A little late on these but here they are.

The Spelling List!

Spelling N 6

Here is the link to the Spelling City for this week. Remember, if you bring in your certificate with 100% on it, you can get an extra mark on your spelling this week!!!

We have been working on our Math Problems of the Day and today we have three to display!!! M.M, D.W and N.G all did a Math Problem using the Artpad.art.com website. Here are their results and how they worked out the problem.

D.W came up with the solution this problem: A telephone company charges 50 cents for the first 3 minutes of a phone call and 10 cents for every minute after. A 4 minute phone call will cost 60 cents. How much will a 15 minute call cost?

N.G. came up with the solution to this problem:

A soccer game is 75 minutes long. If the game starts at 11:25, at what time does it finish?

Our memory verse for this week comes from Psalm 37:1-2:

Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

Have a great week!

Here is another challenge from one of my new favorite blogs. Here is the challange:

Build a house that is at least 9 inches long and 9 inches high using:

• 1 package of chewing gum,
  
• 1 paper cup (if you don’t have one handy, just do it without the cup),
  
• paperclips,
  
• 5 8.5 x. 11 sheets of paper,
  
• 3 toothpicks, and
  
• 3 bandaids.
  

You may use scissors during construction but not in the solution.

Here is the thing however. From this week on, these challanges are going to be part of our Science program. This means that they will also be a part of your Science mark from now to the end of the school year!!! Here is how it will work:

1. You will get one week (from Monday to the following Monday) to complete the projects.
2. You may get help from your family. In fact, I am hoping this will be a fun family project for everyone!
3. On the Monday, we will display the projects and see all the different ideas people come up with.
4. Pictures will also be taken to add to the blog to show off our creations.
5. For completing your homework and bringing in the finished project, you will receive 5 marks. If you do not complete the project that week, you will receive no mark (unless you have talked to me beforehand with a very good reason why you can not complete the task).

I am hoping that we can have a lot of fun with these projects but I am also hoping that these projects will allow us to think differently and stretch our minds and creativity in new ways!!!

Our first project (the one above) starts tomorrow!! You have until next Monday, Apr. 6 to finish them!

Well, we had a great time last night playing scrabble in the dark. I got some pretty big words but my wife says she still beat me! We also called her parents who said that they did not have their lights on but that they conserve all the time (which is probably true!).

Anyway, I thought I would add some pictures here. The first one is of Siena holding the Earth in her hands. She is going to be growing up on this Earth and will still be here after we are gone so we had better take better care of it for her! The next one is of us in the dark with the scrabble board. The last one is a whole slideshow of photos from around the world during Earth Hour. There are alot but you can skip through them. Enjoy and we will see you tomorrow!!! Last day of no school. Tomorrow we get back to work (and some fun!).

Just to let everyone know that tonight is Earth Hour. Starting at 8:30 tonight, and around the world, huge n

umbers of people are hoping that you will turn off all your lights for at least one hour. Since this event started in Australia a couple of years ago, millions of people world wide have participated. Though it seems a small, insignificant thing to do, when milions do it, the effects can have an impact if only for awareness of the impact we have on our environment and the amount of energy we use.

Tonight, Siena, my wife and I will be turning out our lights and other appliances (including the T.V and the computer!!!) and spending time together in the dark. It sounds like it is going to be fun.

We will also take a picture and add it to the blog after the event. If you would like to participate, make sure your lights are off at 8:30 tonight!!!

It would also be fun if you took a picture of your family do something during that time, whether playing board games by candlelight or whatever. Send it to our email and we will put the collection of photos up as a slideshow or animoto!!!

Here is a video about the event:

I found a new site the other day with some great projects to do. The idea behind the projects is to make students think in new ways; to think outside the box. The challenges are inventive and creative in nature but also a lot of fun. I thought I would post the challenges on here so all of you can try them out.

Here is the first challenge:

Using the following materials, design a puppet that moves in at least two different ways. It may NOT be a hand puppet.

6 straws or pencils
a 12 x 12 square of aluminum foil
6 paper clips
6 inches of tape
paper
string

You may use scissors in construction but not in the solution.

If you want to take a picture of your creation to put on the blog, just send the picture to the class email.

Have fun!

Sooo, I was looking around the internet the other day and came across some interesting things. Namely, a number of different ways you can prepare hamburger. Now don’t ask why I continued looking but it was quite fascinating and maybe an indication of why there are so many health problems in North America. Here are some of the preparations I found.

First of all, the classic cheeseburger in the can. Yes, that’s right! Hamburger in a Can!!! Oh so delectable!! Not sure how you get it out but I am sure the taste more than makes up for it!!! You can see for yourself!

Well, the review of it wasn’t great as you can see by the picture below but I am sure that if you were out in the back woods of La Crete, Alberta you’d be biting into this one pretty quick!!!

Maybe for my birthday, I will get my wife to make one of these. Not!!!

Yes, that is a lot of hamburger, iced nicely with mashed potato and ketchup. The last one I found, I have to admit, looks kind of good. I can’t think of why I didn’t think of this before. The Grilled Cheese Sandwich Burger!

I can’t believe people actually eat these things. What do you think? Would you any of these? Why or why not?

Well, here we are a few days into Spring Break. And I bet that you have already run out of things to do right? All the toys have been played with, all the books read, all the friends over and tired out . . .

Now you’re all ready to come back to school, right? Well, unfortunately school is still out for another week and a bit. So, in lieu of being able to come to school and learn, I have created a little science quiz for you to keep your minds sharp. Here it is:

Just a short post today.

Students earned their party after gaining their 75th star today. They were able to hold on to it to the end of the day and thus, we will be having our party on Friday. I have asked the students to bring something if they are able to. It can be anything as long as their is enough for the class. For example, if someone could donate some juice boxes, we would need 25 of them for the entire class (or 28 if you wanted to include myself, Ms. Wiebe and Mrs. Davies).

Students will still be having their Spelling Test, Memory Verse and Mad Minutes on Friday. For the Mad Minutes, we will be focusing on the basic facts from the 5 times tables to the 10 times tables. I have noticed that many of the students are weak in these basic facts. If you could work on these with them, that would be great.

Madeline got to solve our Math Problem of the Day today. Using Art.com artpad, she has beautifully illustrated her solution to the problem. You can see the question and the result below.

We had a great time in Science today. For the last couple of days, students have been studying five basic concepts:

1. The Earth is very large
2. Some objects in the sky, such as the Sun, the Moon, Stars and Planets are very large.
3. The Moon is very large but not as large as the Earth.
4. The Sun is super huge compared to the Earth.
5. The Sun is a star. Compared to other stars it is medium sized.

Today, students measured a scale model of the Sun. After having learned that the diameter of the Earth is approx. 15,000 km and that the Moon is approx. 6,000 km in diameter, the students were amazed to learn that the Sun is approx. 1,210,000 km in diameter!!

We also got a great chance to see a Bill Nye video. Here is one of the segments we watched. I think this has an amazing illustration of the distances of the planets from each other.

It was Open House today and we had many visitors come by to have a look at the class. Thankfully, we still got a lot of work done. It has been a great week so far and the students are one star away from earning their next party. If we do have party, it will be on Friday in the afternoon.

I had a couple of students bring in an answer for whether there is colour in space. Brennan was the first students to bring me their answer. His search revealed that,

Although space objects are very colourful, chances are you will not be seeing much colour unless looking at Jupiter or maybe Mars through a large aperture telescope. Galaxies, nebulae and other space objects are simply too far for seeing any colour.

Hannah also brought in an answer from Yahoo Answers. Her search revealed that,

Space has no colour. Space isn’t a thing, it’s the absence of things (although, it’s not completely empty, there are particles in it, they’re just rare and spaced far apart so space is mostly empty).

The reason space looks black has to do with how we see colour. Colours are the result of different wavelengths of light bouncing off of objects. If there is no object for light to hit, then it just passes though and we don’t see it. We see sources of light (like a star or flashlight) and we see objects that light hits (like planets or dust) but we don’t see the particles of light as they move through empty space unhindered. Thus, empty space just looks black.

Good Job, Hannah and Brennan for taking the time to research and bring those answers in for us.

We had another Math Problem of the Day Today. Take a look at Cameron’s response below.

To end off today, here is an interesting video of a shuttle launch including all the stages.

First of all, I think I am about to give up on there actually being a spring. However, it was a great start to the week. The students worked super hard today and we got a lot accomplished. There was a lot of learning happening today, especially in Science. But let’s start at the beginning of the day, shall we?

In Language Arts today, we continue on with our look at our next dress-up, adjectives. Using a number of websites to help explain the concept, the student now have a very good understanding of the concept. One of the things we did today was to do a couple of Pic-Lits. Pic-Lits allow you to add words to a picture describing it. Here are the two that we did today. Click on the picture to see a larger version of it.

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Students also got their new spelling words today. You can get them by downloading the spelling words from below or from the box.net widget on the side.

Spelling N 5

Here is the link to the Spelling City list. Remember!! Bring in your report or your certificate and you too can get a free mark on your next spelling test!!!

Students also worked on a new problem of the day in Math today. Then they completed their Chapters 11-20 test. You can see the results from one of the students Problem of Day answers using artpad.com. Some really good thinking going on here!!!

In Science today, we learned about using modals to help us understand ideas and problems that are too large or far away for us to understand. For example, today we learned that the actual size of the Sun is huge compared to Earth. However, the Moon is even smaller than the Earth by almost half!!!!! We used special solar rulers and 2-D modals to help determine the approximate sizes of the planets and Sun. We also looked at this graphic below showing the size of the Moon flattened on top of a picture of the Earth flattened.

We also saw a really cool site where you can compare sizes of planets. You can go to the site by clicking the link here or going to the links on the side. I also challenged students with a question about whether there was colour in space. I said that there wasn’t. However, on further research I may be only half right. Does anyone know for sure. If you can get me the answer, I have a prize for the first one correct that can show me evidence!!!

Our Memory Verse for this week is Psalm 100:1-2:

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Finally, thanks to all the parents who were really patient last Wednesday with the Worlds Math Day. The students did an amazing job and answered a ton of basic facts questions. Many students continued on after the event was over and racked up even more points. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully, we will get a larger group of people together to get even more points and maybe even some medals!!!! I created an Animoto to show you some of the stuff that went on during the day!!!!