Sunday, November 30, 2014

Osaka Field Trip


On Thursday, we went on a field trip to two different museums in Osaka: 
the Osaka Castle Museum and Osaka History Museum. 

We went to explore the concept of how different places change over time. 

It was quite an adventure, since we took three different trains from Rokko Island!




Some people got to sit at the front of the train!




Once we arrived in Osaka, we walked through Osaka Castle Park to get to the first museum. 




Look at all the colourful leaves! 




First, we sat down for some snacks. 








At the Osaka Castle Museum, we headed to the top floor where we could see the entire city of Osaka!




As we viewed the city towards different directions, we made connections to what we explored in math about north, south, east, and west. 



In the museum, we saw some videos explaining how people used to live in the past. 






In the Osaka History Museum, we got to walk through replicas of actual places in Japan in the past. 

It felt like we were travelling through time!




Afterwards, we had lunch on some giant rocks we found. 




It was a day filled with learning and lots of walking!



Saturday, November 15, 2014

Osaka Christmas Market


Yesterday we went to the Osaka Christmas Market. 




We sang Christmas carols at the opening ceremony in English, German, French, and Japanese!




Check out the video to hear our beautiful singing voices!





New Unit and Fact Family Kites


Last week we started our new unit of inquiry with the central idea: 

The place we live in the universe changes over time. 




We explored the concept of "change" by looking at some old pictures of the school. 




We used our research skills to notice details in the pictures and take notes. 




We also looked at pictures showing the development of Rokko Island. 





We realized that some changes take place over a long process, just like the way Rokko Island was built. 




In math, we learned about fact families. 

This helped us understand the relationships between addition and subtraction better. 






To show our understanding, we made "fact family kites". 




Each kite represented a fact family, and had two addition sentences and 

two subtraction sentences which all related to each other. 




Wow! Look at those cool designs!








Afterwards, we walked over to the field to fly our kites!






We played some games with our kites too!






What a great afternoon!