The H.R. McMillan Space Centre! by Sophia and Eleanor

Astronaut Sophia!

Sophia here. Last week we went on a field trip to the planetarium.  We watched a science show about extreme environments, because space is an extreme environment. I thought it was really interesting that scientists are studying extreme environments here on earth, because some extreme environments on earth are very like environments you can find in space. If scientists can find living creatures in extreme environments here on earth, they may be able to find similar living creatures in space as well. We learned about scientists testing buggies on deserts here on earth before the buggies are taken on missions to Mars. I thought this was very clever.  I know that sometimes astronauts are trained to use space suits and space ships in great big pools, because the feeling of being underwater is much like the feeling of having less gravity in space.

Even before I went to the planetarium, I had read about sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica. When we watched the Extreme Environments show, they mentioned a lake called Lake Vostok. I remembered reading about frozen lakes in a science magazine that I like. The reason why sub-glacial lakes were in a planetarium science show about space, was that scientists have found similar looking sheets of ice on Jupiter and it's moons, specifically an ice moon, called Europa, which we also learned about in the Solar System show we saw.

Tomorrowland over the moon and out!

This me, Eleanor, making myself an alien encounter. Choosing my planet, and the size and temperature of my planet, and also if it has more water or land. All those things make a huge difference as to what the creature would look like on the planet. I usually like to have a medium or large planet with more water and hot temperature.

Now this is what I would look like if I had an alien encounter! It is a picture of my face changed to look like a creature on the planet I created. My planet was hot, with mostly water an a large planet.

(Eleanor) We went to see a space science show called "Surfing the Solar System" and it was super duper fun. It was in a big black dome with a whole bunch of seats in it. We would lay back in the seats and we would go all around space. We went to one of Saturn's moons, called "Pan", and also we looked at the "shepherd moons" that keep Saturn's rings in place with their gravitational pull, and saw all around the solar system. We I am amazed how many solar systems there are in the universe. There was a map of how many there are, and it blew my mind crazily. Pluto is also still a planet, it is just a dwarf planet. 

We also got a special Grade 3 science bonus - we went to look at the Solar System and got a whole private show about Rockets (except for this one other guy wearing a red shirt with curly hair) and learned a whole bunch about gravitational pull and forces!

The show about Rockets was amazing. We learned about Newton's three laws of motion, and I got to shoot a cannon at Sophia! The reason we shot a cannon was to test the difference between how far a light ball and a heavy ball could go. Almost everyone guessed the light ball would go further than the heavy ball. And it did go further than the heavy ball!

Here I am in a NASA space suit! Tip to astronauts: never toot in your own suit!

This is a station where you can learn what it feels like to be in space. In space your sense of up and down gets all mixed up, so this was a simulator that showed you how it felt to get all mixed up!

Blossom: The Movie!

"Wheels" Brownie Badge by Eleanor

More Random Science Fun! By Sophia and Eleanor

This term we went to the SFU Science Fair. They were making liquid nitrogen ice cream and also some fun buttons. There were lots of different exhibits about this kind of science, that kind of science, every kind of science!

The POWER OF MAGNETS they aligned atoms!

Sophia was making electricity by pedaling this bike.

Nori does a probability experiment.

Here we are look at a van de Graaff generator. More electricity fun!

Here is Eleanor sitting on a tractor at the Birchwood Dairy farms. There were cows there. Or as they say in Latin taxonomy terms, Bos taurus. Fun fact: every Holstein cow has a spot pattern on it as unique as a fingerprint.

Farmer Eleanor

Us looking at the calves in the maternity calf barn.

Us looking at a bunch of water flooding a cow pen. There was a lot of sewage!

Eleanor makes a sundial!

And Eleanor had a really good time learning about structures and forces with her roller coaster science book.

Electricity! by Sophia

This term I studied ELECTRICITY! Electricity is really cool because you can use it for lots of things.  You can use it to make light, heat, sound and movement. I made a fan, a light, a buzzer, and a lie detector (which was really just a complicated buzzer and light hooked together.)

I am adding metal connector pads to my battery in my battery case so that my motor will work.

This is me using my batery to light up a small LED light bulb.

"Supercrafts" Badge and "All About Art" Badge for Brownies by Eleanor

Supercrafts Badge

For my Supercrafts badge I needed to sew something. I used a kit I got from the Scholastic catalog, and made a cookie. I am going to give it to my Dad for Father's Day.

I had to make a paper craft and I chose origami, and I made a origami bunny.

...and then I made an origami elephant.

And then I had to make a craft out of recycled materials. I decided to make a flower vas out of tissue paper, glue and a wine bottle.

This is for my "All About Art" badge. I had to make colour wheels of the primary and secondary colours. I used my special scented markers.

I had to make a figure out of wire or pipe cleaners.. I made one out of wire. It is a man walking his dog.

For this badge, I had to visit an art gallery. I went to the art gallery with my Moaike. This is picture I drew when I was there of one of the pictures in the art gallery by Henri Le Sidaner.

I also had to make a comic book about my favourite book. I made a comic strip called Murray and Blurry, about one of my favourite books, which is called "Ever After".

Blossom On The Road! By Eleanor, Miranda and Sophia

Part 1: Sophia

On Wednesdays, our families do home school swaps, where either Sophia and Eleanor go over to Miranda's house, or Miranda goes over to Sophia and Eleanor's house, and we do home school! We call ourselves BLOSSOM.

Last weekend, we went on a road trip to Victoria as a field trip all together in Miranda's family's Westfalia van. It was a fantastic trip accompanied by awesome playlists and car breakdowns!

Us in the broken-down van, fretting our future.

But then, we drove into the parking lot of a local Dairy Queen and one of the employees fixed our van for us!

Luckily Miranda is an artist and brings supplies with her everywhere she goes - so here we are making emergency Thank You cards for the man who fixed our van!

After our van was fixed, our Granny and Papa arrived and treated us to lunch at the Dairy Queen.

First Stop: Royal BC Museum - Actually learning something! 

(Just kidding, I learned that Miranda is awesome and brings art supplies with her everywhere, and that it is a true fact that strangers are friends you haven't met yet.)

After the DQ adventure we went to the Royal BC Museum, where we first went into the Human History Exhibit.

First we saw a bunch of exhibits about lost languages of the First Nations people from BC. British Columbia has 64 First Nations first languages and BC has 80% of all the first nations languages in Canada. Unfortunately, at residential schools, children were made to learn English and stop speaking or forget their mother tongues.

(Eleanor's note: "I have been studying communities and I think losing your language would be like losing your life. If the grandparents and parents who always taught the kids lost the kids and when the kids came back they couldn't understand them any more it would be heart breaking. if was a mama and my kid got sent away and my kids came back and I started speaking my language to my kids and they didn't know my language, it would break my heart. And that happened! That really happened! people! Have a heart!")

Listening to the language of the Tahltan, the people our church is connected with.

Language board of BC

My favourite bit of this exhibit was a giant woven basket called the Cradle of Language. You could sit in it and listen to old recordings of lost First Nations languages. You can see a video of us in the Cradle of Language by clicking HERE.

A beautiful baby carrier.

One of the TRC calls to action

Then we went into a First Nations gallery and posted all over the gallery were the 94 Calls to Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation commission. It was entrancing and inspiring to see the roots of our country's history.

This was us panning for gold, super cool for Miranda who is studying BC Gold Rush history in Grade 5 Social Studies!

We went to the western bit of the Human History gallery. We saw a Gold Rush exhibit, a pretend marine ship and a pretend town with a movie theatre with old Charlie Chaplin movies I got sucked into and loved watching.

We met Shrimpy the shrimp.

We named this wooly mammoth George. Talk about extreme environments!

Then we went into the Natural History exhibit where we looked at lots of nature - such as wooly mammoths with real ice walls, tidal pools by sea lion exhibits, and a pretend submarine filled with aquatic artifacts including a ninja crab - which was helpful as I'm learning about exploring extreme environments - like in the deep ocean!

Ninja Crab!

I loved coming here, it was fun and memorable experience, but I wish I had gotten the moccasins I saw in the gift shop! Sophia, signing off.

Pretend submarine!

 Part 2: Goldstream Provincial Park by Miranda

On Monday morning Granny and Papa took us on a hike at Goldstream Park. It was called Goldstream Park because that was where explorers found gold a long time ago during the Gold Rush. Granny and Papa told us that some people still come and pan for gold in the river.

Granny is teaching us about the salmon life cycle. The Goldstream river is where you can come and see the salmon somehow returning from the ocean to their birthplace! Scientists still don't really know how the salmon do it!

Learning about the Goldstream river.

Here we were looking at different flowers to see if we could match them up to the flower book back at their house.

Here we are at Goldstream Falls. Sophia was making her own waterfall by moving rocks and putting rocks in different places.

There were 195 steps! (I think!)

I really liked how Granny and Papa took us to an awesome playground at the park, and I really liked seeing the waterfall too. We pretended we were forest adventurers and we went down the stream and found different things. I really liked looking at the Goldstream river and I saw tiny little glints of gold-looking stuff. I loved it!

I learned a lot about the forest this time. This time I stopped and looked around and saw different things I had never seen before. I loved learning all the things about the river too, that I never knew before. Granny is a really good teacher! I loved it!

I'm going to hand things over to Eleanor now and she is going to tell you all about our visit to the Provincial legislature buildings, but I just wanted to say that the people who worked there were really nice to Todelo and Ittle, my and Eleanor's favourite stuffies. Here they are below, tucked in our shirts ready to go in! When we went into the legislature buildings we all had to go through a security check point and we all had to put our loose items into a bucket to be x-rayed. We had to put Ittle and Todelo in too! The security guards were really nice about it. We had to give our stuffies to security when we went in to the legislative assembly viewing gallery.

Part 3: The BC Provincial Legislature Buildings (aka BC Parliament)

 Just before we went in to the BC Leg for a tour, we met Queen Victoria! (I loved her crown.) I think they had an actress playing Queen Victoria because it was almost Victoria Day and also we were in Victoria!

Queen Victoria told us where she comes from they don't smile in pictures, but we were so excited it was hard not to smile!

On our tour we saw this quilt which was a quilt made by the families of First Nations women who were missing or were murdered. Some of the squares were made out of their clothes and possessions.  I thought it was just terrible that they were missing or murdered. The world should not be like that.

This is Mary Ellen Smith. (An actress playing her.)

 We learned about Mary Ellen Smith. She was the first women in all of the BC Legislature. When she was elected women used to not be considered PERSONS under the law. They gave birth to persons, they raised persons, but they were not persons! She got elected before women were considered persons under the law! When I heard this speech, it made me feel like women can really do anything!

This is beauty. Admire it. They made this building so beautiful to show our amazing country and where we live. It shows how beautiful it ca be.

When my Mum asked Sophia why they made the buildings so beautiful, she said: "Because this is where they decide our future." I think the government wants our future to be bright and beautiful.

We went on a tour of the buildings and we sat in the viewing gallery and watched a bit of the debate. A lot of the members weren't there so it was not that exciting. They were talking about families, though.

And then..... Miranda's MLA in her riding, Mabel Elmore, called us AND ASKED US IF WE WERE STILL THERE. She came out and asked us if we would like to come back into the parliament buildings and have a private tour! She took us all around the places we didn't go on the regular tour. 

This was a viewing room where people were typing out the words from the debate in the assembly to silent TVs and sending all the TV signals to TV stations. They were also typing down everything that got said for records.

We loved going into the MLA's bathroom, it wasn't exactly fancy but it was really old and kind of nice, but the Queen might have sat on the toilet I sat on. Sometimes people call toilets "thrones", so I could say I sat on the Queen's royal throne!

We went to the library. The public could actually take out books there!

There were no children's books, but there was one comic book, an Archie comic book.

Betty and Veronica visited Victoria!

Ms. Elmore gave us awesome badges. We got them for our Girl Guide blankets! One says "Government Girls" and one has the BC crest. (Just like the one we're standing in front of in this picture.

One of the interesting things we learned on this tour was what the BC Coat of Arms is supposed to look like and how there are so many wrong coat of arms around the legislature buildings, ones where the big horn sheep's tongue is sticking out, or ones where the sun is setting on the British Empire and don't even tell me about the Lion without the dogwood necklace!

We were so excited! We just completed half of the best day of our lives!

Here I am standing in front of Queen Victoria. it is actually supposed to be facing towards the leg, but they faced it the other way, so then Her Majesty could look out to the harbour.

Here we are sitting with George, a statue at the Navy memorial where my grandparents have a stone.

Here is a beautiful scene taken from beside the Milestones looking out onto the harbour and you can see in the middle of the night a big glowing building, it looks os beautiful doesn't it?

This is Sophia looking at yet another coat of arms!

This is Ruby! Finally it was after 10 o'clock at night and we said goodnight to all the carriage horses one their way to the stables for bed.

Our trip to Victoria was amazing, it couldn't have been better! We all want to go back as soon as possible. Thanks for listening!

Here we are today, writing our thank you letters to Mabel Elmore!