Energy - I've Got The Power!

We have launched into our next round of Immersion entitled Energy! First of all we posed the question 'What is Energy?'  We recorded our initial thinking on hexagons and then looked to see if we could make connections and link our thinking with other people's thinking. They are currently displayed on our Learning Journey so take a look the next time you are walking past.

We will spend the next few weeks rotating through activities based around the following Scientific Areas.

Planet Earth and Beyond - Papatuanuku
Material World - Kitchen Chemistry
Physical World -  Forces
Living World - What Am I?

This coming Thursday we will be going to the Auckland Zoo to support our learning around animal classification and how the different species gather and use energy.

Below is a sample of the shared texts that have been coming home to support our Immersion learning as well as our Reading.  These are very important so please make sure they find their way to your child's Shared Text Folder.  They are great to read with your child and should generate some great scientific discussions and spur some scientific exploration at home!

PAPATUANUKU - Temperature

KITCHEN CHEMISTRY - Solids, Liquids and Gas

PHYSICAL WORLD - Forces

Projects come to an end...

This week has been an exciting week of watching some of our hard work come to fruition!

Health and Fitness Group
Our health and fitness group have been working hard on creating a model of the heart and lungs to help people understand how blood and oxygen get around our body. They have also been working hard on creating some fitness programs to help our class get fit and healthy! These fitness programs will be put into play next week!






Waste Wise Group
Our waste wise group have been busy creating badges for our waste wise monitors to wear, creating posters to help people know what rubbish to put in what bin, and creating a presentation to share with our school to educate students on how they can be waste wise.

          

                   (Click to view presentation)



Upcycling Group
Our upcycling group has been busy bringing their designs to life by upcycling old jandals and other materials to bring some character to our common.




Money Group
Our money group has come up with the awesome idea to create a school 'coin collection'. If you have any money (old coins, notes, or money from other countries), then we would love for you to add to our collection. We are hoping for this to be a permanent 'coin' collection, so please only bring in coins/notes that you are willing to donate permanently.

    


Worm Farm Group
Our worm farm group have been using their new found knowledge to put together some information reports to help educate others about worms! Next steps include finishing off the painting and sourcing some worms!!!


                                                                                                        (By Nathan Harrison)


Celebration Group
Our celebration group finished our week off with a bang! We celebrated all the cultures of our common with some of our students running workshops to share their knowledge with others. We had an amazing morning tea, which was so big that it became a shared lunch as well! It was a pleasure to see our children sharing what is special about their culture, and being able to watch everyone gain cultural experiences outside of their norms. Thank you so much to everybody that contributed to our shared morning tea, and to the parents behind the scenes of the workshops who helped their children prepare and therefore present such successful workshops.

New Immersion Phase...
This coming week we will be starting our new immersion phase. We will be exploring concepts around energy and how it is used. As part of this, we have a trip coming up on Thursday the 1st of June. Your child should have come home with a notice about this on Friday. Please return your permission slip as soon as possible so we can get everything organised from our end. We will need 15 parent helpers for this trip. Please use the permission slip to indicate if you are available to help. If your child did not bring a notice home on Friday, please get in touch with us so we can get one to you.

Worm Farm Project Group Update

What an exciting week it has been for the worm farmers this week!! We carried out some research about worms using the skills we had learnt in our How To Research and Make Notes workshop.  We certainly found out some interesting facts!

In preparation for Darryl coming to build the base and lid for the worm farm we explored Measurement as we realised that we would need to be able to measure accurately in able to make a base and lid that fit properly. We investigated non standard and standard measurements and found out what a prediction is.  We then went about measuring different objects in our classroom accurately after having made a careful prediction.

On Wednesday Joshua's Dad Darryl came into school to help us start building the Worm Farm.  We were all very keen to get outside, roll up our sleeves and get involved.  There was lots of measuring, sawing, holding in place, problem solving and painting taking place. Check it out!

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately the bad weather has hampered our efforts to get the painting finished but we are hoping that we will be finished by the end of the week and ready for our worms.  A big thank you for Darryl for donating all of the materials and giving up his time to come in and work with the children.  We think a Worm Farm is a great addition to Hobsonville Point Primary School.

Our resident work farm expert, Anna (Starr's Mum) came back in this week also to answer some more of our questions and help us be ready to welcome our worms.  The children practised their note taking skills and demonstrated that they have learnt a great deal since the project began.

Celebration of Culture Project Group

It has been an extremely busy week for the Celebration of Culture project group.  We have been extremely fortunate to have a number of parents support our project by coming in to run workshops with us, sharing aspects of their culture.

Arifah and Elsa's Nepalese Games Workshop
Arifah shared with us some of the games that the children of Nepal play.  She also gave us some information about Nepal.  We know that it is a landlocked country, the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest is there and that many people in Nepal are very poor so the children usually have to make the games that they play with.

Emma and Michaella's Irish Dancing Workshop
Emma and Michaella shared a power point presentation with us about the history of Irish Dancing, the costumes and techniques. 

 

 Here are a few of the slides from the presentation - 

Emma, who grew up doing Irish Dancing, gave us a great demonstration before we got to have a go ourselves! We weren't sure if we could move our legs that fast but we gave it a good go!!

 

 

Thanks Michaella and Emma for such a fantastic workshop.

Making Filipino Snacks with Issa, Merwina and Dennis

Issa's Mum and Dad also came in this week to show us how to make a traditional Filipino snack called Puto.  Again they shared a fabulous power point presentation which gave us some background information about the Phillipines and this popular treat.

Then it was time for us to get cooking!!

 

The best part was when we got to taste them!!

‘We got to make puto.  There was even a magic box!  They tasted like plain muffins. They were so yummy I want to eat them forever!’  William

‘Puto was very yummy because they tasted like pancakes.’  Jade

Indian Traditions with Deepti

Deepti came to work with us this morning to share some information about cultural traditions in India. We made sure we had our project books with us so that we could make notes. Here are some of the facts that we found out -

Deepti then gave us special bracelets to wear and the girls a bindi before we learnt some Indian dance moves.

 

Celtic Art with Meela and Liz

Last but not least, Liz and Meela lead a workshop looking at the history of Ireland, including Meela's own family tree.  

We had a go at designing our own patterns using the colours of Ireland - orange, white and green before painting them onto wooden cutouts made with a very special machine. When the paint has dried, we are going to make them into necklaces.

 

 

 

Our sincere thanks to all of our parents who have been able to come in and run a workshop for us this week, we are extremely grateful.  We are really looking forward to passing on all our new knowledge and skills to the rest of LC2 at Cultural Day next Friday.