All Intermediate – Groups

Landmark 14 (Five new outdoor activities)
The whole school participated in an outdoor play day. The grade 6 students were given the opportunity to be leaders and the grade 5 students led the activities and games. Each team was made up of various students from each grade which allowed some of of students to get to know other students in our building. One of the stations included a talk and meet and greet of some reptiles. Students learned all about the proper care of these reptiles and had an opportunity to ask questions and interact with them.
rfdowneylgk – June 27, 2023

Landmark 17 (Three New Outdoor Skills)

Last week, our Junior and Intermediate students participated in an Ultimate Frisbee Clinic. We have been hard at work practicing all of our new skills this week!

Highland Heights Gr 5 – June 15, 2023

Landmark 20 (Plan and Conduct a Project)

We worked with ORCA to plant 75 native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers in our school garden. We worked very hard on this project and learned a lot about bird-friendly species and pollinators. We affectionately named our plants and look forward to watch forward to watching Fred, Bob, Francis, Butterweed, Bruce Jr Jr, Honey Hoya the Fourth, and all of their plant friends grow and flourish in our school gardens.

Highland Heights Gr 5 – June 13, 2023

Landmark 17 (Three New Outdoor Skills)

Grade 5 students participated in an Ultimate Frisbee clinic. They learned a lot of new skills and played some fun games outside.

Highland Heights Gr 5 – June 5, 2023

Landmark 16 (Renewable Energy)

Ms. Volgyi’s grade 5/6 class explored renewable energy sources by building their own solar ovens out of recycled and found materials. Students observed solar to thermal energy transfer by attempting to roast some marshmallows.

Queen Elizabeth Gr 5/6 – May 12, 2023

Landmark 17 (Three New Outdoor Skills)

Today, Nansi Harris’s grade 6 class from Roger Neilson were introduced to Fibonacci the mathematician and the Fibonacci sequence and spiral that exists in so many parts of nature (from the monarch caterpillar to the galaxy). They then had a chance to create a piece of nature art using these concepts.

Think Outside with Nature Nancy – April 20, 2023

Landmark 19 (Explore Biodiversity)

Grade 5 students went on a scavenger hunt to explore biodiversity at the KPR Warsaw Outdoor Education Centre. We found evidence of many different animals in the forest. We learned A LOT about scat 🙂

Highland Heights Gr 5 – April 5, 2023

Landmark 17 (Three New Outdoor Skills)

You know you have a great group of students when you have the BEST class trip in the absolute WORST weather! Grade 5 students enjoyed building shelters to help keep them warm and dry in the rainy weather.

Highland Heights Gr 5 – April 5, 2023

Landmark 21 (Meet Other Cultures)

Miigwech, Nia:wen, Thank you to TRACKS and the #kprEcoHope Environmental Symposium for teaching us all about the significance of turtles through Indigenous knowledge, stories, and song.

Highland Heights Gr 5 – April 20, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

Our grade 1/2 buddies showed us their own “special trees” around the school yard. It was the perfect opportunity to sit and read a nature book together!

Highland Heights Gr 5 – April 21, 2023

Landmark 26 (Volunteer in Three Ways)

We are learning about social responsibility in Social Studies and have been brainstorming ideas to help our community. Students noticed a lot of trash on the walking/biking trail behind our school. Today, we walked the trail with gloves and garbage bags to conduct an Earth Day clean up. We think the trail looks MUCH better now!

Highland Heights Gr 5 – April 21, 2023

Landmark 19 (Explore Biodiversity)

We looked for living things, animals, plants and fungus in our schoolyard. We described them, made a sketch, photographed and attempted to classify them. We will be expanding our scope in the coming weeks. We added some of our discoveries to the iNaturalist App which is part of Parks Ontario.

R.F. Downey Gr 6 – April 11, 2023

Landmark 18 (Natural Area Booklet, Blog or video)

Grade 4/5 students explored their schoolyard for the first signs of spring or chose to observe different birds. Student observations were recorded in individually hand-crafted nature journals.

Queen Elizabeth Gr 5/6 – April 14, 2023

Landmark 3 (Exercise Senses Daily)

We were playing outside all day yesterday and the wind became stronger and stronger! The wind was wild, but Georgia didn’t let it stop her from exploring outside, she asked for instrumental music so she could dance ballet because the wind was making her want to move like the wind and the breeze through the strong winds that were happening. She said the wind was helping her dance and spin.

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After School – April 11, 2023

Landmark 11 (Celebrate Each Season)

Aubrey was exploring the pylon in the squishy mud! She was trying to stick the pylon in the mud and pull it back out but she discovered when she pushed the pylon back down into the mud it made a funny squish noise as it became suctioned to the mud and it became harder to pull out. She thoroughly enjoyed the sound and what happened as she pushed it down so she’d continued to explore the pylon in the mud and made it more and more stuck to see how hard she had to pull, to pull it out. She said, “the mud is so squishy, and the pylon is getting stuck as the mud comes over the pylon!”.

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – April 11, 2023

Landmark 13 (Travel a Familiar Route)

With the beautiful weather this week we decided a forest trip was necessary! We walked along our route and took in all the changes! No more snow, the mud has dried, and everything is starting to turn green!

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After School – April 12, 2023

Landmark 9 (Special Outdoor Place)

We visited the Peterborough Zoo and learned about the animals and their habitat. This outdoor experience tied in with the Science curriculum and it was great to explore the zoo with the wonderful guides. We learned so much about each animal and its habitat.

Queen Mary PS Gr 3/4 – April 6, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

Our class read the story ‘Unplugged’ by Steve Antony which tells the story of a robot named Blip who gets unplugged from his computer one day and discovers the fun of being outside. Afterward, the students loved creating their own Blip robots, complete with a turning wheel of activities they like to do ‘plugged’ into technology and ‘unplugged’ away from technology.

Highland Heights Gr 1/2 – April 3, 2023

Landmark 5 (Garden/Care for Animals)

Room 3 Planted seeds today! Spring is a great time to start getting your seedlings ready indoors. Place your seedlings near a window, in full sun. Make sure you turn your pots around every day so that they get sun on all sides. At this little daily visit, you can also check in on how your seedlings are growing and make sure they’re getting enough light and water.

Kawartha Heights Room 3 – April 4 2023

Landmark 5 (Garden/Care for Animals)

Students have been learning about the difference between evergreen trees and deciduous trees. We have explored how to identify some of the evergreens based on how they grow, and the structure of the needles. We’re also learning to identify and label the parts of the tree (branches, roots. trunk). Today on our community walk we discovered various species of evergreen and were able to observe some similarities and differences. As we walked we noticed some spring flowers starting to peak through along with some buds on the trees. We also observed our pine cone experiment that we placed in water the previous day and shared our thinking as a class.

rfdowneylgk – April 4, 2023

Landmark 8 (Nature Art Weekly)

After learning about evergreen trees and collecting pine branches and pine cones students were invited to use the found pinecone and branches for paint brushes.

rfdowneylgk – March 31, 2023

Landmark 17 (Three New Outdoor Skills)

We welcomed the early days of spring with a day full of outdoor games. Julie Bagshaw’s and Shelley Boulton’s grade 4 and 5 students spent the day playing all sorts of different games and challenges. We started off with some silly icebreakers and initiative challenges and moved into some eco games where the students became deer, mice and owls, adapted to survive. We finished off with many different examples of Inuit games to test our strength, agility, and endurance and also to have a giggle or two with our classmates.

Think Outside with Nature Nancy – March 30, 2023

Landmark 11 (Celebrate Each Season)

Noah created his own dramatic play sugar bush, where he started working through the process of creating maple sugar. The pea gravel from under the climber acted as sap from the trees, the pylon was the tap in the tree, and he collected the ‘sap’ in a bucket underneath his pylon tap! I have some books about sugar bushes that I will bring in this week to keep thinking about making maple syrup!

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After School – April 3, 2023

Landmark 21 (Meet Other Cultures)

We enjoyed a virtual visit and story time from the New Canadians Centre and learned about how it feels to be a newcomer to Canada. We discussed how we can help people feel welcome and what a wonderful place Canada is to live.

Lakefield DPS Kinders 1 – February 16, 2023

Landmark 23 (Design a Healthy Home)

We started by watching a variety of YouTube videos and reading through various websites about what makes a home “healthy”. We also had some more general discussions about being eco-friendly and how our individual choices can have an impact on our environment. We completed a 4-step research booklet to help us design a “healthy” home and then created persuasive Google Slides presentations to try and convince interested buyers to purchase our homes. The kids really enjoyed this learning experience!

Highland Heights LLSB – March 20, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

Today we looked at a book titled, ‘Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt’ by Kate Messener. The detailed, realistic pictures were really interesting to the children and sparked so much discussion that we are saving the rest of the book for another day! A question came up that we did not know the answer to: “Do worms have teeth?” So, we did a bit of reading and research to find the answer.

Queen Elizabeth K1 – March 23, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

We read ‘Water is Water’ by Miranda Paul. It is another wonderful book that celebrates all the forms of water. In this story, the kids are shown playing throughout the seasons of the year, enjoying nature and water in its many, ever-changing forms. There are so many details in the pictures to observe and talk about.

Queen Elizabeth K1 – March 24, 2023

Landmark 6 (Play in Nature for a Full Hour)

On this rainy, snowy, cold spring day, we set off joyfully on a morning walk. We found another huge snow mountain, which we discovered on kids, not adults, can climb well! We also walked to the end of the schoolyard and stood quietly to listen to the birds and the snow falling.

Queen Elizabeth K1 – March 27, 2023

Landmark 2 (Animal Friends Monthly)

Students have been learning about the farm and today we took a closer look at cows. We read a book about cows and students learned various facts about cows. Afterward, students were invited to create a cow at the crafting center to consolidate their learning and talk about cows as they crafted one of their very own.

R F Downey K/1 – March 23, 2023

Landmark 2 (Animal Friends Monthly)

Over the course of the week students have been learning about various birds. We went on several walks around the community and discovered some bird nests in the trees. Students collected found materials as we walked and were invited to make bird nests of their very own.

R F Downey K/1 – March 24, 2023

Landmark 1 (Explore Together Weekly)

During our dairy educator visit students learned the reason why many of the barns years ago were painted red were because the farmers used sumac berries to create a stain to put on the barns to protect the wood. Students were inspired to go out into the forest and pick some sumac berries and brought them back to the class and created some of their very own paint stain! They used the stain to paint their very own barns, just like the farmers would of done. A fantastic day of learning!

R F Downey K/1 – March 20, 2023

Landmark 1 (Explore Together Weekly)

Students went on a community walk today and learned about a local little library. While on the walk we stopped and collected pine cones. Several of the students came back to the yard and counted their treasures.

rfdowneylgk – March 27, 2023

Landmark 2 ( Animal Friends Monthly)

This morning we learned about chickens on the farm. The chicks have an egg tooth to break out of the egg. They have fluffy down then the down disappears as the feathers grow in. We were inspired to make our own fuzzy yellow chicks using paint and a fork.

R F Downey K/1 – March 27, 2023

Landmark 3 (Exercise Senses Daily)

All weather is good weather! We enjoy all kinds of weather, wet and cold, doesn’t bother us at all. The friends were delighted and resilient as they soaked themselves in freezing puddles and created the most wonderful snow cities out of the particularly packable snow.
Babbling Brook Daycare – March 23, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

We read the book SPRING and talked about all the animals, their habitats and characteristics that happen in the spring.

Kawartha Heights Kinders2 – March 24, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

We read ‘A Day at the Sugar Bush’. We talked about how important trees are again as they provide food. We talked about how sap is taken from the tree, boiled, and made into maple syrup – the process is explained in the book with real life pictures. We talked about our local sugar bush and what a trip there looks like.

Kawartha Heights Kinders2 – March 23, 2023

Landmark 6 (Play in Nature a Full Hour)

Finding ways to build with snow has helped us build on problem-solving and innovating skills! We have a group that loves to build and constantly finds ways they can create “towers,” “houses,” “forts” etc. Recently our students were inspired to clear a path to make our playground more accessible for a friend. The result was large hard pieces of broken snow, students were quick to capitalize on this new building material!

Otonabee Valley JK/SK – March 1, 2023

Landmark 8 (Nature Art Weekly)

We read ‘In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb’. We discussed spring and all the different words used. We chose what we would like to draw – the lamb or the lion.

Kawartha Heights Kinders2 – March 22, 2023

Landmark 19 (Explore Biodiversity)

Student choose their favourite deciduous tree and will be continuing to visit over the next few months and see how the buds explode into leaves.

Queen Elizabeth Grade 6/7 – March 1, 2023

Landmark 11 (Celebrate Each Season)

Cole and Noah worked hard to build this two-story tunnel system! They started with just one tunnel through the top of the hill, then started working on the one underneath. They talked about how far into the hill they would have to dig before they’d be able to connect the two tunnels and used the shovels to measure our distance. Eventually, they were able to dig down from the top tunnel to meet the one underneath, creating a more elaborate structure! They spent some time trying to figure out how to have both of them in the tunnels at the same time, with one on the top floor and the other on the bottom but decided that the tunnels just weren’t quite big enough for two people. Maybe that can be a project for next time!

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – 03/07/2023

Landmark 12 (Nearby Plants and Animals)

As we were trucking through the forest and playing in the trees and around the trees as we were walking back out we found animal tracks. The children thought the first print was a moose print, but one child said, “no that’s a rabbit track because if the back legs”. Another child said, “I think that is a rabbit because moss would sink down into the snow”. The next animal track we came across looked like a turkey animal track and one child guessed maybe a chickadee. Another child guessed, “a blue jay”. The last track we came across was a deer track and it was sunken down in the snow because it’s too heavy when walking a child mentioned.

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – March 16, 2023

Landmark 17 (Three New Outdoor Skills)

Cross Country ski trip at Kawartha Nordic Ski Club! Many of us were first-timers – we learned how to put on skis, go down hills and get back up once we had fallen down! It was a great day and we had beautiful weather!

Queen Elizabeth Gr 7/8 – March 7, 2023

Landmark 9 (Special Outdoor Place 2X/Month)

We took a bus this time for our trip to the forest and we took the city bus to Fleming where we were exploring throughout the trails. We were playing forest games, and walking the trails to see what we could find throughout nature and what may have stood out to us the most. We attempted to feed the chickadees but they wouldn’t land, unfortunately. The children absolutely loved this trip and we even ate every snack and lunch in nature.

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – March 16, 2023

Landmark 18 (Natural Area Booklet, Blog or video)

Ms. Volgyi’s grade 5/6 class explored the trails around Trent University and tried to look for or identify animal tracks. We learned that tracks are not solely animal footprints but can also be any other sign of animal existence such as fur, feathers or bones. We discovered a bird’s nest on the ground and placed it back up on a tree. We also found grouse feathers and rabbit footprints.

Queen Elizabeth Gr 5/6 – March 9, 2023

Landmark 7 (Books, Songs, Games Weekly)

We played a game called “Predator and Prey” yesterday! After talking about what predators and prey were, the prey went off to hide. All the prey had to leave a trail that would give the predators a hint of where they were, and then try to camouflage themselves so they wouldn’t be found. The predators would give the prey a few minutes to hide, then begin their hunt!
We had wolves, foxes, and some rats as predators, and bunnies and a rat for prey! ????

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – March 16, 2023

Landmark 22 (Citizen Science)

While out in the forest, we noticed there were a lot of birds around us. We kept track of the birds we saw through ebird, creating a checklist that we submitted at the end of the day!

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – March 16, 2023

Landmark 19 (Explore Biodiversity)

Yesterday, we visited the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre, and had an amazing time. We met some of the turtles, including Andrea, a Blandings Turtle who had a cracked shell with a missing eye, Shelbie, a female painted turtle, Picasso, a male painted turtle, Paddy, a 40-year-old snapping turtle, Zig and Zag, eastern musk turtles or “stinkpot” turtles, and Rusty, a wood turtle who is missing his two front legs. We got to explore the centre and see all the baby turtles – we learned that the conservation centre takes care of 3000 baby turtles each year! We also learned how adults can help turtles cross the road, so that we can help teach our adults when we see turtles! It was a great trip!

Strath Maclean Child Care Centre – Junior After school – March 14, 2023