Adam's River Salmon Run

This week, Division 2 traveled to Adam's River to see the salmon run. Adam's River is a spawning ground for salmon, which means that it is a place where adult salmon return to when it is time to lay their eggs.

This is Adam's River, where hundreds of thousands of adult salmon lay their eggs.

When we arrived at Adam's River we took a walk through the provincial park and down to the river. The river was so full of fish when we arrived that we could smell it all the way from the bus. As we walked closer and closer, the smell got stronger! Some of us had to plug our noses.

Down by the river, we saw lots of salmon swimming in the water. They were all bright red. That means that they are mature adult salmon, that are ready for laying eggs. We learned that the female salmon use their tails to dig out a 'nest' for their eggs in the gravel at the bottom of the river. A salmon's nest is called a redd. The male salmon covers the eggs in milt. Then the female salmon protects her eggs by covering them in gravel and swimming nearby.

How many red salmon can you spot in this photo?

Adult salmon usually die after they spawn, and there was lots of evidence of this on the beach! There were dead fish lying on the rocks, and some still floating in the water. We noticed that these dead fish were being eating by lots of seagulls and other birds. They were also home to some very lucky flies. Other animals eat the spawning salmon, too, like bears, eagles, and humans. Any salmon that isn't eaten breaks down and adds nutrients to the soil, which then becomes food for the plants near the river.

Was it a bear? There were blood and fish eggs on the gravel - evidence that a fish was eaten here!

This fish will be a tasty dinner for a bird!

We took a lot of photos during the day of all the things we observed by the river. We liked walking on the trails and looking for animals. We loved spotting the red salmon swimming and jumping in the river. Even the dead fish weren't so bad! We got to see salmon bones and teeth up close, and some salmon eggs. We had an excellent day at Adam's River!

Leave us a comment: 


What was your favourite part of our Adam's River adventure? 


What was one new thing that you learned about salmon on our field trip?


Have you ever been fishing for salmon? 

Division 2 visits a Pumpkin Patch

Today, our class got to go on a special field trip to a pumpkin patch! Miss. Petschl's Division 1 class came, too. We got to explore the fields at the farm, search for pumpkins - both tiny and humungous, and pick out our very own pumpkin to bring back to school with us! We brought several cameras to take pictures of our adventure. Check out the photos we took of our fantastic day at the pumpkin patch!

The farm was huge! We had to drive across a river and up a really steep hill to get there!

The pumpkin patch was right beside a field full of this dry, tall stuff! Riannon guessed correctly that it was corn!

Here we are looking for our pumpkins!

We had excellent weather for pumpkin picking. Nothing but blue skies, pumpkins, and corn as far as you could see!

What a fantastic field trip!

To our AMAZING student photographers, you took some very beautiful photos today while you were choosing pumpkins - I was really impressed!  Unfortunately, the laptop at the school crashed and we lost most of them. I am very sorry that we can`t share all your photos with our blog friends and families. We will have to do an extra-great job of painting pictures with our words so we can show them all what it was like at the pumpkin patch!

Thanks to all the parents who joined us at the pumpkin patch today. We are so glad you got to share the pumpkin-picking experience with us!

Over the next two weeks, we will be measuring and weighing our pumpkins and making predictions about how many seeds might be in our pumpkins. On Halloween, we will get to carve our pumpkins in class!


Leave us a comment:


What was your favourite part of our field trip to the pumpkin patch?


What is your pumpkin like? 


Do you know any interesting facts about pumpkins? 

It's October!

That's right, October is here already! In Division 2 we are already very excited about the adventures October has in store for us. We all had wonderful Thanksgiving weekends with our families, and we are looking forward to some special birthdays in our class later this month. The thing we are most excited for, though, is Halloween!

We got in the Halloween mood today in our writer's workshop afternoon! We read some spooky (and some silly!) poems about Halloween, and then we wrote some poems of our own.

Check out the Halloween acrostic poem we wrote as a class. We included some very spooky details!

Snakes slithering on your face
Crazy cats scratching at your door
Around your fireplace, witches are making green, bubbling soup
Reaching zombies are trying to eat your brain
Yucky werewolves are jumping off your kitchen table

Leave us a comment:

Can you find the secret word spelled out in our Halloween acrostic poem?

Could you write your own Halloween poem?

What's your favourite event in October?