Growing seedlings

We are growing seedlings for the Year 3-4 garden. We are growing an autumn crop of Bok Choy, Spinach and Cauliflower.

 

We are growing the seedlings in teabags. The teabags have all the nutrients that the seeds need to grow into seedlings.

Mr Dobson found this ideas HERE in the Kiwi Conservation Club magazine. It's a great way to recycle used teabags!

Today's picnic at Days Bay

We had a perfectly sunny day for our picnic at Days Bay today. After a great sand-sculpture competition, we headed over to Williams Park for lunch and games.

 

We had a great time!

Our first week at school

We have had a very busy first week at school. We are reading "Georges Marvellous Medicine" and have made some cool 'GR' blend posters, describing George's grandma. Grouchy, Grumbly and 'Old Grunion' were three very popular adjectives!

We also finished our "Thinking hats" about who we are and what we hope to achieve this year. We used the White Hat (facts about me), Yellow Hat (What I am good at), Green Hat (What I want to achieve in 2011) and Red Hat (Things that make me happy/sad)

This term's focus for Art is drawing. This week we spent most afternoons 'drawing what we see, not what we think we see'. It was harder than it sounds!

sometimes the most interesting things were not where we expected to find them!

Next week should be even more exciting!

Meet the class of 2011!

Aren't they a handsome bunch!

PS22 Chorus- New song!

I just love these guys! PS22 Chorus, an elementary school chorus from Public School 22 in Graniteville, Staten Island (New York), just ROCK!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has had a great Christmas and you are all enjoying the great summer weather of the January school holidays!

I have been enjoying a wonderful 2 week holiday in the South Island. The weather, apart from a day of rain on the West Coast, has been warm and sunny. Below are a few Photos of the places I have been visiting:

Kayaking down the Dart River, Queenstown

The Jetboat ride up the Dart River.

Mt Cook in the distance!

About to roll Jaffas down Baldwin Street, Dunedin, the steepest street in the world!

Moeraki Bolders, which were once thought to be fossilized dinosaur eggs!

The TSS Ernslaw, on Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown

Waterfalls coming from nowhere, besides a rainy West Coast road, near Haast.

"Walking with our eyes closed" Poetry

Recently we have been writing a poem about the beach. What is different is the way we are writing this poem, 'with our eyes shut'! What this actually means is that instead of using our sight sense, we are using our other senses to describe the beach- touch, hearing, smell and taste.

Here are some pictures of us at the beach, 'walking with our eyes closed', using senses other that sight to describe the beach.

Our Plate Tectonic movies

FINALLY we have finished our stop-frame animation movies about Plate tectonics. It took a while, but we got there!

Head over to the 'Class of 2010' blog (on the menu bar to the right) and have a look.

Not all movies are uploaded yet, but they will be by the end of the week!

Sewing

Today we spent the afternoon learning how to sew a 'double stitch'.

Plate Tectonics

This week we have been investigating how Nepal was created. We've found out that:

• The surface of the world is broken into large chunks called 'plates'
• These plate slowly drift around ontop of the liquid mantle that is below the surface of the earth
• Sometimes these plates collide, and can force land up or down, making either mountains or deep trenches

We saw on 'Google Earth'  the  plate boundary that runs through New Zealand. We could see the deep ocean trenches and big mountain ranges, where two plates were pushing against each other.

We then looked at Nepal and saw the great Himalayan Mountains. We watched an animation that showed how, over time, the Indian plate collided with the Asian plate, forcing land that was once the ocean floor, many kilometres up into the air. Wow!

We broke into small groups and made our own tectonic plates out of plaster-cine, and made a small stop-frame animation of our plates colliding.

As soon as we finish our animations we will post them on the 'Class of 2010' Student blog. Head over there to have a look (link on the right hand side)

Term 4 about to begin!

What wonderful weather we've had for the 2nd week of the school holidays! Who would have thought a Wellington spring could be so warm and sunny? I hope all of you have been able to get out and enjoy it- a walk in the bush, a bike ride to Pencarrow, or lazing on the beach at Days Bay.

In Term 4 all Year 3-4 classes are going to explore our school's relationship with Bistachap Orphanage in Nepal.

This relationship has been ongoing for many years now, supported through "The Orphans of Nepal Trust"
We will spend a lot of time throughout the term learning about Nepal, and working out 'how we can make a difference' in the day-to-day life of the children in Bistachap orphanage.

The first two weeks of this study will explore how Nepal was formed.....
PLATE TECTONICS and EARTHQUAKES!

Visit the Y3-4 wiki to get a head start on what plate tectonics are, and how the Himalayan Mountains were formed. 

The Short but Incredibly Happy Life of Riley

Over on Muritai TV this post was uploaded today, and is a great recap of the school production "The Short but Incredibly Happy Life of Riley".

What I loved so much about our Year 4 item this year was that probably 80% of the choreography for the dancing parts was arranged by the students themselves! We have some very talented dancers, and it shows!

I hope you all have a chance to see the show this week.

Halfmen of O/ International Literacy Day

This term I have been reading "The Halfmen of O" to the children in Room 7. As one of my ALL TIME favourite fantasy books for children I tend to read it to my class every 2-3 years. each class I have read it to has enjoyed the crispness and clarity of Maurice Gee's storytelling.

I am also excited to see online that there is FINALLY some movement towards the novel being developed as a feature film. As a 3D feature (which could emphasise the 'unsighted/sighted', 'yellow smoke/shy' contrast) I think would be really quite fantastic.

I plan to spend International Literacy Day reading just a few more pages to the class....

Mummified Apples- after 7 days.

After 7 days we uncovered our mummified apples and had a very close look at what had happened.



Some mixtures of salts had dried out the apple really well. Others left the original colour of the apple intact.



Have a look at the comparison board and see if you can decide what mixture was the best for mummifying an apple.

Rugby World Cup!

The Webb Ellis Cup (aka "The Rugby World Cup") payed a visit to Muritai School on Monday!

Room 7 children got to have a close up look at it! We weren't allowed to touch though, that honour is reserved for Richie McCaw to be the first NZer since 1987 to hold the trophy up high, when we win the world cup next year!

Egyptian Science

Room 7 has been investigating the science of Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians were very clever at preserving dead bodies, and used a mixture of salts called 'Natron' to help preserve the body for the afterlife. This whole precess we call 'mummification'

We are running an experiment using Epsom Salt, Table salt and Baking soda to see if we can mummify an apple.



The process we went through can be found on the Year 3-4 Wiki 'Mummified apples" page.

Being an Expert!

This week each child in Room 7 had the chance to become an expert on the topic of "Why was the Nile River so important to the Ancient Egyptians?"



One of the learning activities we did to help this happen was a "Bus-Stop". This involved the class splitting into groups and each group being given a small passage of information about the different uses the river had.



Each group then had 10 minutes to summarise their passage. Each child had to put to use the information literacy skills of skimming, scanning and summarising in order to do this successfully.



At the end of 10 minutes the summaries were then shared using a 'Bus-stop". One child became the bus, and had a 60 second visit to each other group (the 'bus-stop') and shared the group summary. The members of the group who were the 'stops' were encouraged to ask further questions of the 'bus'.



This activity allowed each child to become an expert on a small but important topic, while at the same time gaining a 'big picture' by listening to what they had to say.



Bus-Stopping is a great co-operative activity to use when their is a large, complicated topic that needs summarising in a short space of time.

Reading our "Uncle Jack" stories

Room 7 have been recording their "Uncle Jack" stories for you to listen to. Click on the "Class of 2010" link to the side and then click on a students name.

"Uncle Jack" is a very cool story by Kate De Goldi. We used her story of Jack and then made up our own. We hope you enjoy!

I also found this link to a storyteller reading "Uncle Jack". You can listen here

"Extra" science homework this week

The "extra" science homework this week can be found on the homework blog. Click to the right and take a look. Bring to school and share when you've completed the task.

Soccer Tournament

On Tuesday we had a fantastic Soccer Tournament organised by SportZone.

The Year 3-4's played in round-robin soccer games during the morning, then the top 4 teams played off for a semifinal/final placement.

Room 7 had 2 teams place in the top four!



Semi finalists!



Finalists!