By exploring our forest space and other forest spaces, we started examining what a happy and healthy forest looks like!

Last week we started exploring light mapping! What light does our space get? How does that influence who lives here?

This week, we learned about the skills of surveying! How can we map our places even more closely? How can we identify who lives here and beginning planning where we want to plant our new native species?

Thank you, Pablo, for helping us understanding these math connections to our forest inquiry!

Gardening has been such an important part of our year! We carefully observed our potatoes before planting them in the pod! What do our potatoes need to grow? How many potatoes do you estimate will grow from our seed potatoes? Why did we plant them inside?

Div. 6 has been so excited to honour their learning and time by creating books in a bag. They chose several special symbols to represent the book using found and created items. Share your book in a bag with your family this spring break! Why did you choose each special item?

Div. 6 has been looking closely at specimens from the Beaty Biodiversity Museum Forest Box! We recognized so many of these amazing species, and learned about many new ones! Who knew there were so many different kinds of mosses? We were amazed at the connections we could find between them all. After observing, wondering, learning, and playing, we took our curiosity outside. We wanted to see what plants, animals, and fungi we could find out in the forest of Burnaby Mountain beyond our familiar trails.

With our field guides and and our new field nature journals, we tried to see who we could find living here! It was a long and exhausting hike, but it was worth it to find these new treasures! We wondered, why do these forest spaces look different than the ones near our school?

A forest is not just a group of trees! It is so much more! We have been exploring the stories of our forest this year. Recently, we have taken photos and started creating power point projects to express our understanding.

As we get to know our forest, we are realizing our role in protecting these places. Last week, we created vegetation maps of the forest spaces near our garden, and are excited for light mapping next week! Our findings will help us in our next steps of our forest understory restoration project!

Div. 6 has been exploring with cyanotype paper. How can we understand the interplay between light, shadows, and form? We learned the story of Anna Atkins and the first photograph in Bluest of Blues. Then we set out to represent our forest treasures in yet another way. We are excited to create some new experiments by changing some of the variables to see how it changes the outcomes!

Last week, we connected with the SFU Fairtrade team to participate in a fabulous workshop. We explored what people need to be happy and healthy. We examined what the supply line looks like and how farmers fit in to our systems. How does ethical decision-making connect to our daily lives? How does it connect to our systems? We wondered if and how our actions could encourage fair treatment for people around the world, because everyone deserves to get their basic needs met.

Div. 6 found and created hearts around our school yard. Can you find any on your adventures this weekend?

We are so grateful for our lovely class and school community.

How do we help each other feel cared for, celebrated, appreciated, seen, and respected? How do listen to the stories of others to help us build our understanding of the world and what we want the world to be?

We created this video in December, but we wanted to share it now, because we think it is a perfect fit for this month of February. In Wishtree, someone carved “Leave” into Red and we considered how that message made the community feel. How do we want our community to feel? We considered the messages we wanted to share with our school, even from a distance. Students in Div. 6 and 8 created affirmations from the heart and after sharing them through our video, we posted our hearts all around the school for all to see!

Februrary is…

• Black history month
• Lunar new year, Feb. 12th
• Valentine’s day, spreading kindness on Feb. 12/14th
• Family day, Feb. 15th
• Pink shirt day, Feb. 24th

Seasonal Changes & Shadow Length

This week we were exploring the Sun’s path changes with the time of the year. We noticed that on summer days the Sun comes up earlier, rises higher in the midday sky, and sets later than it does in winter. If you are curious about when the Sun rises and sets, you can type “sunrise” or “sunset” into Google to find out the exact time! This week we had daylight savings – how does this adjust our observations?

Changes in the Sun’s position every day add up to big changes over months. You can show this by marking the shadow of a stationary object at the same time of day once a week for a few weeks. If you are up for an experiment, try this at home! Every week, the shadow will be in a new position.

Seasonal Patterns & Earth’s Orbit

This week students were introduced to constellations, and learned how there are different constellations visible each season. They explored the Mystery, “Why do the constellations change with the seasons?” Your child built a model that makes it easy for them to visualize the answer, called a “Universe in a Box.” If you can, take this opportunity to have your child show you how their “Universe in a Box” works. Ask them: Why do we see different constellations each season? What are some constellations we will see if we go outside tonight? You might even want to try out an app on your phone for finding constellations!

Other extensions – Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)!

Each day, APOD features a different photograph of the universe, along with a short explanation by an astronomer. There’s also a searchable APOD Archive.

Here are a few photos to get you started:

• Look for Orion here — and then search for the bright stars of his belt in this snapshot from the International Space Station
• Your may have heard of the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, but have they seen them in the sky? Move your mouse onto the photo to see the connecting lines.