Wonderful Wheels Day.

What a great time everyone had!

Yeast Experiments.

Our question was...

"How does sugar affect the growth of water?"

We had two bottles, warm water, sugar, and yeast.

We mixed the ingredients and waited to see what would happen.

We didn't have to wait long.

Within four minutes our mixture was bubbling and foaming.

Our second bottle had warm water, yeast but no sugar.

This one had a small amount of foaming.

We then made up another bottle and put in warm water, yeast, and sugar.

We put a balloon over the top and waited.

The balloon was soon filling up with gas and some of the foaming mixture.

Yoghurt Making.

We made a batch of plain yoghurt.

We used milk powder with a good bacteria in it to make our yoghurt.

We put it into our yoghurt container which had hot water in.

We left it overnight so the bacteria could get to work.

We made a thick creamy plain yoghurt.

We tasted it...it was tangy but nice (to most of us!)

Black Out Day!

What a great 'Black Out' Day we had at school on Friday.

I think the All Blacks knew that we were supporting them for their game

early this morning...and what a great result. 

Here we are on the court forming our A and B!

Room 8 Assembly

What a great assembly we had on Friday afternoon.

Well done Room 8.

We shared some of our results from our topic.

Mind Lab Visit.

This morning Room 7 visited the 'Mind Lab' in Petone.

What a fabulous learning place it is!

We had lots of fun learning about robotics and creating our own piece of music.

'Goodtime Music' Performance.

On Friday we had a performance from the guys at the 'Goodtime music Academy'.

We had a great time dancing, singing and clapping with the music.

Junket Making.

Who can remember Junket??

We made junket (custard) using warm milk, caster sugar, and rennet.
Rennet is an enzyme which is found in a calf's stomach.
You can't overheat the milk or you will kill the enzyme.

Once we cut into the junket the whey runs out and separates from the curds.

Some children came back for a second taste BUT most struggled to taste their first spoonful.

Our topic for Term 4 is 'Food Technology'.
We will be looking at Yoghurt, Bread and Yeast, and Biscuits.

Today we talked about milk and milk products.

We made butter by putting cream into a jar and sending it around our class circle.
Each child had turns at shaking the jar of cream.
It did not take long to turn into lovely yellow butter with some milky whey left as well.

We spread some of our butter onto crackers so we could all have a taste.

Yum! it did taste like butter.

Welcome to Term 4.

It is great to be back working in Room 7 with the 'Super 7' students.
We have a very busy term with lots of learning and fun times to be had.

Today we had Tennis coaching with Paddy, working in Room 7 and finished the day
with a session in the library.

The opening of Rooms 5 and 6.

We all went to the new rooms for the grand opening.

The rooms look great and smell very new.

We went back in the afternoon to do some singing.

Flying Teabag

After much arguing with iMovie (suspect it was my fault) here is a short clip of an experiment we did last term. 

The experiment is called the flying teabag.
Easy to replicate at home with an adult. You need a teabag that has a string that is stapled to it (I found Dilmah teabags work best).
Carefully remove the staple and tip the tea out. You should be left with a thin paper tube.
Stand the tube on its end and light the top. It will fall over in the slightest breeze (even if you pull away too quickly) so make sure you are somewhere sheltered.

Thanks to George our video expert. You probably don't want your volume up too loud but keep an eye on the faces in the background.

Buddy Reading

On Mondays we have buddy reading with Room 1. We visit each others' class and have 15 minutes quiet reading with a partner. Today we visited them and the Room 1 students read us one of their buddy reading books. Then we read them a book from the library shelf.
It is good practice to read books aloud to an audience, we are practising our accuracy and using expression well. It also allows us to build links and friendship across the school.

Football

After having our first football lesson last week on the grass and in the sun, this week we were driven inside by the weather. We had great fun playing football indoors and it was good practise for those going to the Futsal tournament tomorrow.

  

 

Speed Stacking

On Friday we had a demonstration of speed stacking from Philip. He is a Black Stack and has represented New Zealand. Speed stacking involves setting up plastic cups in a number of different formations like 3, 3, 3, or 3, 6, 3, and then collapsing them down again. Philip was very fast.

Build them up.

Collapse them down

Some lucky students had a go.

Lucky teachers too!

I wonder if we should get some for our class? What do you think Room 7?