Wow, what an exciting day we had today! World Water Day 2017. The theme this year is: Why waste water? It is time to look at the ways we can recycle our daily water use. Here is a video for you to watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrJhsH0Sz_o
It was great to see the rain this morning, it was like Calgary skies were celebrating this very important day dedicated to protecting this precious natural resource. It reminded us about the water cycle.
We had two big events this today to consolidate our inquiry into the importance of water.
The first was a design challenge to build a water filter. All three grade classes came together and we put on our scientist lenses to investigate how to build a filter using a recycled plastic bottle, cotton balls, sand, charcoal, gravel and j cloth. It was really wonderful to see everyone putting on their design lenses and testing out their filter prototypes. We learned that different materials have various coarseness (roughness) and that it does matter the order that you layer the materials in the filter. Can you guess which material was the finest/smoothest material? What do you think is the best order for the layers? We started to build our measurement background knowledge by exploring volume and the units ml and L for measuring water.
Here are some photos of the big build:
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| Answering the big questions and making a hypothesis |
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| Picking up the materials for the filter |
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| Carefully measuring out the dirty/unsafe water |
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| Testing the filter |
In the afternoon we did our water day walk into the community carrying our 2 and 4L jugs of water. We could not have asked for a more beautiful afternoon! Students really empathized with their young peers in Africa and India who have to walk for many km each to collect untreated, unsafe water. Our goal on this walk was also to connect back to our science exploration into rocks and minerals and to a fresh water source that runs right along their neighbourhood. We made many connections and generated even more questions as we traveled along the pathways. We were field scientists who observed, wondered and inferred about the wetland that is right on our doorstep. We have made a plan to head back down in the next couple of months to see the changes as we begin our exploration of life cycles.
Here are some photos our amazing trip:
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| Departing the school. |
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| trying out different ways of carrying the water |
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| water line |
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| Heading down the paths |
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| Thanks Nicole for volunteering and leading the way! |
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| Sitting down to snack, observe and sketch |
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| Mindful focus |
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| A smiling water ambassador |
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| recycling the water to give our school plants a drink. |
Thank you again to all of our wonderful parent volunteers! We really appreciate the time you dedicated to join us. We know this will be a memorable water day for you too!
Namaste from all the big thinkers in room 123
Everyone have the best spring break -- enjoy, and recharge.
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