On Tuesday, we went to TELUS Spark. It is such an amazing place to go and it has the coolest things. There was a bed of nails, a toilet bowl drinking fountain, and these round things that when you would shine a spotlight on them, they would play music! WE LOVE SCIENCE! Along with all these cool displays, we got to participate in a magnet program. We did 6 different activities with magnets. 1. Played with a magnet pendulum: we tried putting different sizes of magnets around a tray to see what would happen to the pendulum. We found that we could make it swing. 2. A maze: we had one magnet inside the PVC pipe and one on the outside of the pipe. We tried to move the magnet on the inside of the pipe. 3. Played a board game: we split the magnets up into equal groups. The goal of the game was to put all magnets on the board at the same time without the magnets attracting or touching. If they did, we had to start all over again. If you won, the board got smaller. Which was WAY harder! 4. In this activity, there were metal filings inside two pieces of glass and we had magnets on the outside. Some of us tried to figure out how the metal filings would go up. We learned that some magnets are strong enough to go through plastic and glass. Some of us tried to ‘steal’ the filings from each other! 5. Inside the mineral oil was inky stuff that had metal filings in it. I found that I could create a big ball and then some of the ink would fall off. When the magnet had a lot of ink, it would have these spiky looking things on the outside. So cool! 6. Magnet exploration: At this table we got to explore different types of magnets and sizes of magnets to see what would happen. During the program, we learned so many things from Monica. We learned that: - Magnets don’t stick to all metals and bigger magnets are not always stronger than smaller magnets.
Curriculum Corner:
This week in math and literacy, we focused on: Math: we continued to discusses and learn about early place value. We are starting to build numbers, recognizing the tens place and the ones place. We also were talking about odd number and even numbers. Some if the students really enjoyed the “Who am I” number riddles. Literacy: we continued to read in our guided reading groups, working on predictions, connections and comprehension. In writing, we continued to learn about spelling patterns, working on using our personal word wall, looked at word choice when writing a story and started to create “story tickets” to help generate our ideas.
0 Comments
The Amazing World of Fish Creek Park. At Fish Creek Park we did a lot of neat things with water. We used thermometers to see how cold the water and the air was. We noticed that the air was colder than the water. Reading a thermometer is tricky and it was hard to see where the red line stopped. We went on a scavenger hunt looking for signs of winter. We found LOTS of signs ... like snow… everywhere. It was amazing! Some of us were trying to catch snow on our tongues. We also found some cool looking ice and slush in the river. Besides the snow, there were a lot of very exciting things that greeted us at the park. We saw a coyote, lots of wax wing birds, some canadian geese, chickidees, a big black crow, and black fungus growing on the trees. One of the activities was a nature walk. Along the walk we chose sticks for the “Great Stick Race.” We were looking for sticks that would be fast and steer through the rocks. We looked for sticks that had a rudder, small and pointy, smooth so they would ‘cut’ through the water really fast. This activity reminded us of the boat designs we have been looking at while building our boats.
This week we were given a challenge: To make boats using recycled materials that would hold weight. The first thing we needed to do was test the different materials to see how they would react in water. Through this experiment, we discovered that materials: - absorb (soak up) water - dissolve (become one with the water so that we can not get it out of the water) in water - disintegrate (break into little pieces) in the water - are water proof (does not soak up any water) We found out that ...We tested a sponge and discovered that when the bottom of it got wet, it soaked up (absorbed) water and would flip so the dry side would stick out of the water. When we tested the tin foil, we found out that the shape made difference. If you put the tin foil in the water flat, would float below the surface of the water. If you rolled it into a ball, it would sink. However, if you curved the edges, it would carry some weight. Another material we tested was a milk carton. We learned that an empty milk carton would float. But if we put water inside the milk carton, it would get lower and lower in the water until it touched the bottom. We also remembered things like if you put heavier objects on lights things, it would float. Stay tuned for next week when we start to build our boats! In grade 2, we are learning about water, boats and buoyancy. Last week, we went to the Glenmore Reservoir and we learned that it has a dam and is a place where we store Calgary's drinking water. We also learned that there is a dam to stop the water because a long time ago they decided "Let's keep some clean water". The water in the Reservoir comes from the Elbow River. This week, we were making Glenmore Reservoir maps based on what we saw on our field study. We included the dam, the 3 different locations that we studied last week, and the Calgary Canoe Club. We enjoyed reviewing how to create a Birds Eye View of an area and working together to make the big maps. At the Calgary Canoe Club last week, we learned about canoes and kayaks. We learned about how they float and move across the water. Some of these boats hold many people and some only hold one. We learned that some of the kayaks are made for racing. The front is the bow and the back is the stern. Canoes have a single blade on the paddle and kayaks have blades on both sides. The differences in the design between a recreational boat and a racing boat are that racing boats are much skinnier so that they can go faster (aerodynamic - or is it aquadynamic?) Last week, we were also trying to make plasticine float. We tried making different shapes. The shapes that floated were boat shapes, bowl shapes, and clam shapes. Some shapes that sank were flat shapes, curves, rolls, and holey shapes. Stay tuned for the Boat Building Challenge next week! |
AuthorEveryone in the grade 2 class at Langevin Science School. Archives
February 2017
Categories |