Room 7 talks about Yeast

Room 7 children have been making 'Comic Life' presentations showing, in their own words, what they have learned during science the last few weeks. Have a look by clicking on 'Class of 2010' link to the left.

Please leave a comment! The children love to read these.

Room 7 digi-kids

Jonathan and Ella are 2 digi-kids in Room 7 who have been working with Mr Skilton and myself to make a slide show on the bread-making process.

These 2 digi-kids have taken complete control, from start to finish, making the slideshow. They developed a storyboard, included a storyline, took the photos needed to illustrate the story, and imported the photos into iPhoto to use in the slideshow. Well done Ella and Jonathan!

As soon as the slide show is completed, it's going to be shown at assembly! I'll also make sure it is blogged right here, on Room 7's blog!

The photo shows Jonathan and Ella working hard on their slideshow.

Making Bread

Miss Gandhi and Mr Dobson have been busy teaching Room 7 about starch, yeast and CO2 and how they can be used to make bread.

On Tuesday each table group made a loaf of bread and ate it at the end of the day. It was delicious!

Ella and Jonathan, who are our class photographers, took these photos of the process we followed:

Firstly the yeast needs to be 'excited' by feeding and watering it. We fed the yeast sugar and let it soak up warm water.



We mixed flour and sugar together


we added warm water which helped the starch in the flour swell up and become sticky.

Next we added the yeast mixture and kneeded the bread.

The bread dough needed to be kneeded for a long time until it became elastic


We left the kneeded dough in the sun. The warmth of the sun helped the yeast grow and release CO2. The CO2 gas made the bread dough puff up.
We put the bread dough in the oven and baked it for 40 minutes.

YUM! Who would have though starch, yeast and CO2 could make something so delicious!

The changes that starch and yeast goes through

Over the last two weeks we have explored what changes starch and yeast can go through.

We have discovered that starch and yeast stay inactive (not doing anything) until they are excited/activated. Warm water was a way we activated both the starch and the yeast.

We discovered that starch swells up and becomes sticky when it is activated.

We discovered that because yeast is a living organism, it needs to be fed as well as watered, before it activates (comes alive).

Once the yeast has been woken up by the warm water, and has fed on the sugar, it starts releasing CO2. The CO2 made all the bubbles we could see. The yeast underwent a chemical change.

We experimented by mixing yeast, sugar and warm water together, then added that to a flour (starch) and water mixture, to see what would happen.

Some of us thought the mixture turned into something resembling pizza dough.

Veggie Patch programme

The Year 3 and 4's have enrolled in the McCain School Veggie Patch programme. The programme involves collecting barcodes from McCAIN frozen vegetable and McCAIN Purely Potato packs and sending these to school. Teachers will collect the barcodes, which can be redeemed for a whole load of garden supplies.

By clicking on the picture above, you can visit the McCain Veggie Patch website and browse the various items we could purchase, using the barcodes.

Your family can get in behind the Year 3-4 garden project by collecting McCain vegetable barcodes and sending them to school- as simple as that!

Introducing Vaishally Ghandi

Hey all,

My name is Vaishally Gandhi, and I would just like to introduce myself as the student teacher who will be in Room 7 until the end of Term 2! My time at Muritai is my final section as part of the four year primary and secondary Bachelor of Teaching conjoint programme with a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration. So far I have been inspired by the passion that learners, staff and the wider community bring towards the learning which is occurring at Muritai, and I will endeavour to add to this community of rich learning!

If you do have any questions about your child’s learning during my time here, please feel free either to pop in at the beginning or the end of the school day or to send me an email at gandhivais@myvuw.ac.nz

I look forward to working with you

Vaishally Gandhi

Origami Homework

HI Everyone,

Here is the link I promised:

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-for-kids.html

Make sure you scroll DOWN the page and click on the little pictures.

Don't click on the writing at the top of the page because they are ADVERTS!