Vancouver's Water System Model

Today we continued with our project of building Vancouver's Water System including Capilano and Seymour reservoirs. A Sesame Street clip on water reinforced the idea that every living thing needs water. "Water is important." concluded Esme.

Everyone took a part in the project: Julia and Alfie painted the mountains, Bela painted the land, Esme and Sofia painted houses and Simone painted a water treatment plant. While they worked I began the discussion of how important it is that we take care of our reservoirs and not pollute them "Ya, I don't want yucky water" said Sofia.

Next week we'll add snow on the mountain tops, rivers and streams and a pipe system for the water to travel through. Many of the children in other groups are curious about what we're doing. The Fire Group will present their model and practice talking in from of a group and share their knowledge.

Where does our drinking water come from?

Today we continued investigating the child's question "How does water get to our taps?" 

Mixing flour and water for paper mache

We started building a model of where Vancouver gets it drinking water which will provide a way for the children to show what they've learned.

Together we did some research on the computer and learned that there are 3 reservoirs we get our water from, our model will include two of them: Capilano and Seymour.

Making Seymour Mountain and Capilano Mountain

Johnathan and Sofia helped me paper mache two mountains. Simone said that ballerinas do not get their hands gooey so she opted to be the photographer and take pictures of the process. The smell of the paper mache made Alfie gag so he opted to give us moral support out of nose's reach rather than risk disaster!

The book "A Cool Drink of Water" by Barbara Kerley illustrates how everyone all over the world needs clean water to drink. Sofia noticed that not everyone got their drinking water from taps.




This led us to wonder about "What needs fresh water?" The children are very knowledgeable about this and made a information poster to share their knowledge.

Child's Question

Child's Question: Where does the water in our taps come from?

The children can see water coming out of the tap but where did it come from? "Pipes" many of them knew. We had a look and indeed there are pipes connected to the tap.

Looking at the pipes

Where does the water in the pipes come from? "The stream" thought Julia. We watched a video explaining the water treatment process http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuYB8nMFxQA. Esme heard a familiar word - chlorine - "You have to wash it off your body." (after swimming) Chlorine is used to killed germs and bacteria and helps make our water clean to drink.

To watch the filtration system in action we built one to show the process.

First a layer of cotton, then a layer of sand

Then a layer of gravel

Making dirty water

Pour in the dirty water

Clean water comes out the bottom!

After group time I observed Sofia explaining the filtration system to a child from another group - great communicator Sofia!

Where is water found?

To check the children's prior knowledge the children told me where they knew water was found and I drew it on a poster. Then we used the book Water by Frank Asch to add information to the poster.

While we gathered information the children came up with questions to lead our inquiry:

• Is snow and ice water?
• What is dew?
• Where does the water in our taps come from?
• Do you need water to make paper?

During this process Alfie was chewing on his sleeve and when he leaned on our poster he made it wet . . . with saliva! An exciting discovery! Water can be found in our bodies! The children thought of two sources: tears and saliva. We'll investigate this further.

I shared with the children something I knew about water - the water we find in oceans is different than water we find everywhere else. The children taste tested fresh water and salt water.

Salt water

Fresh water
Experiment: Is ice water? Some thought yes and some thought no. We let an ice cube melt in a bowl and concluded ice is water and we talked about two forms of water: liquid and solid. The children discovered that their hands and mouth made the ice melt faster.

New Unit: Water Wonders!

How We Share The Planet

Central Idea:

The decisions people make about water affects everyone.

Line of Inquiry:

The water cycle (function)

The impact of humans on water sources (responsibility)

Coast Salish use and connections to the local waterways (connection)

We all met today to talk about the new unit and the summative activity the children will do at the end of the unit; they will create a 3D mural of a landscape featuring bodies of water. The children will work together on the mural to plan and build a community and share a contribution to fishing, housing, drinkable water, ponds, animal life, plants, transportation, and ways to cross the water.

To assess what the children know about water each child offered a fact which was recorded on a rain drop. The rain drops were grouped into common themes: function, what we do with water, and where we find water. This is one way the teachers will launch their planning for the upcoming weeks of inquiry.

what's your idea?

sorting ideas

Is this ALL we know?

Row Row Row Your Boat

Another way to row

Preparing for the Potlatch

Yesterday there were four children in the Fire Group who started stringing bracelets for our gift to give away at the potlatch tomorrow. We needed to make 25 and it seemed like a daunting amount.

Today there were seven children who continued the work. We needed to make 17 more bracelets. After a few minutes the bracelets were finished and Sophia and Simone noticed how quick that was compared to yesterday. Together we concluded that the more people there are to share the work the less work each of us needs to do - a very important discovery amongst people who work and live together!

"I'll help you."

A lovely discussion took place while the children worked, the topic - what work do you want to do when you grow up?

Simone - "A vet"

Alfie - "A fireman"

Sofia - "I like to fix cars"

Esme - "I don't know yet"

Bela - "Don't know"

Grace - "A fireman" (but after icing the cake she decided to be a cake decorator)

Julia - "A gymnastics teacher and a ballet teacher"

The children helped to ice the cake and decided on how it should be decorated.

We're all ready for the potlatch!!

Who Are We Anyways?

The transdisciplinary theme for this unit is Who We Are and while we've been focusing on one aspect (we are generous beings) today's assessment provided an opportunity for the children to connect their understanding of who they are in the world.

The children came up with all these possibilities of who we are.

The children created individual posters expressing who they are and worked carefully and at length both in thinking of who they are and in decorating their poster.

Some of the children felt they couldn't draw a picture to represent the words. Simone came up with the idea to colour in the circle choosing a colour that represents that idea. For example, pink was the colour she chose to represent "I am a ballerina" This idea shows her connection to the previous colour unit and how people use colour. Many of the other children liked this idea and used it too

The children's work is displayed in the room, we invite you to come and see who we are