Grade 2 found a caterpillar in the playground and gave it to us as they knew we were inquiring about life cycles. We gave it fresh leaves, some soil and a stick. So far it has made a chrysalis and we are waiting to see if it will turn into a butterfly or a moth.
A few days later Gracie found another caterpillar in the garden. She brought it up and we gave it some leaves too. It remains a caterpillar at the moment and every day we check to see if it has made its chrysalis.
Over the two week March break we left the chrysalis with Mr Aik our security guard. When we collected the container today we found a small moth inside. Unfortunately it was dead. We think it didn't have enough food or water to survive. We buried it in the garden.
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For part of our inquiry into 3D shapes this week we played a 'guess the shape' game. There were two 3D shapes in 3 different boxes. We weren't allowed to look, just feel. We had to count the edges, faces and vertices as we felt each shape to help us figure out what each one was. We wrote down our guesses and after everyone had a turn to guess the shapes in each box were revealed. We've also been exploring how how many edges and vertices shapes have by building them with toothpicks and balls of play dough.
We used water colour pencils to draw and paint pictures of plants and flowers. We had to observed the details closely. Our finished pieces will be on display for the parents to see at our poetry cafe coming up soon.
For our latest round of show and tell we have had a maths focus. Sosuke showed a handy gadget which helps calculate the times tables. He showed us how to work it and explained he sometimes uses it when he goes to Kumon maths class. Gracie showed us a Maths book she sometimes uses at home and found a page about 3D shapes which we are exploring at the moment. Lots of us wanted to try the idea of colouring a picture using different 3D shapes. Next, Holly showed us magnetic tiles. She demonstrated how to make various 3D shapes and then allowed everyone to have a go at making their own. Then we used everyones shapes together to create a big class structure. Fedor showed us two books he uses on the weekend to practice his maths work. Everyone enjoyed looking at these, especially the pages about telling the time with analogue clocks. Daniel showed us a Maths activities book he has at home. He showed us some of the pages he has completed and passed it around for everyone to take a look. Shoichi brought in his ipad to show how the time works and then explained a game he plays where he needs to use the timer. He also showed us a clock which he uses to practice telling the time. Shoichi's third item was a measuring tape. He explained his mum uses it at home to measure furniture like bookshelves. We had a go at using it to see how long it would stretch. Sara was inspired by Shoichi's show and tell and brought in a measuring tape too. She said she uses it at home to measure how tall she is. Erica showed everyone her calculator and how it can be used to add big numbers. Someone was interested in how many digits could be entered in to the calculator and what the biggest number it show would be. We worked these questions out together by trying some different things with the calculator. Saki shared a fish pictures she'd made using only square, triangle and circular stickers. She explained different sizes of the shapes were needed to make the picture. Hugh's show and tell was all about monopoly. He explained the rules of the game and how the money works. He said it's important to plan how much money you have and when to spend it so that if no one lands on your property you can still have enough money to stay in the game. Athan shared a game that his dad helped him make and they play at home sometimes. A group us tried playing it too. Julian showed some pictures of different games which he likes to play. All of them need Maths to help with counting.
This week we had two visitors to our class. The first was Sara's little sister Emma. Emma is two years old. We asked Emma's mum questions about what she was like when she was a baby and how she has changed in the past two years. We watched what Emma did, played with her and sang a song with her. We made comparisons between ourselves as seven and eight year olds and a four year old. Then Hugh's mum came in to tell us about life cycles. We learned about the sizes of a baby as it grows inside the mother before it is born. Then we compared the length of time it takes different animals to grown into adults. We had two babies visit on the one day. First baby Teddy who is a friend of Hugh's family and then Holly's little brother Louis. It was fun watching them, listening to them and finding out about all their changes since being born. We were able to compare too as baby Louis was older than baby Teddy. Thank you to everyone who visited our class. On Wednesday we went to the library to hear a story from a mystery reader. Our mystery reader was Athan's mum. She read us the story Situ Bagendit which had lots of good lessons to learn about sharing, being kind, being generous and looking after people in need. Also on Wednesday we had a visit from the author Andy Chua. Andy is a fossil expert and has written 3 fiction books called in a mini series called 'Fossil Finders'. He showed us some of his fossil collection and gave an informative and interactive talk about dinosaurs. Afterwards we went in small groups to meet him in the library and see other fossils. On Thursday we were able to swap our old books for ones we haven't read that other children brought in. It was fun exchanging books in this way, helping to recycle used books. Friday was the book character parade where we dressed up in costumes of some of our favourite book characters and walked around the school to look at everyones costumes.
To spark our interest in how living things change and lifecycles we played a game with our baby photos. We had to guess who each person was. To do this we used a 'think, see, wonder' thinking routine. We had to note clues which made us think the photo was the certain person. We also had the opportunity to wonder and ask questions about the photos. Some were a lot easier to figure out than others!
To help us understand the central idea 'living things change' we worked on sorting out things into living or non living. We used a venn diagram in groups and had some interesting discussions about things such as oranges which were once living but are no longer living. We also discussed items such as a wooden table that came from a living thing. After further discussions and watching a video clip we came up with 4 questions to help classify things as living. Does it move? Does it breathe? Does it make more of itself? Does it grow and change? Then we took a walk around the garden to find things which we could classify as living or non living by asking these questions.
Our new unit of inquiry is from the transdisciplinary theme 'How The World Works' with the central idea 'Living Things Change'. To help with the tuning in and to spark many wonderings we went on a nature hunt. We had a checklist of living things to find and even managed to add on some of our own to the list. We saw crocodiles, monitor lizards, bats, turtles, crabs, mud skippers, birds, fish, spiders, butterflies, dragonflies, ants, geckos and squirrels. We enjoyed some snack and also had some time to write about what we had seen.
As part of our inquiry about the journey of food we focused on where and how different foods grow. Some of us were interested in rice and some of us wondered about where flour comes from to make bread. After watching some videos about rice and wheat we planted some wheat seeds. They took about a week to start growing and we have been measuring how tall they are each week. We also grew some cress seeds and once they had sprouted we knew they were ready to eat. We tried the cress in a sandwich with some cream cheese. Our reactions ranged from loving it to hating it, but we were all risk takers and tried it. We also planted chives and are still waiting to see if they will grow!
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June 2018
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