We've had a delightful month with the chicks, and they officially made the trip back to their farm today! We got to meet Mrs. Hardy who taught us a lot about the chicken life cycle and how the chicks will live on the farm, and we got to see some older chicks from a couple of months ago who had grown so much! The class was very sad to see them go because we've grown accustomed to their silly antics, musical chirping, and cuddly-soft feathers. We learned so much about their life cycles, and the students were devoted caretakers to these newborns. The students of 3B were wonderful chick parents! To celebrate the warm weather and the arrival of spring, Millgrove had a day themed around one of spring’s best things – rainbows! Our class enjoyed the many colours that people dressed up in, and we had fun with some rainbow-themed dancing and literature. It's always special to see the school come together, and it was definitely a colourful bunch at Millgrove today! The big highlight four our class this week was getting to visit the Royal Alberta Museum! We learned lots about Indigenous peoples, Alberta's history, Albertan animals, rocks & minerals, fossils, vehicles, and bugs. A big thanks goes out to our wonderful volunteers who led groups, and the students did a great job trekking around the large building. We wrote journals this morning summarizing what we'd learned, and it was neat to see all the different things that stuck out to them during our trip.
Our class is in charge of two planter boxes at Millgrove this spring, and we enjoyed preparing the soil and planting this week! The class worked hard to plan, dig, and distribute the seeds, and now we’ll work on watering and fertilizing them. You can watch the video below to see some of what we discussed about seeds and plant growth. We planted carrots, pumpkins, onions, and potatoes, so hopefully we’ll have some carrots before summer break! The students successfully completed the research and writing for their non-fiction animal books this month! They typed up all their findings in a variety of subtopics, so to celebrate we had a well-deserved book publishing party and got to share our reports with each other (and watched Born to Be Wild about orangutans and elephants). It's always satisfying to see our hard work in writing pay off!
We’ve been very engaged in our Animal Life Cycles unit in Science recently! In this unit, students will describe the appearances and life cycles of some common animals, and identify their adaptations to different environments. We've focused especially this week on animal classification and observing our chicks, mantids, fruit flies, and caterpillars. It's been a busy and fun week! During our learning on Animal Life Cycles, students will:
We had our first assembly of the school year today with our grade three schoolmates, and we were so lucky to have Juno Award nominee Mary Lambert visit to sing some songs with us! Mary Lambert is a family singer, songwriter, performer, author, and outstanding Canadian artist and she has performed well over 3500 shows throughout Canada. The class enjoyed her funny songs and opportunities for active engagement in the assembly! The most exciting event of this week has been the arrival of our chicks! We had 14 hatch, and one chick that was born with gastroschisis sadly passed away (we had a lovely memorial for Pip with Mrs. Davies). The class has been abuzz about all the interesting chick behaviour, their amusing names, and careful tending to their needs. Our biggest highlight was getting to pet the chicks and let them roam in the classroom a bit. We can't wait to spend more time with them next week!
On our trip to downtown Edmonton this week, we also were able to visit the Winspear Centre! The students were able to go on a tour of the building, including the amazing concert hall, and we learned lots about sound, music, building design, and Dr. Francis Winspear. We were even able to hear the Davis Concert Organ played, and heard some music from a cellist and French horn player which was really beautiful! We explored different instruments and how they made sound, and were even able to play music with some of those instruments. It was a great day with so much learning! This week we were lucky enough to visit the Art Gallery of Alberta thanks to the help of our wonderful volunteers! We got to take in the gallery's Maud Lewis exhibit, and the students explored the idea of "place" with a mixed-media sculpture project. They investigated some important elements of landscape art including foreground, mid-ground and background, and visited gallery spaces to discover how artists tell stories about ‘places’ in their artwork. In the studio, students worked with a variety of materials to build their own 3-dimensional relief sculpture based on a place that is important to them. The class was fascinated with the amazing building, and it felt special to see famous Canadian pieces of art. Happy Mother’s Day! The students were thrilled to take home their Mother’s Day poems this past week that they had worked so hard on. Thank you to all you fantastic 3B moms, grandmas/nanas/omas, aunts, and other wonderful women who love these children so very well!
This week was Mental Health Week and in addition to “Hats on for Mental Health Day” (May 4th), we discussed kindness and how important positive messages are to support feelings of happiness and belonging.
This year’s theme for Mental Health Week in the Tri-Region was “Rediscover.” In observing and participating in Mental Health Week, each classroom was invited to take some reflective time to write on a sticky a kind message that they wish to hear, that feels good to hear, or that they feel someone else needs to hear. These stickies and messages were posted on a bulletin board by students, and then students were able to read the messages and “take what they need” for themselves or a friend. We learned that it's important to build each other up with kindness! To wrap up our learning about geometry this week, the students made teepees (sometimes called mīkiwāhp in Cree) that featured a variety of polygons and other 2D shapes. We also learned from Miss Smith about First Nations teachings about teepees, and how they are traditionally constructed. The class enjoyed analyzing each other’s creations in a gallery walk the next day, and it’s clear they’ve learned a lot about regular polygons, irregular polygons, and 3D objects!
This week we've been learning more about the chicken life cycle! We got to candle a couple of the eggs, and we learned all about the different parts of the egg that allow the chick to develop inside. Each student "dissected" their own egg in class to find the albumen, air pocket, embryo, chalaza, yolk, and membrane. It was egg-cellent fun!
As part of our poetry unit, this week Miss Smith taught us about some Indigenous perspectives on the northern lights, and we wrote poetry and made art inspired by this sky phenomenon. You can watch the video below to see a northern lights legend! |
Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
April 2024
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