Learning Treasure Hunt: A Sneak Preview

Nau Mai Haere Mai!  Welcome to our Learning Treasure Hunt!

We are inviting our parents/caregivers in to see all that goes on on the classroom on Monday the 12th of September.  There will be a rich assortment of activities being run and managed by students.  These include Food Science activities, music, writing, and much more.  

The activity presented below is advanced taster of one of the Maths activities our guests will be having a go at.  If you want to look like a flash mathematician when you visit do this activity in advance and pretend that you have never seen it before.  Ha ha!

Sophia has just been given a dart game for her birthday.

The board has three rings.

The outer ring scores 4 points, the middle ring scores 7 points, and the inner ring 9 points.

The game has three darts.

(a) What scores can Sophia get?

(b) Sophia thought that was a bit boring so she decided that she could add and subtract the 4s, 7s and 9s. What possible positive scores could she get now?

Turning cream into...

 We have been learning a little about fats. We need to eat them to keep our body healthy, and our body stores them.  We discussed how scientists are reconsidering how much fat is bad for us, and comparing it with questioning how much sugar is bad for us. We learned how oil is the name for a liquid fat.

We practiced using our thinking as scientists ideas: predict, observe and explain; by predicting what would happen to cream if it was shaken hard. We took turns shaking it and stopped it every minute to observe what changes had happened. Within four minutes of very vigorous shaking it had turned into cream and buttermilk!

Some of us had predicted this and others were surprised. The fat molecules in the cream stuck together and the product was cream, leaving some buttermilk left over.

Those of us who wanted to had a taste - it was pretty good!

Have a look at this video to see a Russian fairy tale about this, and the value of persevering, one of the character strengths we're learning about.

Heat and Sugar

As part of our Kitchen Science Inquiry we are looking at different elements can change food. Our experiment was around what heat would do to sugar. As scientists we had to come up with a question, a prediction or hypothesis, and write the steps down for completing our experiment. While the experiment was happening we were observing closely and noting the changes that we could see happening.
 

Yeast, Baking Soda, Baking Powder!

Yeast, Baking Powder and Baking Soda

What is making the balloons blow up?

We have begun investigating the extraordinary everyday ingredients which we use in the kitchen for their scientific properties.  Good cooks and bakers need to understand the nature of the products which they use in order to control the outcome of their cooking.  We are aiming to conduct research and experiment with all kinds of ingredients over the next couple of weeks so that we can be creative cooks and make our own recipes and food products.

Of course food and in particular eating it is a popular past-time.  We are all pretty fired up and can’t wait to get to it!

So, what is causing the balloons to blow up?

Lizard Garden

Lizard Garden

No, This is not a lizard but a lizard gardener!

You may have noticed at the Awa road entrance to the school some delightful new plantings.  A small but enthusiastic group including two students (thanks Zach and Joanie) spent a sunny Sunday morning, setting boulders and driftwood artistically and putting in grasses and small shrubs.  We have created a habitat which Lizards will love!  Geckos and Skinks are regulars on the hillside anyway but will now have a purpose built, sunbaked piece of prime real estate in which they can warm their cold blooded skins.

We hope that they will thrive and proliferate in this environment but we need to make sure that we look after it.  It is not an area for playing in!  Please help us make the lizards feel at home and the new plants grow unhindered.

A special and MASSIVE thank you to Joakim from Te Motu Kairangi who lead the planting and brought in a number of his own plants.  Joakim and his group are doing amazing work all over the peninsular.  Keep an eye out for them and join them on one of their planting missions if you are feeling inspired.

Thanks also to Brian Thomas of the Wellington City Council who continues to support us with our environmental projects.  Awesome work Brian!

The nature of water

We've started conducting some experiments and looking at the nature of matter. Today Gabrielle's base group looked at what the universe is made of - solids, liquids and gases. We focused on water, the only thing that can be all of these and looked at how adding energy, or heat, changes the nature of ice to water to steam.

We talked about how water is made up to two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Then, in groups of three, we made ourselves into water molecules and acted out being in a dense solid state (ice), a fluid liquid state (water) and energetic steam. Can you tell which we are in each picture?


The wind was pushing the gas/steam around a lot today!

Waste... there's a lot of it!

Wendy from Waste Management, part of Wellington City Council, came in to talk to us about different types of waste and what our city does with them all. It was very interesting and we all learned a lot. Have a look at our padlet to see what we and Tautoru learned from Wendy. We were also able to share with her what some of us had learned from our maths investigation into water - did you know that it takes 11.3 litres of water to make on piece of paper?

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