We Are Growers!

Waka Whanake are GROWERS! 

 We spent a bit of time with our friends Harold the Giraffe and Liz from Life Education and we learnt a lot about the stuff we fuel our bodies with...FOOD! Here's a summary of what we learnt: We learnt about the food pyramid. At the bottom is all the food that grows in the ground. We can eat lots of these foods. The next part of the food pyramid is all the food that comes from animals and we can still eat these foods every day but not as much as fruit and vegetables. The top part of the food pyramid is food that is made in a factory. These are treats and we can have these sometimes.

What are your favourite foods that grow in the ground? Have you ever grown anything at home? Comment below, we would love to hear from you!

Busy Bees in the Garden

Look at our amazing garden! Thanks Sally for taking Alex, Bayley, Summer and Phoenix to Mitre 10 Mega. We are so lucky to have your help. Sounds like they had fun buying plants and spending the afternoon weeding and planting.  Such busy bees.

What did you guys plant? We would love you to make comments and tell us what you planted and why?

 

 

 

Our Garden

Hi Rooms 19 and 20,

Alexander’s mum Sally here.  Yesterday I came and helped some enthusiastic gardeners in your class vegetable garden at lunchtime.  What wonderful kids you are to be learning how to grow your own vegetables.  We weeded all the garden and I found a weed called Oxalis, and we had to be really careful to get all the little bulbs out with the soil still around the roots, as it will spread easily if the bulbs are left in the ground.  We also put this weed into the rubbish bin, not the compost, as the compost won’t break down the bulbs and it will spread to other areas of the school when the compost is put onto those gardens.  We have also put some stakes in to help the tomatoes and the peas grow taller, and don’t forget to water the garden every day if it doesn’t rain.  After that, we were wondering what we should plant next.  It is autumn now, and we could get some things planted that will be ready to eat in winter.  What do you think would be good to plant?  Let me know if you need anymore help with the garden.

Sally

 

Production Song...PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

Production Song from Kristin Mason on Vimeo.

Inquiry Learning

Inquiry has started with a hiss and a roar this term for Waka Whanake!

We are looking into Taupo's ecology this term and we have been super busy so far. We spent the first two weeks preparing for an audio conference with Michel Dedual and our friend from LEARNZ Andrew Penny.

Our audio conference topic was Preserving and Improving Taupo's Freshwater Ecology. Phew! What a mouthful! We needed to come up with some questions to ask our experts so we had to do a lot of research. There were heaps of words we didn't know so we did some research and made a visual dictionary in our classroom to remind us.

Here we are researching about threats to Taupo's ecology.


Here's a  of the questions we came up with to ask Michel and Andrew. (We're a clever bunch!).

On Tuesday it was audio conference time. We used a funny machine called a Polycom. It works just like a giant speaker so we could all hear what was happening. We all had different jobs during the audio conference. Some of us had to ask the questions and some of us had to take notes. All the schools in New Zealand could've tuned in to listen to us if they wanted!

We learnt so much from the audio conference! Check it out...

We did so well that Andrew even sent us this certificate! ...

Waka Whanake, post a comment telling us the most interesting fact that you learnt from our first three weeks of inquiry!

 

Trout Art

Near the end of last term, Waka Whanake created some stunning pieces of trout art as part of our inquiry.

These pieces took a long time and we put a lot of hard work and care into creating them!

We used watercolour paint for the blue background. While we waited for that to dry, we painted newspaper green and ripped it into pieces to make it look like lake weed. We also painted pieces of paper with brown, purple and black and then laid glad-wrap over the top to make it look like it had creases and cracks, just like rocks. We ripped these up into small pieces and glued them to the background. Next we sketched a trout in pencil and smudged charcoal with our fingers to create shading. After cutting these out, Miss Fraser sprayed them with hairspray which stops the charcoal from smudging any more.

What was the best part of our Trout Art? What did you find really challenging?

Water Cycle Investigation

In Room 19 today we investigated how the water cycle works.

We discovered that the water cycle starts with the sun. The sun heats up water and the water turns into water vapour (which is just like hot air). The water rises. This is called evaporation.
When the water rises, it cools down and the water vapour changes back to water. This is called condensation. When the water joins together, it forms clouds. When the clouds get too heavy, the water falls back to the ground like rain. This is called precipitation.

Miss Fraser showed us an example. She boiled the jug. As the water became hotter, some water vapour started rising up. Miss Fraser and Luke held a bowl over the top of it. The water vapour filled the bowl then it turned back to water and stuck to the sides of the bowl. When enough water had collected, it started dripping down the sides because it got too heavy.

We also watched this video which helps explain all the tricky words like evaporation, condensation and precipitation.

With a buddy we  made our own water cycles in a zip lock plastic bag. If you want to make one at home, here is what you need to do...

Materials:

zip lock plastic bag
vivid/sharpie
piece of scrap paper (to draw your plan)
water
blue food colouring
sellotape

Method:

1. Draw a picture of the water cycle on a scrap piece of paper. When you are happy with it, draw it onto your plastic bag with a vivid.
2. Mix two drops of food colouring with 1/4 of a cup of water and pour into your plastic bag.
3. Make sure it is sealed tight!
4. Sellotape your bag to the window in a sunny spot.

Wait and see what happens...

By Miss Fraser, Luke D, Luke R, Zach, Sophie, Fin, Seth, Jade and Jazmyne.