Week at a Glance

Mrs. Zimmerman kindly printed enlarged photos from her recent trip to Greece. We used them as inspiration for our Athens character  story that we are writing for the game. All of us used Athens as our setting. 

We used the lottery system to determine the materials we could use for the egg drop challenge. We chose our own fresh eggs and Mrs. Hollinda did her best to break them. Most survived the crash!

We used our garden pumpkins to whip up a few recipes. We made roasted pumpkin seeds, mini pumpkin pies, pumpkin soup and a pumpkin cake all from scratch! 

This past spring, the original 5 planted pumpkins in the garden. Now in grade 6, they are ours to harvest and use as we choose. Here are some pumpkin seeds we roasted with different flavours.

We are working on drawing the barnyard to scale for our gameboard. We have some pretty cool ideas for it. Stay tuned...

Mrs. Besler introduced the course to the 5s and 6s this week. There's a lot to learn; we're intrigued to say the least!

After reading chapters 1-4 in Hatchet, we created a list of 10 survival items. Then, we debated about two specific items: matches and a tent.

True to Athenian Democracy, the boys were tasked with deciding the set up and rules of the game that we are creating. They had to vote on every. single. rule.

Mr. Chambers brought dragon fruit and passion fruit for us to try this week. He told us a little bit about each one too, like where in the world it grows. 

This is the first step to a big charter project where we create a game board of the barnyard. We measured the perimeter and some of the buildings and pens this week.

Students worked together to prep the soil and garlic cloves and distribute them evenly on the plot. We planted during the full moon, and will plant some more at new moon to see if it makes any difference.

In our Forces Unit for science we tested different types of string/rope to see which had the most tension force. Paracord could hold our entire body weight without breaking.

Students played The Farming Game and Farmopoly in Math to improve their mental math skills. 

Students collected fall leaves and created animals and scenic pieces in art class.

Grade 6 was requested to help the Grade 1 class get logged into their computers for the first time. 

We are all learning ukulele chords in the key of C to play John Denver's "Country Roads"

We got out hands dirty plucking feathers, and cleaning up the turkeys on Tuesday

We gathered voting stones like they did in Ancient Athens and have used them to vote on classroom matters twice already!

We took turns drawing (or acting out) some commonly known idioms. They we created some new ones to add to the card deck.

The wind made this project a little challenging! We traced shadows from all different kinds of plants in the garden and then finished them with watercolor.

 We learned about potatoes from planting varieties, soil testing and harvesting. We were even served lunch where potatoes were the main ingredient, and every student dug up enough potatoes to fill a bag for their family.

We used the trees for inspiration when brainstorming onomatopoeias. Twigs snap underfoot, and the two squirrels chasing each other shout chikchikchick! from the treetops.

We are growing plant crazy! We created pots and tags for houseplants we'll be caring for throughout the year. The first plant was already potted in dirt and the second had been propagated in water and had nice healthy roots when we transplanted it into its new pot. Next, we'll take a cutting of an existing plant and watch the propagation process.

This has been a great incentive for us to finish our classwork. When we're done, we get to go climb trees until the next activity!

While out on a walk to find integers in the real world, we stopped at the garden to check on our pumpkins. We will be harvesting them later in the fall.

We took our integer work into the barn where we talked about temperature. This time of year we could only find one place with a negative number: in the deep freeze!

The playground is one of our favourtie places to read and write. 

Welcome! Our small class this year includes five new students and one new teacher. Here we are tallest to shortest (Mrs. Hollinda is the second tallest but is not in the picture). Let's see how the order changes in June!

Our broiler chicks arrived this week, so we spent some time with them in the barn. They are so tiny and delicate!

We figured out our orientation and the lay of the land. Students created a personal map of the school yard, including the barnyard and which animals belong in each pen.