Saturday 1 December 2018

Nearly the end of term!

We have been busy with our experiments, maths, writing and learning how to play cricket!


Maths:
The children have been learning how to use a number line to help them solve addition and subtraction problems. They quickly picked up the concept and were away to do independent worksheets.


Money has been the focus for our maths strand this term. We learnt about the value of money, 'needs and wants', and about saving money with Amie from the ASB.











Next we made our own money, we looked at what was on New Zealand notes and used this as a guide to designing our money. In writing we were describing Monsters, so we combined this with our strand and made Monster Money Boxes to put our money in.
 
We experimented with Sinking and Floating.
First we predicted what each item would do, sink or float. We marked this on our sheet.
Then we put each thing in the water container and watched to see what would happen.
We then marked if it was sinking or floating and compared it against our predictions.


We found most of the things sank because they were heavy.

We thought if we had used a metal spoon instead of a plastic spoon, it would have sunk too.

For our next experiment we wanted to know, "What makes the froth on top of an Ice Cream Soda?"
We looked at the ingredients we were going to use to make an Ice Cream Soda.
Lemonade is a liquid. It has bubbles in it. CO2 is put into the Lemonade, which makes it bubbly.
Ice cream is a solid. It is made from cream. Cream is a fat. The ice cream had a greasy feel. We made a prediction that when we mixed the lemonade with the ice cream, it would explode!
We then put some ice cream in a glass and added the lemonade.

We then used our Scientist eyes, nose and ears to observe what happened. It didn’t explode, but made lots of bubbles (which is gas!). We now had three states of matter, solid (ice cream), liquid (lemonade), and the bubbles (gas).

                              



Conclusion: The bubbles in the soda don’t like the fat in the ice cream. They try to run away out of the soda and this make the froth on top of the soda.

Room 1 then did some amazing writing about making Ice Cream Sodas.
 


This week we were learning how to play cricket. Some of the children had never heard about cricket before and some had played cricket. It was fun learning new skills and working together as a team. Maybe future Black Caps or Silver Ferns!
 







Sunday 11 November 2018

End of week 4 already!

Room 1 and 2 had a lovely day at Shanty Town at the end of week 3. The children loved dressing up in clothes like children wore when people first came to the West Coast.



Even Murtle the Turtle got in the photos!


A big thank you to all the parents who made this trip possible. 

This week Room 1 started on their topic, Great Scientists. The children are learning that they are scientists too, by looking, listening, smelling, touching and recording. Our first experiment involved jellybeans.
First they arranged them in a plate, made a graph of the colours they had and then predicted what would happen when we added water.


Next they observed and recorded the changes they saw at 1min, 5min, and 10min.

After 10 mins we discussed our findings and wrote a conclusion.

The outside of the jelly beans is made with sugar. The water melts the sugar and makes the inside go slimy.
Next week we are experimenting with things that can sink or float.


Saturday 27 October 2018

Welcome Back to term 4!

We have just completed week 2 already!

Week 1 was full of excitement, getting ready for pet day and finishing pet projects.
The children put in a huge effort to make their posters look fantastic!

Calves, lambs and birds.



Cats.




Dogs.



They also made some cool models of their pets.


Pets galore!






Week 2 was getting back into the daily routine. Here we are enjoying some of the phonic activities.






Sunday 30 September 2018

End of term 3!

Our focus for this term has been our writing. There has been a lot of Professional Development around making writing Learning Intentions clearer for our children. The result of all this work is some amazing writing by the children in Room 1.

This is a story by Alice.......


Brooke's story...


Amelia's story......




We had a visit from the popular Elgregoe, Chiedza helped him out with a bit of magic!



Room 1 finished off their strand maths, learning about Geometry, with some shape designs. They look fabulous!




Hope everyone has a lovely holiday with lots of fun, see you all next term!






Friday 7 September 2018

Three weeks till the end of term!

Room 1 has been working hard on their writing and produced some great work.

Amelia

Raine


Rocco


For our strand this term we are learning about shapes. The children had fun making shapes using string and themselves.

We made a circle...

We made a triangle...

We made a square...

We finished up this week with some cool games organised by the senior children.