Yesterday, we started with our new poem, "Fall Mixed Up!" to celebrate the unpredictable nature of weather in Calgary. Part of the Alberta science curriculum is exploring seasonal changes, which offers some unique challenges living where we do! When this poem comes home, it is meant more as a "read with me" poem, as it's original format is a picture book, and quite lengthy.
Many students came in after the weekend with a variety of leaves, which prompted our return to a variety of activities in our classroom that were paused while we waited for "normal" Fall weather to return!
Others helped grind different colour leaves with our mortar and pestle, in order to break them up a bit for an experiment on leaf pigments:
After setting the leaves in rubbing alcohol, we used filter paper to do simple chromatography to extract the pigments:
We were able to extract yellow, orange, red, purple and green pigments!
Students also wondered if we could extract chlorophyll (green pigment) from different kinds of leaves, which prompted an additional experiment set-up with needle leaves (spruce), sheath leaves (grass) and angiosperm leaves (regular, "broad" leaves) . We'll keep you posted on our findings!
Thank you to all the volunteers who were able to join us on our field trip to Fort Calgary today! We had a wonderful time participating in two different programs:
Calgary: A Prairie Community - Students will built a 3-D map of our city while learning about the founding groups, and the changes over time as each group settled in the area. Everyone dressed in traditional clothing, learned to say "hello" in a new language, and handled artifacts as they learned about what makes different cultures unique.
Building Calgary - Students discussed Calgary’s past and how
different types of buildings have been made and used. They worked together to build a model log cabin, then traveled through the museum to
further explore buildings and their materials.
We look forward to our next field trip for One Day Arts School at Arts Commons! Stay tuned for details!
Ms. Thomas
