Our Powerful Family Memories

We have begun the school year by looking at our families and learning about the many varied types of families.  We enjoyed “Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge” by Mem Fox.  This is a lovely story about a very young boy whose family lives next to a senior’s home.  Wilfrid Gordon knows all the people, and is friendly with them all, but his favourite is Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper because she has four names, too.

One day he hears his parents talking about how Miss Nancy has lost her memory.  This sets him on a quest to learn about memories and to help Miss Nancy find hers.

After reading the book we discussed memories and what makes some of them more powerful than others.  Here are their responses:















Our Community Grid

We started with a large piece of white roll paper divided into 24 six by nine inch tiles.  These all had mapping coordinates on them – A1 through to D6.  Heavy tag board tiles were cut to these measurements.  These were temporarily taped together so the grade twos could draw on the basic structures of roadways, parks, and the school site.

Each student then chose their tile as their name was pulled from a box. Two students were then pulled for the extra two tiles.  Then the individual work began.  Plasticine was used as ground cover – grass, cement, or asphalt for roads.  Students chose different structures for their site. When these were all in place, details were added such as trees, stop lights, flagpoles, etc.

Side view photos in three sections for close ups:

 



And one from the other end …

Five classes came and viewed our work this afternoon.

Well done, everyone!!

The Japanese Footbridge, in the Style of Claude Monet

We used oil pastels and recreated an important piece of Monet’s famous garden in Giverny … his Japanese Footbridge.  We looked at prints of a variety of his paintings of the bridge (which were painted at different times of the day) to notice the different lighting. We also looked at several of his water lily paintings.

Claude Monet was a leading member in the Impressionism painting movement which developed in France in the late 19th century and which was based on the practise of painting out of doors spontaneously – en plein air 🎨

We then used either green or blue tempera disc paints to do a wash over the whole picture. These lovely art pieces are gracing the bulletin board in the hallway outside of our classroom.



















More Plant Experiments …

This afternoon we did preparations on a lot of different experiments …

We did pairs of plants in pots which we will be treating differently …

One will get water, one will not …

One will get sunlight, one will not …


One has roots, one had its roots removed …


One has leaves, one had its leaves removed …

We ‘planted’ some avocado pits (seeds) …

We put seeds in three containers, one each with soil, sand, and clay … we will await the outcome. (picture to come)

These are the plants we used …

We are still awaiting our beans-in-bags to sprout.  We are thinking it hasn’t been warm enough, or sunny enough, on our windows … we are still hopeful 🤞🏻🤞🏻

Exploring Plants

We have begun our exploration of all things plants. Students planted seeds into little pots – they had a choice of four different seed types: Cosmos, Forget-Me-Knots, Zinnias, and Asters.

We put soaked overnight Lima beans into Ziplock bags with paper towels and taped them to our classroom windows.  We hope to see growth soon.  A few are looking promising, as of this afternoon.

We did an experiment with white flowers and celery placed into jars of water. One was the ‘control’ – meaning that it was just in clear water. Two other jars had food colouring (one blue and one red) with celery and white flowers in them.  Another set had one large bunch of flowers with one stalk that was divided into two jars, one with red and one with blue food colouring.


Students noticed that the food colouring had moved up the stems into the leaves and the flowers.

We also planted peas into a large pot.  Most were planted on the right-hand side of the pot straight out of the package.  On the left we soaked the peas overnight.  Our objective is to see which side grows first / fastest.


We will be continuing with our explorations tomorrow … stay tuned …