Building Stable Animals

Amelia had the most fun this year creating her animal in science this week. We are currently on our building and testing units in science (I blend both together because they hit on similar ideas) and we are investigating the concept of stability.

For these projects, I had the students break into companies that they will work in for the unit. They have named their companies and have also created banks and cards for their business. Their businesses are given certain tasks to do each week based on my demonstrations that I do at the beginning of the week. They must use prior knowledge and lessons that they learned from our labs to create different structures.

This week we investigated different stable shapes and how humans are stable. Based on the information taught, students had to create an animal that was stable out of recyclable materials. Students could buy or rent materials from the class (money came out of profits from other projects) or could bring in materials needed from home.

They had to create a plan and a materials list. If (when I test tomorrow) their structure is deemed stable and safe, their group could earn up to $40 dollars for this project. I assess in my assessment book, giving a limited, acceptable or proficient as well.

Amelia's company "Compression Crew" created a puppy for us. Enjoy the pictures!

StarFish of the Week- Amelia

3P would like to present Amelia, the StarFish of the week because she is one of our hardest workers. Amelia came to us this year from Beaumont, moving from a French to English program! Mrs. Patterson loved it because it meant she got to speak French in class :)

Amelia has 1 brother and a mom and dad. Her mom is a nurse and her dad works for the RCMP. When she is in school Amelia loves to do science and art. The best thing she has done in science this year is building her animal (see other post). She has learned about hearing and sound, rocks and minerals and now building structures. Art is her other favourite. She enjoyed the Robert Munsch Salt painting that we did.

After school Amelia likes to go home and let loose. She has a kitten names Dexter (he is turing 1 on Easter), Snoop and Panda are her other pets. Snoop likes to dig in mud and then Mia has to bath him HAHAHA.
She also goes to Brownies! (she is yummy- browniieeeee). In Brownies she loves to learn first aid and to do the Brownie Opening. She also takes Snoop for muddy walks around the neighbourhood and visit her friends across the street.

Mia is happy because Dexter finally slept in her bed last night!

We appreciate all the Mia does for the class. This class would not be the same without her and I love her dearly.

Grade 3 Van Gogh!

We created these wonderful Van Gogh creations the other week and the kids loved them. Very easy to do. I put the link in an earlier post of where I got the idea (off of Pinterest) and wanted to post the final project.

First we had students look at Starry Night by Van Gogh and pick out elements they will have in their picture. We focused around the moon, stars and swirls.

Next we had students draw with white, black, grey and yellow crayons on large pieces of paper to create the night sky.

Finally we used different colours of blue and washed the paper with paint in order to create the darkened sky. Of course the paint does not cover the wax and you can see the crayon through it.

Here's the final products, they turned out GREAT!

Jasmine's Proudest Moment

Jasmine chose to include her research for the postcard project that we did awhile ago. Students were really excited about this project and I am so glad that they loved doing it. I will have to use it again and maybe find a way to incorporate it into more literacy projects that they will complete. 

The bottom picture is of the sheet the students were given to do research from the text book. Students were then asked to pick only 1 region and write a sentence for each box. That is how the postcard was created. Above, in the first picture, was Jasmine's rough copy before she did the good copy on the computer.

This example really demonstrates how much work Jasmine puts into every day tasks and I am so proud of her because she does work so very hard at everything she does.

Keep up the amazing work Jaz!