Yellowknife

Teacher's note: This post is from the students of 3B. We received an exciting blog post from our friends in Surrey, BC (which you can see below) about their community. We had already began our study of Yellowknife and decided to deepen our research to include some of their questions they had about Yellowknife. This project was done in groups of 3 and was structured around inquiry questions that came from the students. They went to several different resources (including themselves!) to find the answers to their wonderful wonders about Yellowknife. We will then be looking at the features of each community and finding similarities and differences between the two. Here is our response to our friends down south. 

Dene Culture

Dene people are a group of First Nations people who live in the NWT. Dene people like to live off the land, which means they go hunting for their food and make their own clothing. Dene people have many beliefs and stories that they share with us at school. We even have elders who come in to share their teachings with us. Dene people have their own games that they play with materials from the land. We had a few Dene adults come to our school to teach us some games. They taught us snow snake, which is a game where you throw a stick into the snow as far as you can (it wiggles along the ground like a snake). Another game they play is leg wrestling. This was one of our favourite games.

Fun Activities in Yellowknife

Yellowknife has similar activities to most cities. We like to play sports at our Multiplex or our Fieldhouse and go swimming at our swimming pool. In Yellowknife we do a lot of outdoor activities for fun as well. We have lots of trails and lakes. We go hiking and fishing in the summer. We love to go to the lake in the summer to swim, tube and hang out at the beach. In the winter the lakes freeze over so we go ice fishing and snowmobiling. We also go cross country skiing. Sometimes when it isn’t freezing cold we can play ice hockey on the lake!

Animals in our Community

We have a lot of the same animals that you find in BC. When we go on road trips out of Yellowknife we see a lot of Bison crossing the road. Bison are HUGE! We have to make sure that we stop for them or we will CRASH!! We also have lots of foxes in Yellowknife. They run across the street a lot. You can see them in backyards, forests and parks all the time. Ravens in Yellowknife are very annoying. They pick out your garbage and make a big mess! This sounds like raccoons that you have in Surrey! Ptarmigans are a type of bird. They are very hard to see in the winter. In the summer female Ptarmigans turn brown first to blend in to our rocks to hide from the predators and protect the babies. The males stay white to distract the predators.

Transportation

In Yellowknife we use cars and trucks to get around town. Yellowknife is very small and it only takes us about 10 minutes to get anywhere!! We use trucks in the winter to make sure we don’t get stuck in the snow. In the winter we have some unique ways of getting around. We use dogsleds and snowmobiles. They are very entertaining to ride! In Kindergarten we got to go to a dogsledding camp. It was a little chilly. There are also lots of boats and sea-doos in the summer.

Food in Yellowknife

We grow some food in our gardens, but most of our food comes from the grocery store. We have a few different grocery stores. Most of our food in our stores comes by trucks from suppliers in the south. We also get food from hunting and fishing. We can get nice pickerel and white fish from Great Slave Lake. Our class made Duck Soup a few weeks ago. The Ducks were hunted in Yellowknife and we made soup from the meat. 

Landscape and Weather in Yellowknife

In Yellowknife there are lots of rocks and trees. There is barely any grass. Our trees are short and skinny because our growing season is so short they don’t have a lot of time to get big like the trees in the south. In Yellowknife we can hunt in winter and summer. There are lots of things we can hunt like caribou, duck, ptarmigan and muskrat. In Yellowknife it is really cold in the winter. The temperature is around -30 degrees. Here we have indoor recess at 30 below (which means we have it A LOT!!). Spring comes very late. We usually still have frost in May. In Yellowknife we have a city garden in June. When you drive past it you can see lots of lettuce, sunflowers and all sorts of vegetables. 

Tourism in Yellowknife

People always come to Yellowknife to visit. Lots of people love to see the northern lights. There is a place called Aurora Village and you can go out to see the northern lights and go dogsledding and warm up by a fire. Other cool things to do in Yellowknife are travel on the Ice Road. The Ice Road is a road on Great Slave Lake that you can drive on to get to Dettah in the winter. It can be a scary feeling driving on the ice! Another reason people may come to visit Yellowknife is to go dogsledding. You can go on tours around Yellowknife on a dogsled or watch the dogsled races that take place. There are lots of other reasons to visit Yellowknife like fishing on Great Slave Lake, swimming and experiencing Dene Games! Yellowknife is awesome; you can even see Folk on the Rocks.

Festivals that happen around town!

There are lots of festivals in Yellowknife. Two of our favourites are Folk on the Rocks and the Long John Jamboree. Folk on the Rocks is a music festival that happens every summer. Musicians come from all over and some of our local musicians get to play too! We also have The Long John Jamboree. It is a winter festival. There are ice sculptures, a sugar shack, games and much more. At the sugar shack they pour maple syrup onto ice so it freezes to a Popsicle stick. It is delicious! The Long John Jamboree is one of the best festivals in the world.

Life in Surrey, B.C.

Teacher's note: This is a blog post from a class that we blog with in Surrey, B.C. We have been blogging back and forth and thought it would be fun to compare our community of Yellowknife to life in their community of Surrey. Our class has looked at what makes up a community and have began our inquiry research into life in Yellowknife. We plan to refine our inquiry questions to answer their lovely questions about Yellowknife. Check back to see our response to Div. 9 and 10!

Life in Surrey! An Amazing Place to Live . . .

Our Community

We have been learning about the different features of communities and have been working in small groups to find out how those features look in our community.

Fun Activities To Do in Surrey

There are lots of fun activities in Surrey, like the Aquarium, the Greater Vancouver Zoo, pools, and parks. Surrey is near the ocean where people visit to go on picnics, build sandcastles, and play on the beach and in the water. You could have a picnic dinner or lunch at the beach.  There are many parks in Surrey including Bear Creek Park – our favourite!  In Crescent Park you can go walking all year long and enjoy bird watching. Some of our favourite activities include skiing and snowboarding on Mt. Seymour in the winter and canoeing and swimming at Crescent Beach in the summer.  What do you do for fun in your community? Do you have a favourite park?

All About the Landscape in Surrey

We have lots of evergreen trees and green grass in Surrey. We live close to the ocean. On the beach we see sand, rocks, and the water. The beach near us is named for the large white rock on the shore.  What do you see when you look out the window? When we look outside we see the Coast Mountains topped with snow. There are lots of paths and trails in our community. We have fertile soil and lots of blueberry farms. In the wild you can pick blackberries and huckleberries.  Do you grow any fruits or vegetables in your community? Do you grow anything we don’t have in our community?

Weather in our Community

Our weather is mild; it doesn’t snow very much in the winter and when it does snow, it’s not very much nor does it stay very long.  The weather doesn’t get very hot in the summer either but is warm.  We do get lots of rain all year long! In spring the flowers bloom and the grass grows fast. In the fall we have trees whose leaves change colour and then fall. We have four seasons: summer, fall, winter, and spring.  How many seasons do you have? How cold does it get in your community?

Animals in our Community

Some of the animals in our community include the beaver, black bears, bald eagles, geese, and lots of fish including salmon and rainbow trout. A couple weeks ago we had a fire alarm and while we were waiting outside we saw two bald eagles circling above us.  Our school is next to Chantrell Creek and a beaver lives near our creek.  He has built a big dam.  Raccoons eat our gardens, get into our garbage, and are a nuisance in our community.  What animals do you have in your area?

Chantrell Creek - located just behind our school!

Transportation in the Lower Mainland

We have lots of types of transportation. Lots of people in our community use the skytrain. We use the skytrain so we can get from place to place quickly and efficiently. The skytrain opened in 1986 when Expo 86 was on. This was a fair that people came to visit. We have an Expo line that takes us to Vancouver from Surrey. When skytrains get to Vancouver they can travel to Richmond on the Canada Line. The Canada line is the newest line on the skytrain. We also have the Millennium line which takes us to Coquitlam. The skytrain works with magnets.

 

Ferries take us from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. There are two islands you can travel to. One of the places it goes to is Victoria. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. They can also take us to Bowen Island and the Sunshine Coast.

We see cars everyday. We use cars to drive us to other cities. Cars are the most used type of transportation in Surrey. Trucks usually carry cargo.

Passsenger trains take us to different provinces. The Rocky Mountaineer takes us from Vancouver to Alberta.  The VIA takes us to Winnipeg and to the U.S. Trains used to be pulled by horses in our community. Now we use diesel engines in our trains.

Our roads are made of asphalt. We have roads because we have long drives to places in the Lower Mainland. Thank you for reading about our types of transportation. Thank you for reading our blog.

Teacher's Note:  this post was developed through an inquiry project by Div. 9 and 10.  After learning about the features of all communities the students spent two weeks learning about their community through questions they had developed.  They plan to share this information with a class in Yellowknife and hope to compare their community to Yellowknife.  

Sunflowers: From Seed to Plant

3B has been studying all about plants. With Mother's Day that was coming up 3B thought it would be perfect to plant a sunflower seed for our mothers to show just how much we appreciate them (and of course Ms. Betts was happy to connect it to our plant unit!). We started off by putting rich soil into our pots and digging a small hole in the soil. We dropped a sunflower seed into the hole and carefully packed the soil on top. We watered our sunflowers and placed them in the sunlight to watch what happened... We made sure to water them each day. It was so much fun to come in each morning to see our sunflowers sprouting. We did lots of reading on sunflowers and learned all about the parts of our sunflowers and what the function of each part is! We learned that plants make their own food in their leaves in a process called photosynthesis!We sent our flowers home in hopes that they will be planted and will bloom this summer! Hope all our moms loved their sunflowers!

Measuring everything we can!

We have been using our estimating and measuring skills to see how long and how wide objects are. We even measured our classroom and hallway! We have also been adding all our measurements up to find the perimeter of objects. We have used centimeter rulers and meter sticks as measuring tools. 3B has become experts at measuring! Well done 3B!

Duck Soup

We were so fortunate to have Ava's Dad come into our class to make Duck Soup! It was not an easy task and it certainly was messy! He hunted the Ducks from a local spot and brought them in to share with us. He explained to us the importance of respecting the Ducks for giving their life to us, so we can have food. We started out making our soup by plucking all of the Duck feathers out. Then Ava's Dad took them home to singe the remaining feathers off. Next he brought them back and we cut the Ducks up to get all the meat for the soup. The students chopped celery and carrots to add extra flavour! Last we had our friends from Pre-K to our class to enjoy the delicious soup! Thank you Ava's Dad and Mom for making Duck soup with us.