from Christmas holidays, we have been watching Rootsy (our class amaryllis) grow. It started off at 23.5 cm, and grew rapidly, sometimes as much as 3 cm a day! Our amaryllis project has given us real life opportunities to make connections between Science and Math.  Students can:

identify plant adaptations and the parts of a flower;

make measurements;

discuss the relationship between millimeters, centimeters and meters;

discover that fractions and decimals are really the same thing, just wearing a disguise!

Since the amaryllis in 4G bloomed early, everyone has been eagerly anticipating the flower, and were delighted to find that ours had bloomed overnight. See the results yourself!

Our Grade 4’s have taken the slogan “Travel Alberta” to heart.  Today we traveled to Cardston, Alberta to visit the Remington Carriage Museum for a presentation called “Poop and Progress – A Stinky Story but Someone Has to Tell It.”  The museum is the world’s largest carriage museum, and the Queen has even ridden in some of their carriages.  It has been there for 17 years, and focuses on transportation in North America from 1850-1920.  Did you know that back then, there were more than 100 000 horses on the streets of New York City by 6:00 am?  All those horses made a huge mess.  Each day there would be almost 4 feet of manure on the streets that had to be collected that weighed more than 300 elephants.

Although we think that we have a lot of pollution now, we learned that there were problems before cars came along.  The invention of the bicycle helped.  An important message was that we have to invent the solution!  Robert Mein told us that we need to pay attention in Math and Science to think about ways we can come up with new energy solutions.

Of course, we also found out some new things about the Grasslands Region of Alberta.  It was very windy there today (over 100 km/h gusts), so you would have to hold on to your hat!  We also saw pictures of lots of flat pastures, with the rolling foothills in the background.

Not only did we think about Science and Social Studies, we also touched on some Math today.  Ask your child to explain why hay = sunshine!

Grade 4′s have been talking a great deal about Waste and Our World. Today we decided to take a look at our lunches and think about packaging. Since 13/22 of us brought a juice box today, we talked a bit about the advantage of juice box packaging. The list we came up with was

Safe to drink – no bacteria
Can take them everywhere, like camping
Doesn’t take up much room:
student – more stuff in my lunch
teacher – doesn’t spill easily
parents – more space in the pantry
environment-not wasting juice
store – can display more and sell more
factory – lighter and can fit more in the truck, and they can sell more

Can anyone else add to our list?

Today was an amazing day. Thanks to our friends from the Edmonton Science Outreach Network, we were given a number of kits to build and work with Building Devices That Move. Thanks to our parents and families, students were able to work hands on with the materials in small groups. Thanks to our visiting Grade 9 friends, our students saw their activities, classrooms and school through new eyes and perspectives. I know that I was inspired by the enthusiasm and wonder as students raced their rubber band car down the hallway, launched a marshmallow over the ceiling fan and discovered that smaller gears spin really fast (and can make you dizzy!) As we move on through the year and move on to different places in our learning journey, I think that “Movin’ On” just might be the perfect theme song for us this year!