The Great Popcorn Pop Off!

Do you like to eat popcorn? If you do, we can help you on decide which one you might like to buy on your next shopping trip! We recently tested out 6 different kids of popcorn and looked at their calories, fat content, number of kernels popped and price point.  We also looked at the price of each sample.  All of these factors helped us determine which popcorn we would purchase again.  Here are a few pictures and the results from each group! 

President's Choice Butter Flavour

We worked on sample a.  Sample A was $0.76 per bag and it was one of the most expensive.  It tasted greasy and soft and buttery.  It was greasy because it had oil and butter.  It's fat content was the same as sample C, D, and E which was 2.5g per 50g. Some of us would buy this popcorn because it is tasty and buttery but some of us would not because of it's a little greasy. 

No Name Butter Flavour

Our group tested sample B, No Name Butter Flavour.  It cost $0.49 per bag.  It had a buttery taste. that was just perfect.  It was puffy and it had a golden colour.  We thought it was a good choice but not the best choice because the calories were 200 per serving.  It is hard for us to decide if we would buy it or not because it had a good taste to it but it is really fattening. 

Smart Pop Butter Flavour

Our popcorn was Orville Redenbacher Smart Pop.  Each bag cost $0.41 and it was the least expensive.  Our popcorn tasted very salty and some burned.  It had an average amount of calories when compared to the other samples and it had the least amount of fat. We would not by this popcorn because it was too salty and too greasy.

Blue Menu Butter Popcorn

This popcorn had 2.5g of fat per serving. Only some of it burnt.  It tasted pretty terrible to us.  We would not purchase this popcorn again. 

President's Choice Natural Flavour  

We tested President's Choice Natural Flavour.  It costs $0.76 per bag.  It is very buttery and salty.  It kind of had a weird taste. Though it is not completely healthy, it is the best choice of the popcorn we tested becuase it has the least amount of fat and the least calories. We would not purchase this even though it is a healthier choice because we did not like it. 

Orville Redenbacher Smart Pop Sweet and Salty

Our brand of poporn was Orville Redenbacher Smart Pop Sweet and Salty. This popcorn costs $0.41 per bag. It was not the most expensive and it is tied with the least expensive.  Our group thought it tasted a little like caramel, but it was sweet and delicious.  It is not a healthy choice but it is a good sometimes food.  It is not a healthy choice because it has 15g of fat per 50g bag and 250 calories per 50g portion! Some of us might buy it for our family because it is tasty and delicious but we might not because it is really salty and has a lot of calories and fat per serving.

Overall, the popcorn most students liked was Orville Redenbacher Smart Pop Sweet and Salty but we all agreed it was a sometimes food becuase it had the most calories and fat per serving. We hope our information will help you next time you go shopping for popcorn! Happy snacking!

An Annual Tradition - Pumpkin Math!

Here are some pictures and explanations about our pumpkin measuring and carving from the students themselves!

***Thank you SO much to our amazing volunteers! Without you, this project would not be such a success!!***

Here are some memories from the students.

Carving Pumpkins

Pumpkins, aren’t they ooey gooey and delicious!!! Today we scooped out all the guts out of a pumpkin. Mrs. Steinhoff got a lot of high school students and adults to help us with the scooping out!!! Our class wrote a letter to the Safeway manager to ask if we could get some pumpkins and we got some! There were six pumpkins so we had to get split into groups. We also counted seeds, and after everybody counted all the seeds, recorded them, and dumped them into a big bowl we counted up all the recorded numbers!

And the total was…2739 seeds out of six pumpkins!!!

by Brooklyn

Off to Get the Pumpkins!

For the past few years, I have gotten pumpkins to carve with the students.  This tradition is a great way to incorporate so many different curricula into one amazingly fun activity! Here is the letter we wrote to ask donations!

Thursday, October 22^nd, 2015

Dear Kildare Safeway Manager,

We are grade 4/5 students from Room 4 at Radisson School. You may know that this class has a special tradition with pumpkins. Every year, Mrs. Steinhoff likes to carve pumpkins with her students around Halloween and she often asks you, the manager at Safeway, to please donate them. But this time, WE, the students are asking you! After looking at pictures on our classroom blog (room4learninglounge.blogspot.ca) and seeing students of the past participate in this awesome activity, we knew we wanted to be part of this special tradition too! We would love if you would be kind enough to donate 8 pumpkins to our class for us to carve for this educational event. These pumpkins will be turned into jack-o-lanterns and will be displayed at our annual Operation Halloween, where students go through a “haunted” gymnasium to have fun, be active and get in the Halloween spirit!

Things we will learn by participating in this activity include:

·        art

·        math – estimating, counting, measuring, problem solving

·        science – making observations

·        group work – getting along with others

·        writing – like this letter!

·        reading – looking and learning about pumpkins

Ways we will have fun include:

·        sticking our hand in ooey-gooey pumpkin guts (yum!)

·        seeing everyone else’s pumpkins and sharing them with the school

Above all else, we will practice our school motto – We Care,  Share and Play Fair!

Thank you so much for your anticipated support,

The Students of Room 4 from Radisson School

P.S. Happy Halloween

P.P.S. BOO!

Stay tuned for some fantastic pumpkin pictures next week! 

In the meantime, please enjoy our Spooky Symmetry Halloween Art!

Lines in the City

What does it mean to measure something?

Canada's 30 x 30 Nature Challenge

We are participating! Are you?!

This month, the students in Room 4 are going outside the box - well, outside the classroom! We will be participating in David Suzuki's 30x30 Challenge this May and we can't wait to get started!  

Here was part of the note we sent home so families would know what was coming up! 

Thursday, April 30^th, 2015

Dear Parents/Guardians,

This letter is to inform you that throughout the month of May, Room 4 will be participating in the David Suzuki 30x30 Nature Challenge. The challenge involves leaving the classroom to spend 30 minutes a day in nature for 30 days. We ask that students are dressed according to the weather of the day to ensure all can join in the fun. This challenge is weather permitting which means that if we are not able to learn outside one day, we will be learning outside for 1 hour the next day.

The David Suzuki 30x30 Nature Challenge is best described as a way to get people of all ages into nature more often. Activities might include using all senses by breathing in the fresh air, listening for bird songs, or watching for local wildlife. Other activities might include scavenger hunts, sketching or journaling, writing, solving real-life math problems and walking in nature. All activities will be supervised by a Radisson School teacher.  We will also take a walking field trip to the bio-reserve to see the nature right in our backyard! This learning fits in with provincial, divisional and school priorities of teaching students about Sustainable Development and the importance our natural environment.

“It’s a simple yet meaningful way to develop a deeper connection with nature while improving our health and well-being. Best of all, it’s free and easy to implement!”

For more information please check out the website - http://30x30.davidsuzuki.org/

Laura Steinhoff

Grade 4/5 Classroom Teacher

"Gingerbread" Building

What a fantastic afternoon! Today we built our "gingerbread" houses - out of graham crackers! It was a lot of work but I think it was worth it! The students had so much fun designing their yard too! 

Of course to make it integrated into the curriculum, we used the design process to also learn about area and perimeter. We also used multiplication, division, addition and subtraction along the way while we figured out how many supplies we needed, what the cost would be, and how to share our materials. 

Here are a few pictures from today! We will be showing them to the other classrooms tomorrow :) Enjoy!

Mini-Metric Olympics

All I Want for Christmas . . . is to plan a party!

Recently, the students of Room 4 have been spending time adding and subtracting decimals. A great way to play around with decimals is practice using them in one of the most common place ways we see them - with money!

Students were "given" $1000 to plan a party with food and presents for their friends and family.  They used flyers to search out the items they wanted.  Students were sure to follow the rules of place value in order to add and subtract accurately.

Enjoy the pictures :)