2B created their own virtual museums this past week using our borrowed artifacts from the Royal Alberta Museum! We learned so much about Inuit traditions, ways of life, and history from these artifacts, and the students became real experts with lots of knowledge about these Inuit artifacts. You can check out your child's virtual museum on Seesaw!
We had a week with lots of Science learning as we focused on how all living things need and contain water, the water cycle, the threat of pollution to accessing clean water, and a review of our learning so far. You can see the students poster PSAs about water conservation (like the ones above) on Seesaw! In Social Studies this past week, we were lucky to have some Inuit artifacts from the Royal Alberta Museum in our classroom. We learned about many interesting aspects of Inuit culture, and were able to use a variety of items including an ulu (multipurpose knife), traditional pulling game, kimiik, art, and a soapstone carving. We’re lucky to learn about such an interesting group of people in grade two! Each student became the expert on an artifact, and our friends in 2A, 2S, and 2W came to visit our mini-museum and learn about the artifacts form our class. You can watch the video above to hear from some 2B experts sharing about these fascinating artifacts, and watch the video below to hear Inuit throat singing.  We had a great Valentine's Day in 2B! We wrote friendly letters in the morning, exchanged valentine cards and candies, watched a movie, made some crafts, and enjoyed the delicious treats that parents that parents kindly sent in. The class very thoughtfully reflected that some of their favourite moments were giving treats and cards to their friends, which was quite sweet. There are plenty of great friendships to be celebrated in 2B!  We've been practicing our estimating skills in 2B this week, and the students have become more comfortable with having an informed estimate that doesn't exactly match their subsequent count. In grade two, students use referents to help inform their estimates, and the class is getting impressively accurate with their estimates of amounts up to 100!
 In this Science recently the students had to plan a waterproofing solution for some pretend placemats that we were planning for our prospective (pretend) Millgrove Restaurant. The students set to work testing out different solutions to our restaurant's problem. They found that wax crayons and rubber cement made the paper waterproof, but felt markers and pencils did a poor job. We recommended that the restaurant use the wax crayons because customers likely wouldn't want their lunch tasting like rubber cement! We also examined different densities of liquids, and the absorbencies of different materials. We found that corn syrup is very dense, while cooking oil has a very low density. We also discovered that sponges are extremely absorbent, while nylon fabric, plastic wrap, and tinfoil are extremely poor absorbers. 2B would certainly suggest using a sponge rather than tinfoil to clean up a spill! As we've been learning about Ukrainian, Acadian, and Inuit traditions, we read folk tales from these cultures in in Social Studies. Many of the stories were pourquoi-style stories that explained why something became the way it is today (such as why moles avoid light like in the story below). The students wrote their own traditional origin stories, and showed great reflection in using the traits of the folk tales we had read. You can read some of the students' folk tales in the slideshows posted in this post!  |
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. 
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