Gifts of Grace

Our friends down the street in Ms. Clarke's Class posted about this video and project on Friday. I thought it was a beautiful idea so I shared it with the kids in our class today! Thanks Ms. Clarke! Here is the video:

I love projects like this that encourage us to think about other people, especially around Christmas, and take the focus of the material side of the holiday. We talked about how we could participate in this project and decided it was important to write a letter to our families to explain it all. The kids brainstormed the details about what the project is, why we want to help and what we can do.

Everyone has the option of bringing in gently used or new mittens, hats or warm socks and leftover Halloween candy. I will take care of picking up any extra candy we need to fill the packages. Once we have gathered our donations (by Wednesday, December 16), we will stuff the warm items with the sweet treats and make cards shaped like mittens to go with them. Pick-up or delivery of the packages will be arranged for Friday, December 20 in time for their Christmas Eve delivery to Siloam Mission!

If you have warm items or candy you would like to donate too, please email me at ldent@retsd.mb.ca and I can add them to our delivery.

Thank You!!

THANK YOU!

Today we got a very exciting and surprising piece of mail from our friends down the street in Ms. Malkoske's Class! They made us nets for our caterpillars! It arrived just in time because our caterpillars are getting SO BIG! We think they might start going to chrysalids before the weekend.

I think it was really kind of you and your class to take your time to make it for us.  -Elisa

I think it was really nice of you and everybody likes the butterfly nets. -Katrina

When we got the caterpillar nets, we hung them up from the ceiling. -Carter L

Thank-you for the butterfly net. weil  uos it as sonyas we get butterflys.-Olivia

We really like the butterfly net you gave us. We are going to use it as soon as we get chrysalids. -Alexa

I like the butterfly net. by Tyler.

Thank-you for the butterfly net. I hope we get to use it. I like the green and blue plates with the polka dots. -Laine

I hope our butterflies will like to stay there until all the caterpillars are butterflies. -Iain

How did you make the butterfly nets? -Paige

When did you start making the butterfly nets? -carter V

How long did it take you to make the butterfly nets? -Olivia

How did you get the idea to make the nets? -Carter V

It's cool how you made the butterfly nets because it looks perfect on the ceiling. -Rebecca

We are going to do something kind to another person to pay it forward. -Iain

Ms. Malkoske's class told us they do random acts of kindness for other people. We really liked this idea. We talked about what this means and decided that we should thank Ms. Malkoske's class and then pay it forward by doing a random act of kindness for someone else. We talked about how this doesn't need to be a great big gesture of kindness but could be as simple as holding the door open for someone, saying "goodbye, have a nice evening" or drawing a picture. So, thanks to the children of room 9 not only for the butterfly nets but for spreading kindness. Your kindness will now be spread even further as we pay it forward!

-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Coming Soon - Caterpillars!!

We are talking about the caterpillars that are coming to our class next week. Our teacher told us that Mrs. Malkoske's class got theirs this week! We went to their blog to check them out and saw the livestream of their caterpillars. Our teacher told us we will have that too!

We have some questions for Mrs. Malkoske's class:

How many caterpillars do you have? -Olivia
What do they eat? -Carter V
What type of caterpillars are they? -Paige
We are getting Painted Lady caterpillars. -Tommy-Lee
Are yours Painted Ladies too? -Max
That sounds fun, I am excited that we get some too! -Katrina and Rebecca
What day did you get them on? -Carter L and Tyler
What do they look like? -Alexa
Do they move a lot? -Elisa and Paige
I hope they are Painted Lady butterflies, I am excited!! -Laine
Has one turned into a butterfly yet? -Avery
I hope they look good! -Sam
I hope they have nice wings. -Paige
Where do you keep them? -Iain
How old are they? -Tyler
What are they doing in the livestream? I couldn't tell. -Kaitlyn

Skyping with Mrs.Malkoske's class :)

Today we tried out Skype for the first time as a class. We had a call with Mrs. Malkoske's grade 1 and 2 class down the road at Dr. Hamilton School. We are going to Skype regularly as reading buddies for Read to Someone during our Daily 5 time. After we all had our chance to see what Skype is all about, Rachel and Ricky had a chance to read to two students in their class. I love using Skype in this way whether it is with same-age students or Little Buddies like this. The students are totally engaged in it and able to model being good readers for the youngsters.
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Today I was the first person to skype with Mrs.Malkoske's class. I skyped with Jayden, I read her If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and she read Dolphins. I think both books were awesome!It was pretty fun being the first one to skype with someone. This was my first time. I hope I will get to skype with her again.

BY:Rachel :P

Exploring Weather with Steve Spangler

In a comment on our blog, Mrs. Malkoske told us about a Scientist, Steve Spangler, she thought we should check out. He posts videos of experiments including one on creating a cloud in a bottle. This is a little different than the one we tried but, it works! Here it is:

Our reflections:
It was really cool how it turned all white. It was because it got all pressured and when he took the thing out it went "poof", like it turned white. -Rachel

It was cool when the could appeared because when we did our experiment it failed but when they did theirs it secceeded. -Kaitie

The cloud and smoke disappeared inside the bottle when the pump changed the pressure. -Michelle

How does it work? Explanation from Steve Spangler Science
Even though we don't see them, water molecules are in the air all around us. These airborne water molecules are called water vapor. When the molecules are bouncing around in the atmosphere, they don't normally stick together.
Pumping the bottle forces the molecules to squeeze together or compress. Releasing the pressure allows the air to expand, and in doing so, the temperature of the air becomes cooler. This cooling process allows the molecules to stick together - or condense - more easily, forming tiny droplets. Clouds are nothing more than groups of tiny water droplets!
The reason the rubbing alcohol forms a more visible cloud is because alcohol evaporates more quickly than water. Alcohol molecules have weaker bonds than water molecules, so they let go of each other more easily. Since there are more evaporated alcohol molecules in the bottle, there are also more molecules able to condense. This is why you can see the alcohol cloud more clearly than the water cloud.
Clouds on Earth form when warm air rises and its pressure is reduced. The air expands and cools, and clouds form as the temperature drops below the dew point. Invisible particles in the air in the form of pollution, smoke, dust or even tiny particles of dirt help form a nucleus on which the water molecules can attach.


We also checked out the "Mentos and Coke" experiment which is not connected to what we are exploring in Science right now but was awesome! We discussed what this experiment might be about before we watched it and we thought the mint in the Mentos would mix with the carbonation in the Coke to create a reaction. Peyton told us what a geyser was, "like a volcano but with water coming out of the ground." This really helped us imagine what the reaction might be. Here it is:


Our reflections:
When the Mentos went in the coke bottle the mentos were fizzy so they shot up. -Mason

When it shot out the bottle it almost used all the pop! -Brooke

It amazes me how Mentos makes the coke squirt out like a geyser. It is because the coke is carbonated and the Mentos coating is chalky. -Ricky

The Diet Coke worked better because it went higher when it mixed with the Mentos. -Michelle

How does it work? Explanation from Steve Spangler Science:
Water molecules strongly attract each other, linking together to form a tight mesh around each bubble of carbon dioxide gas in the soda. In order to form a new bubble, or even to expand a bubble that has already formed, water molecules must push away from each other. It takes extra energy to break this "surface tension."In other words, water "resists" the expansion of bubbles in the soda.

When you drop the Mentos into the soda, the gelatin and gum arabic from the dissolving candy break the surface tension. This disrupts the water mesh, so that it takes less work to expand and form new bubbles. Each Mentos candy has thousands of tiny pits all over the surface. These tiny pits are called nucleation sites - perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy.
Couple this with the fact that the Mentos candies are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle and you've got a double-whammy. When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast. You can see a similar effect when potatoes or pasta are lowered into a pot of boiling water. The water will sometimes boil over because organic materials that leach out of the cooking potatoes or pasta disrupt the tight mesh of water molecules at the surface of the water, making it easier for bubbles and foam to form.