Making fruit salad on 22.7.15

   

   

    In Science this term we are learning about cause and effect. Our big idea is that materials can be changed in lots of ways, particularly when they are heated, mixed or cooled. Furthermore when materials change they often look different. We also talked about changes that can be reversed and others that may be irreversible.

    To check the children's understanding of what mixtures are, we made a fruit salad by combining five different kinds of fruit supplied by the children. We talked about what is different and also the same about the fruit. Some children noticed that the pieces weren't exactly the same as they were before they were mixed as the apple and banana were starting to go brown and some of the fruit juice had leaked out. Everyone agreed that we couldn't put the bits of fruit back together again to make the whole fruits so we concluded that the changes were irreversible.

    

    Some children came up with the definition that a mixture is a combination of two or more materials. Most children were keen to taste the fruit salad. We put it into the cups reserved for jelly-making next week and ate our fruit salad with a fork. Mmm! Maybe we should have fruit salad every day!

   

Cultural Day on 29.6.15

    On Cultural Day children were encouraged to dress up to represent a culture either we were linked to or one that we admired. We had shared kai with our buddy class at lunchtime.

    In the afternoon our class and buddy class split into two groups to rotate around four activities representing some of the cultures in our school.

Rugby Skills with PHIL on 25.6.15

    We were lucky to have an extended session of rugby skills with Phil.

    

    Shark attack has proved to be a popular and fun game throughout Phil's sessions with us...

    

    

    ...where we are all involved.

    It was also great having a sunshiny day for the hour-long skills session.

Buddy class time on Pyjama Day 19.6.15

    On Pyjama day our buddy class joined us in Room 17.

    Our buddies read books to us.

    And some of us read to our buddies.

    We had a fun time together...

   

    ...along with our soft toys.

    

    

    

    

    

    

    In between times there was lots of discussion around the ideas or pictures in the stories.

    

    

    What a cozy and colourful way to spend a grey winter's day!

    

Ronald McDonald Safety Show on 9.6.15

    Ronald McDonald visited our school today. He told us a story about his missing sock.

    There were several important road safety messages in the story.

    We listened attentively.

    

    

    

    He entertained us.

    

    And we had fun.

    

    

Bee keeper Visit on 5.6.15

    On Friday a beekeeper called Allan visited us at our Koru Team Assembly.

    He told us that he started beekeeping in 1985 when he was in his twenties.

    Allan has about one hundred hives around the Hutt Valley now. He said that it is a 

    good place for honey making because there are a lot of flowery trees.

    We found out that each hive has from 40,000 and up to 100,000 bees in them. They also have 

    guard bees. The worker bees pollinate the flowers. That's what makes the fruit and the seeds grow.

    There were no honey bees in NZ to start with. They were introduced to NZ about 150 years ago 

    Europe when people came on the ships.

    Allan showed us his smoker. He uses this to calm the bees when he puts on his special outfit to 

    collect the honey from his hives.

    We also found out that bees only sting when you annoy or hurt them.

    The queen bee eats royal jelly. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day.

    Did you know that beekeeper a use sugar syrup sometimes in the winter as food for the honey bees

    to keep them alive when there isn't enough sun or flowers around. 

    We all learned a lot from Allan's talk and wrote about what we'd learned in our thank you letters to 

    him later on.