Eleanor Studies Ocean Plants by Eleanor

Hello, this is Eleanor Pallister again, in a new year. I am quite excited to be seeing you again. Right now, we are talking about the sea, and plants under there, and other great things in the water. 

Have you ever heard of algae? (Pronounced AL-gee.) Have you ever heard of baleen? Have you ever heard of krill? I can tell you all about them. But why don't you watch this video up here to give you a start?

Now that you've watched the video, you may have heard me talk about phytoplankton. Phytoplankton, means "plant drifter" Phytoplankton produce a large amount of oxygen, for creatures in the ocean AND creatures on land. But it's not like you could just walk up to some ocean water, scoop it up, take a whiff, and have unlimited amounts of air forever. The phytoplankton would eventually die.

Plankton are quite, quite tiny, and you can only see them with a very fine microscope. If you do have a very fine microscope on hand, take a dropper, drop some of the ocean water on to a the top of a microscope slide and then take a look. You will probably be able to see very small sort of creature thing eating each other. it's very interesting.

Now away from plankton. Let's talk about baleen. (Pronounced BAY-leen.) Now, first of before we get into what baleen is, whales don't have teeth, instead they have baleen, which is sort of like a strainer - you know, how when you strain macaroni? Baleen acts like a strainer for whales, they use baleen like teeth, they don't chomp down, like us, instead they strain the ocean water with their baleen and get tiny animals like krill, and things.

Now, time for krill. Krill are these little tiny animals which are very important to sea life. Without krill, a  lot of the food web would not be there, like whales and fish and many other things which I will not mention because there are too many. Krill are very tiny, I'm not quite of the size, but make an estimate in your head.

And now you know three things about tiny ocean life (except for the big whale part). Now you have a start off all about plants in the ocean. Please watch Bill Nye the Science Guy's video "Ocean Life" or visit your local aquarium to find out more. Thank you, I'll be here all week!

Touching sea cucumbers and starfish at the Aquarium

Helping animals 

Nature Walks and Forces and Motion!!! by $ophia

This term we have been going on nature walks, usually around our neighbourhood, and once we did one on Burnaby Mountain.

Trying to make fall!

 When we were on Burnaby Mountain, we explored the frost and how we affect it when we do different things.

When we went to the swings we learned about air resistance, one of the forces of nature.

I made this cute little "Sophie Da Vinci" video you can see above about air resistance and how I could feel it pushing down on me when I was one the swings.

When we go on our walks, sometimes we see something very interesting... ANIMAL PRINTS!

Spotting racoon tracks

Like racoon prints, dog prints, deer prints, cat prints, and one time a BALLERINA-A-SAURUS! Actually it was just me and Eleanor doing twirls in the wet gravel in Pax's soccer field. But we imagined it was dinosaur that liked to do ballet and we created a whole story about a ballerina-a-saurus trying to destroy a McDonald's.

The tracks of a ballerina-a-saurus

Reading about the Japanese Aboriginal Totem Poles on Burnaby Mountain - yay Social Studies!!!!

Actual dog tracks

Also when we were on Burnaby Mountain we looked at the fog and also some of the weather patterns that have been going on. Eleanor was noticing for Grade 2 science the water and air and earth stuff.

On a nature walk at Rocky Point Park in Port Moody, we spied a jelly fish!

We were exploring the wonder of magnets. This shows Eleanor using a magnet to pick up iron filings, and me and Eleanor crazily pointing at a home-made compass we made with a magnetized sewing

needle.