Today, we read a story based on the life of Vincent Van Gogh. We learned that most people did not appreciate his artistic talents, and thought he was too strange, too foolish, and too unique to be a famous artist. He only ever sold 1 painting during his entire life, and suffered from mental illness. But now, he is considered by many people to be one of the greatest artists of all time. His paintings are worth over $100 million. Here is a video of the ‘immersive’ exhibit in France. Maybe, one day we can see it in person!
Don’t Give Up: A Lesson from Fauja Singh
Today, we read a story about Fauja Singh, who set the world record for oldest person to ever run a marathon!
Fauja faced lots of challenges in his life. He was born with several physical disabilities, and did not learn to walk until he was 5 years old. When he moved to England from Punjab, he faced discrimination because of his Sikh cultural background. Some people said racist, hurtful things to him because he wore a turban (part of his religious regalia).
But he never gave up, and decided to show the world that you can achieve anything, no matter who doubts you!
In the Foreward of this book, Fauja wrote: “All my life, people set limitations on me. They said I would never walk. Then they said I would never farm. They certainly never thought I would set records with my running. No matter what people said, I always believed in myself…
I’m now 108 years old, which means I’m probably 100 years older than [the readers of this book]! Can you believe that?
My secret to a long and healthy life has been taking care of my mind, body, and soul…I’d love for you to take care of yourself, try your hardest, and always choose yes when you meet and challenge. And who knows? Maybe one day you can break my record…Nothing would make me happier!”
Our Final Spooky Science!
It has been a busy, educational, messy, and fun month of ‘spooky Science’! Our final experiment involved mixing milk, food colouring, and then adding a drop of dish soap. We noticed the food colouring ‘spread out’ and ‘was repelled by’ the soap, and it made interesting tie-dye patterns on top of the milk!
If you want to try this at home (with parent/guardian permission), you will need:
-a small bowl or plate
-milk (whole milk works best)
-food colouring
-dish soap
- Carefully pour some milk into the bowl. You want layer that is a few millimeters thick.
- Add your food colouring, carefully ‘dropping’ it on top of the milk. Try using different colours.
- Do NOT mix the milk and food colouring!
- Then, dip a q-tip into the dish soap.
- Touch the q-tip to the surface of the milk/food colouring mixture.
- Watch what happens next!
Check out this Scientist who did a LARGE version of this experiment in a pool!
Potions Class: Chemistry in Action
Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it! Today, we had a chance to explore chemistry via our “Potions Class”. Our class had to determine what each of the ingredients in our ‘potions’ were based on how they reacted when mixed together. Feel free to click the link above to see the result of mixing “Witch Tears” (water), “Colorful Potions” (food colouring), “Dissolved Eyeballs” (oil), and “Ground Up Bones” (Alka-Seltzer tablets) together to make a bubbling cauldron!
Happy a safe and enjoyable weekend!
Sketching like a Scientist: Our Observation Journals
What does it mean to ‘sketch like a scientist’? We learned that sometimes, scientists keep observation journals with detailed illustrations of what they observe. We focused on drawing what we saw in front of us, not the picture in our heads.
I am so amazed by how detailed our illustrations turned out! We have some talented scientists in our room!
Pumpkin ‘Chunkin’: Galileo’s Theory
After our unexpected results, we decided to try our experiment again! We learned that Galileo once tested his theory that gravity will pull all objects, regardless of their mass, to the ground at the same speed. We wanted to see if we would get the same result when using 2 different sizes/weights of pumpkins.
This time, we dropped them at the same time in order to clearly see which fell first, or if they fell at the same speed. Watch our results below by clicking the link below!
So interesting! We discovered our pumpkins fell as the same speed this time. I love when Science surprises us!
Pumpkin ‘Chunkin’: Exploring Gravity & Mass
We love when Science surprises us! Our class and Ms. Ramen’s class made predictions about which fruits/vegetables would fall the quickest when dropped from a height. Would the heavier fruits/vegetables fall faster?
We also predicted which fruits/vegetables would have the most dramatic change when they hit the ground! Would they splatter? Would they crack in half? Would nothing happen? Our results are below!
Our results were that the lighter objects fell faster, but we will be replicating this experiment to reduce variables (human error, etc.) to see if we get the same results as Galileo. Stay tuned!
Extreme Writing: Day 3
Our topic(s):
- What is your favourite food? Why do you love it? Describe it using all of your senses (taste, sight, smell, etc.)!
- Have you ever been ‘hangry’ (hungry & angry)? What happened?
- Write a story about rats that makes them loveable!
Extreme Writing: Day 2
Our Extreme Writing Challenge continues! Our topic(s) were…
- What is a song or genre of music you could listen to forever and never get bored? Why do you love that song/genre so much?
- Write a story from the perspective (POV) of a black cat.
- What are some superstitions that you have heard of? Do you believe in bad luck? Why are black cats considered ‘bad luck’?
Extreme Writing: Day 1
Our class is working on eliminating ‘writer’s block & brain freeze’ when writing! We will be doing an ‘Extreme Writing’ challenge each day before Language Arts. The goal is to increase our writing confidence and fluency by getting as many words down onto our page as possible in 5 minutes!
Here was our prompt for today:
- Describe everything you see in this image. Infer what is going on.
- Write a ‘story’ about the man in the pumpkin boat. Where is he going? Why a pumpkin?
- Write a story about growing the world’s largest pumpkin. What would you do with it? Make a huge pumpkin pie? A Jack-o-Lantern? Sell it?
Our goal for next time is to increase the number of words we can write in 5 minutes, and to find something we are proud of in every piece of writing!