Ralph Klein Field Trip

Today, we visited Ralph Klein Park and participated in a program called "Marsh Madness." Our teacher, Sunita taught us all about the importance of wetlands. Wetlands are important because they soak up and hold on to water. They can hold a lot of water like a sponge, which prevents flooding. They even give water in a drought. They also clean the water so it's safer for us to drink like a pollution filter. They prevent forest fires because there aren't many trees in the grassland/wetlands. Wetlands also provide a habitat for lots of animals (insects, birds, mammals, fish).

A Canada Goose family with goslings

A Muskrat that swam under our dock!

City Watersheds Model

In the picture above, Sunita showed us places where humans make pollution. For example, factories, farms because of livestock, garbage, dog poop, dust from construction and farms, and salt/sand on our winter streets. We compared the cleanliness of the water before and after she added sponges to represent the wetlands. It was SO much cleaner when the wetlands were there.

Here are a few photos and student quotes about the day:

My favourite part was... 

"the pond dipping because I like how I got to catch and identify different types of animals that live in the wetland." ~ Davyd

"the pond dipping because I like to study insects that live in the water." ~ Isar

"the walk because I got to see around the park and see the animals." ~ MM

"the pond dipping because I learned what animals are in the water." ~ SS

"there are ducks taking their ducklings to swim." ~ Jaivivaan

"the pond dipping because I like all the animals that I got to discover." ~ Nollan

"when a muskrat scared me when I was catching a big leech." ~ Matin

"the pond dipping because we got to see all the animals living in the pond." ~ Milu

"the pond dipping because I like to study the creatures in the water." ~ AK 

On our way to the dock to do our pond dipping

Here, we took turns walking through the middle of the two lines.
We were pretending to be the wetland filtering the pollution from the water.

We tried to guess the animal on our back by asking Yes-No questions.
Then, we added them to the board of a wetland area to show each animal's habitat.

Confluence Field Trip

Our Field Trip to Confluence

We became archaeologists! What did the settlers, NWMP, railroad and Indigenous peoples leave behind?

We also solved some suitcase mysteries! Who packed these suitcases? What were their lives like?

Can you guess what this was used for?

What do these wooden posts represent? Ask me!

 

Robotics Residency

Last week, we had a presentation from Mr Robot. We discussed all the places we find robots in the world and what their uses are. We learned the basics of coding and a few of us got to code his robot, JD. 

Today, we got to spend the whole morning working with Mr Robot and his assistant, Zachary. They taught us how to code different EZ-Robots using a program called Arc. We learned how to make them move, and how to speak either in their robots voices or in our voices through an audio recording! Here are some pictures and quotes from what we learned: 

"I liked how you can make the robot talk." ~ MiM

"It was cool that you could do so many things. It was funny that the robots could ram into other people's robots." ~ Viljo

"It's like you're a parent. You can mould them into what you want and mine was a fighter." ~ Hugh

"It was fun how we could program the robots to do anything basically." ~ Milu

"I learned at the start how to make sound effects with the robot speaking." ~ SS

"I liked how you can change the robot's movements in a split second." ~ LD

"I liked how you could make the robots fight." ~ Nollan

"I liked the coding." ~ MaM

"It was very cool. It did a happy dance." ~ Jaivivaan

We also did other coding activities with them while the robots were charging. For the Algorithm Task, we drew a path on a piece of grid paper. Then, we wrote the instructions for how to travel along the path. This is like the algorithm we use when coding the robots. You need to think about both the movements and the directions of movements so the robots can understand what you want them to do.

The next activity was to make a Binary Bracelet. We did that because robots use Binary as their language. We got a coding sheet that told us how to write our initials using binary code. We used corresponding beads to "write" our initials on the bracelets so the robots could read them.

Last, we played an "If... Then..." game where we did an action if we met the conditions that were given (ex: wearing a hat, being in Grade 4, having braces, etc). Mr Robot gave us an instruction like, "If you're wearing a green shirt, stand up" and we followed it, just like a robot would do. We had a lot of fun today exploring coding!