Fine Arts by Sophia$

Last term my Uncle Matt wanted to know why I only got a "B" in fine arts. He is the artistic director of his own theatre company, Theatre SKAM. He was only joking! But I had to do some more fine arts stuff, which is good cause I like it.

Eleanor and I started taking ballet. This is us posing to show our outfits on the first day. I don't have pictures because Mums are not allowed to stay for class. We are going to have a recital in May and our theme is the movie "Frozen" which is awesome because I love that movie and I have memorized the words to some of the songs and I can sing them off by heart and my voice sounds almost exactly like the girl in "Frozen".

I also got a pottery wheel and I made a pot and gave it to my Granny and Papa but I did not take a picture before I gave it away.

Eleanor also did a huge salt painting the other day too. And now there is a whole bunch of salt on the desk and it is really hard to write on it without getting bumps on your paper.

Rocking the Chalk Number Line

Wildwoodville by Eleanor and Sophia$

This term our Mum signed us up for this thing called Wildwoodville. What we do there is well... you get real stuff and you get to keep it forever with fake money. Where we do it is a house, the basement of a house. It is set-up by CARDBOARD mostly. It s a pretend town, and as you can see here, I am in the cafe. Working in the cafe is my job which I never want to give up.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
This is a picture of me at my not-job, which means I do not work here. It is the Wildwoodville news office. Once I did a movie review on the movie "The Croods" and it was put in the newspaper. The Wildwoodville newspaper is just a double sided piece of paper with ink on it that gets made very day and I always buy it so that I don't miss the news. Sometimes it is like, blah, blah, blah, boring, boring boring. But when I wrote the review I got paid $10.

You get your money from the bank every day. On the first day you get a $20 loan, and you have to pay it back after you've made that money. On the second week of Wildwoodville I paid it back, because my friend Elias who was the banker, sent me 2 $10 bills in the mail, so I said, "You send it, you get it back!" and I paid off my loan.  You try and make money from your business, and at the end of the day you split the money from your day with your partner. BUT you have to save $3 for the newspaper.

You can spend your money at the post office (as you can see Sophia there below) or (as you can above) at the movie theatre and on this day Sophia actually wound up working there. My favourite place to spend my money is the gift shop.

I learned about communities that you should never be mean to your customer because then someone might be mean back to you, and treat people how you want to be treated. And we all need each other. You can't have a business all by yourself. By Eleanor.

As you can see in the picture below, I used to work in the bank. When people withdraw money from their account, I would have to subtract to see how much money they had left.  I would also have to add when they would deposit their money to find out what their total was for the next time they wanted to withdraw it.

Now I work at the cinema. What we do here, is if someone wants to reserve a show ahead of time, we sell them the ticket, and they come back later. We get to stay in the show while they watch it (that is one of my favourite parts). Or they can just pay us and watch the show right there and then. Also we have a ticket recycling program, where we give someone a ticket they bring it back and watch a show. But the next time someone buys a ticket, we give them the same ticket.

I feel I got something out of Wildwoodville because now I know how different businesses in my community work. I like this class because whatever you buy it's actually like a real town, where of you get something from the gift shop or toy store you actually get to keep it. If you buy something from the cafe, it's real and you get to eat it. I super like the way it is structured and organized and built.

This Friday is our last day of Wildwoodville and we have a super cool day called Wildwoodville day. We are going to have a parade, and Ms. Terry, (the mayor) is going to set up a karaoke machine and we are going to use the microphone to sing songs, play instruments and give speeches.

I have made up a song and I can't wait to sing it. it is sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques":

Wildwood-ville, Wildwood-ville,

Our tiny town, Our tiny town 

Mayor's name is Terry

Here we're always merry 

Ding dang dong

By Sophia $

Needs Of Living Things by Eleanor

This is a forest by my house. This is a picture of rocks on a tree, but the amazing thing about it, if I could zoom in, I could see crystals. The crystals looked like they were diamonds. They were growing straight out of that tree, and my mind was BLOWING!

I don't think they were ice. The top picture is of me next to some frozen mushrooms growing on that same tree. Which looked like pecans and butterflies. I can't believe that trees can grow stuff, like mushrooms, and plants, when they are dead and fallen down.  That dead tree is food!

Right here, I am planting flowers in front of my house. I had to make sure the roots were down in the ground so that they didn't die because roots deliver the food to the rest of the plant which comes from the dirt. We have to make sure it gets sun and water. This plant is called hen and chicks.

My brother Pax gave me these flowers for my birthday. They are so darn stinkin' beautiful! He didn't want to buy me flowers that would die, so he bought me the kind that has roots. I will plant them in my garden.

This is a picture of my NEW PET Violet. She is a fish, a female beta fish. I have to clean her tank every week, which isn't that hard, and yesterday, the best part happened. I scooped her out of her tank - because you have to do that, of course - by myself, without anyone else in the kitchen, without any supervision. I take out her rocks, and I think I might move her plant again next Sunday. I have to wash the rocks, and change the water. But she has to still have a little bit of the old water. Then I put in new water with special formula which is stress relief formula for fishes. It makes the tap water feel like pet store water.

I got her with money from my Nanna and Papa Edwin for my birthday.

I called her Violet because she is purple and in the pet store with all her little friends, she was purple. We saw her get stressed when she was in the car driving home with us and she turned pinky-red. But now she stays purple. And also on the top she has a little tiny fin, and her side fins are red.

Now THIS is a picture of today. I made Violet her very own cute little scenery. I made her a moon picture and I made a flag out of pencil crayon, tape and and a toothpick, and in this picture it looks like she is actually planting the flag - FIRST FISH ON THE MOON!

This is my birthday party. and we are eating cake. For my birthday, I raised money for the SPCA. I did that because I really love animals and I think they are just so precious and that everybody should not be mean to animals. I learned about the SPCA from school because my friend Lauren who used to go to my school and she said to raise money for the SPCA so we learned about it.

Plants and animals are very special to me, so take care of them! by Eleanor, age SEVEN!

Lego Travel Adventure Pt. 2 by Eleanor & Sophia

For Lego Travel Adventure Part 2, we did one day at my house and one day at Keon and Levi's house.

We learned about travel by water.

Eleanor: We made tin foil boats and we put Sophia's mini figures into the tin foil boats and this is all the minifigures in MY boat. We were learning about buoyancy, I have found out it's not how good and how much you put for wall, it has to be - well, if you do it out of tin foil it has to be skinny and long. And one layer of tin foil.

We learned about parts of a boat and we ate snack.

 

 Sophia: Water is heavy. Because of this, something is buoyant when it displaces the same water as it weighs. If something is not quite sinking, but not quite floating, you call it neutrally buoyant. This is neutral buoyancy. The coke can in the water above was also neutrally buoyant. This is an example of neutral buoyancy.

 

The toothbrush and the coat hanger were neutrally buoyant too.

  The next week at Keon and Levi's house, we did an experiment on surface tension, and made Lego vehicles to float them using surface tension. If they didn't float we had to re-design them.

We used surface tension to see how much water we could cram into a water bottle drop by drop, and also we did a cool experiment where we had a plate filled with water and pepper sprinkled in the water and we put a tiny drop of soap on the middle. The pepper, because of density, ran away and stuck to the sides of the plate. Even when Levi stuck more soap on the plate, the pepper didn't move.

"The Cricket in Times Square" Unit Study by Sophia$

This term we were listening to an audio book called The Cricket in Times Square.It was so interesting we decided to do an unit study about it.

The Cricket in Times Square is about a cricket named Chester and his friends: A boy named Mario,a mouse named Tucker and a cat named Hairy.

One day we had a "Cricket in Times Square day with Daddy."

Themes
For our quiet time we talked about how friendship, loyalty, honesty, family, respect for elders, freedom, and home are themes in The Cricket in Times Square. We talked about which theme stands out to us most in the book and which of these ideas is most important to us. Eleanor said freedom was most important. I say loyalty.We prayed God would show us how to live out the theme that is most on our heart.

Fine Arts
At "Cricket in Times Square day with Daddy" we made little cricket cages like the ones in the photos and I made a little clay log with a face to be a cricket. We were going to make crickets out of paper tubes like the ones in the picture but we decided not to because we liked the little tiny cricket cages more.



 We also listened to some of the music that Chester the cricket played. We heard

“Come Back to Sorrento.” by Dean Martin
“A Little Night Music” by Mozart.
"Rock of Ages" by Johnny Cash
“Loochy the Murmurer” from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor
“Grand March” from Aida and we even saw a video of an opera, with dancers.
and “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

Comprehension stuff

(This next part I don't have a picture for so I am dictating it to you)

Also at Cricket at Times Square Day with Daddy, we had a little card game show where Daddy would ask us trivia questions about the book and we would write the answers down on cards and then he would say 1, 2, 3, Go, and we would hold the cards up to show him. We did the trivia game show so that way Daddy would know how much we knew about the book.

Science & Math

We did a science experiment where we figured out the temperature by listening to a cricket chirp.



Did you know God made crickets to tell the temperature? We found a youtube video called "Cricket Chirping" and counted how many times the crickets chirped. To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, you count number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get temperature.
Example: 48 chirps /(divided by) 3 + 4 = 20° C

The cricket we saw was in a place where it was 19 degrees C.

Social Studies

We looked at the maps in the road atlases we have of New York city. We found Connecticut where Chester the cricket came from and New York City. We found Coney Island, where Mario liked to go to swim.

We looked at the subway map. We used a pen to trace a route we thought Mario could have taken to go on the subway to Coney Island.

Daddy also took a video of us telling about the book and why we thought it was good and fun and how things were different in the setting of the book and today. Like how Mario worked at the newspaper stand or took the subway alone.

The Cricket In Times Square was awesome. I would recommend it to someone else because I think it has a good plot. Eleanor says, "it is a lovely story about friendship, freedom and kindness."

The making of Eliza Loverige: by Sophia

This is me and my doll Eliza. In Grade 4 Social Studies we learn about Canada's early settlers and I read the book Dear Canada: Winter of Peril - The Newfoundland Diary of Sophie Loverige.

I wanted to do something more interesting than just a paper report, so I made this doll. In the book, Sophie has a doll named Eliza just like this. I did research about what dolls in the 1700s would be like. Sometimes they had entire rooms just for little girls dolls! The head for her doll would have been made of china, or wax, or wood. But we couldn't do something as fancy as that, so we just made a plain old rag doll.

We used instructions from a website called www.instructables.com. Here is a link to the instructions I used. 

Why the doll was important in this story is because the doll Eliza in the story sort of connected Sophie to an aboriginal girl Sophie saw. The girl was a Beothuk girl. The Beothuk is a tribe that was the only tribe that was completely wiped out by Residential Schools.  Off the white board! (If you want to know what I mean by "off the white board", watch my report on Residential Schools here.)  Sophie gave her doll Eliza away to the little Beothuk girl.

My Mum is helping my type this and she wrote "Sophia" instead of "Sophie" and I said remember it's Sophie, not Sophia. Then I said, "I can't give my doll away to a Beothuk, because there is none left." And that makes me feel very sad.

I loved making the doll because I love sewing. I feel like I am getting better at using the sewing machine. The arms and legs were the hardest part. I thought it was really cool I was making a doll. I keep Eliza on my bed every day.

Eleanor Pallister the Second by Eleanor

I learned that there is a second Eleanor Pallister. Actually, she was the first one, and I am the second one.  Eleanor Dickenson Pallister. This is what it says on Ancestry.ca. She is on my Dad's side of the family and she is my great-great-great-great-grandmother. She was born in 1750. She died in 1815.
If she was still alive today she would 264!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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This is the side of my family I was named after. I am called Eleanor because my Mum, My Granny, my Great Gran and and my great-Great-Gran all have names that mean "light". Joanna Helen, Helen, Ellen Mary and Mary Ellen. So I am the fifth generation of "bright lights".

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The thermometer (DON DON DON!):By Sophia$

A little wile ago we decided that we wanted to make a homemade thermometer out of a bottle and a few other things.

For grade 4 Science I needed to do weather and part of doing weather is you need to be able to measure it.

First we filled a glass bottle with cold water. it had to be glass bottle so it would read the temperature more accurately and when the thing would compress it wouldn't shrivel up into a dried out worm!

We put in a whole bunch of red food colouring, to make the water actually visible. and then stuck a straw in and sealed it with play-dough so it was airtight.

Then we poured cold water to make the water in the straw go down and so the water wouldn't dribble all over the counter we put the bottle in a bowl.

Then we taped a paper scale marked from 1 to 12 to the back of the straw so  we could tell when the temperature was higher or lower by the amount of water that was in the straw, because the water would go up or down the straw based on the temperature. it wasn't in degrees, but it was good enough.

 (we didn't have a picture for this part so that is why I'm dictating it to you)

Then, one day the weather got very warm, and the water in the thermometer expanded and bubbled up through the straw, there there wasn't enough water any more for the thermometer to work. Then I took the play dough off the top, because I thought, "well, now this thing is useless." And then a little while later, my Mum told me our city was expecting a cold snap, that means sudden cold weather.

 It's something to do with a thing called the "polar vortex", which apparently is some wind which makes everything colder, sort of like Elsa from the movie Frozen.

Then a few days later, I looked at the thermometer and the weirdest thing had happened. A little bit of a cylinder of ice had formed. Of course, I know that is what happens when things freeze, that the water expands, and there was a little bit of gushy ice at the top that looked like a tiny bit of exploding lava.

(Now this next part I am going to tell you is from the pictures below. P.S. The last part happened yesterday, Tues. Feb. 4, 2014. Today is Wed.)

This morning as soon as my Mum came in to wake me up, my brother and sister came in too, and they said, "Come! Quick! Something has happened with the thermometer! I can't tell you what it is! Come and see!"

Sure enough, when I got to the window, the entire thing had exploded. That's what happens when water is inside a glass bottle. All the water was pushing against the sides.

This thermometer was effective, for the while that it survived. When you have a homemade thermometer, bring it inside if there is going to be a cold snap! Use an actual thermometer to measure the temperature instead!

THE END!!!!!!!
(DON DON DON!!!)

Rememberance Day: A report by Eleanor

All these pictures are in Victoria. It was Remembrance Day. It was at the Navy Memorial. This statue is of a daughter hugging her Daddy when he just got back from the navy. This statue makes me feel very happy. 

 This is a picture of the parade. All the people from the Navy and army and people who fought in wars.

This is a picture of me watching the parade with my Uncle Matt and my Papa. When all the old people who fought in the war go by my Mum makes me clap my hands and shout. I think we do that to make them feel proud.

This is my family. Part of my family.

This memorial is special to us because it has a memorial stone for my Granny's Dad and Mum. It says: "Remembered for his true patriot love, Bert Moloney, RN and his beloved Nell." RN means Royal navy in England. My Great-Grandad fought in World War II.

This picture is me seeing a weird man stone. Sophia tried to rip the newspaper out of his hands. The newspaper says "we won!"

I like this day because I got to eat a lollipop. I learned a lot about my family.

Lego Travel Adventure: Part 1

We were so excited to discover that Science World would be opening a new exhibit Feb. 1 called Lego Travel Adventure. This exhibit was created by the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, IN and they had a whole unit study available on their website.

We've been meeting every Wed morning with our friends Keon and Levi to do the unit study together. http://www.childrensmuseum.org/travel-adventure-teachers

The first unit was called Travel By Land. We read the Dr Seuss story/poem called "Oh The Places You'll GO!". The children took turns guessing aloud how the sentences ended in the story, and then wrote paragraphs about if they could go any where, where they would go.

Sophia: If I could go anywhere, I would go to Italy or Hawaii. If I went to Hawaii, I would take my friends Elias and Mateo, I would bring a bathing suit and lots of sun screen. I would go snorkelling, and I would like to Waikiki to see the hula dancers. I would stay for 3 weeks.

Eleanor: If I could go anywhere, I would go to Paris, France to see the Eiffel tower. I would go for a year, I would take my Mum and my friends. I would pack berets and fancy dresses, a french language guide and a map.

We have already been studying maps this year, so we took time to review some map vocabulary and learned the difference between physical, political and other maps. The children then built Lego vehicles and using their new vocabulary and understanding of physical maps, "drove the maps" trying to consider what kind of terrain they would really be crossing and the kind of vehicles they would need.

We're going to give it a go!

This blog is a place we will try to record our school adventures. We need to report to our amazing teacher, Ms. Shannon, three times a year and we thought this might be a better way to attempt recording our good times than all the last minute cramming we usually do!

This is us, L to R, Joanna, Pax, Wade, Eleanor and Sophia.

Our photos are taken by our wonderful friend Sandra at www.theartofseeing.ca