S, L and G

This post is a little late...but better late then never right?! Ok perfect! For the month of December our class explored many different properties of Solids, Liquids and Gases. We began with a class conversation about matter.

Then we sorted different types of matter into the three categories: Solids, Liquids and Gases.

 Our first experiment looked at the elements of Dissolving:
 1. Each student created a snowball of various sizes
2. We brought the snowballs inside, put them on plates and sketched them. Then we made predictions of what would happen to the snowballs on day 2.
                       -Many students said it would melt
3. We came back on day 2 to find some snowballs melted into water and some had large bites of snow amongst the water, some had dirt, sand and rocks mixed into the water as well.

4. Students then predicted what would happen on day 3. Many said the snowballs would stay as water and some said they would be gone completely.

On day 3 the larger snowballs still has water remaining on the plates and the smaller snowballs had completely dissolved.


Our second experiment with dissolving looked at how use heat and force (stirring) to have a solid dissolve into a liquid....and what better way to demonstrate this then to make HOT CHOCOLATE!

Many students observed once they were finished drinking their hot chocolate that some cups still had solid particles left in the bottom and some did not...

"There is hot chocolate left because they did not stir long enough" -L.Y.

Many students used different ways to cool down their hot chocolate..

"Blowing slowly helps cool it down"-A.P.

"We put them on the vent because its blowing cold air" -E.H.

The Third Experiment looked at how different states of matter take up space. We watched a few videos and experimented with our bodies how solids, liquids and gases take up space differently. Then we used cheerios to demonstrate our understanding.

Finally we looked more at how gases take up space, since many gases are invisible to the naked eye. This was best demonstrated by practicing how to blow bubbles!

We all realized that blowing BIG bubbles was ALOT harder then we thought!

Stay tuned for our next inquiry, where we apply our knowledge of matter to learning about the water cycle, our air and soils!

Until then

Nicole and Room 6

Family Time

A few years back I attended a workshop with several teachers from Elwick which focused on making authentic relationships amongst children and how making these kinds of deep relationships can foster a stronger learning experience for all kids. Needless to say the workshop was amazing and we began to think of how we could create and foster these authentic relationships at Elwick. We came up with and idea we call FAMILY TIME.

Family time began with mixing up the students in our five grade 2/3 multi-age classes and linking them up with a teacher, learning support teacher or Educational Assistant from another classroom. Students would spend an hour a cycle engaging in activities from art, to storytelling to cooperative games, with the goal to have children connect with both other kids from other classrooms as well with other adults in the school.

Family time continued for a second year this same way. We are now in our third year of family time and it looks a little different and has many more students and adults involved.

How Family Time looks now:

-7 grade 1, 2 and 3 classrooms are involved with 12 adults

-5 grade 4/5 classrooms are involved with 10 adults

The next goal is to in some way involve our middle years classrooms in the coming years!

Every year we change up the groups once or twice to allow more positive connections for the students. We have just wrapped up our Family Time groups and are about to switch. Our last time together was spent enjoying a healthy snack (which we often do) and writing kind words about each other on pieces of paper that each student could then take away and keep!

Here were some of the words we brainstormed:

Then students spent some time writing words, drawing pictures or writing comments on each others paper:

I feel so honoured to have met these students and cannot wait to met and get to know the next group!
See you in the hallways and on the playground A, J, K, S, H, C, S, C, M! :) :)

With love and respect,

Nicole