Gosh….it's week 5!!!!!

Some of us have heard that we might be getting a new flag for New Zealand.

We have heard this from our parents or on the radio.
I wonder what design that they will choose?

We thought that we could do our own designs and Gayle said she will send them to our Prime Minister John Key when we have completed them.

You will be amazed at what we have come up with.
So far we have painted our backgrounds but next week we will be able to show you the  final  product.

Our experiment this week was making a volcano.
We put on our lab coats and headed out to the sandpit to collect sand, then we made a mountain shape with it.
At the top of the shape we put half a toilet roll and pressed it into the sand.
Next was the baking soda, food colouring and then the...……vinegar. Oh my goodness you should have seen what happened….it was just like a real volcano erupting with lava.
We had dinosaurs at the bottom of our volcano and some of them died when our volcano erupted !!!

Collecting the sand

Wow this is heavy….I think I need the help of an adult...

Getting the dinosaurs in place….

Baking soda first...

Now the vinegar...

Now for some interaction between the dinosaurs….

  This experiment would be great to try at home. If you don't have any sand just use soil instead.

You should have come to see us on Thursday… we made gluten free Lemon and Poppy Seed cake.

It was scrumptious.

Supporting one another...

Squeezing the juice from the lemon

How many cups of flour?

Now for mixing all the ingredients together….

Nearly ready...

 See you next week!

WEEK 4

Luke B was very thoughtful when he was choosing experiments for us to explore.

He decided that it would be kind to choose an experiment for Gabby and Aieshar…..so this week we put on our lab coats and prepared lavender and rose petals as we were making pot-pourri.

We had to put the petals and flowers on paper then put heavy books on top to help press the flowers down . It takes four weeks before the petals will be dry.
The roses smelt beautiful…we are wondering if they will still be smelling at the end of the four weeks.
We will let you know!

First we had to cut the stems off the lavender ...

Then carefully put the petals on the paper..

Four weeks is quite a long  time to have to wait to see if this works…but then scientists have to be very patient!!


We tried doing our bark rubbings on bark that Gayle had collected from a park. We were a bit disappointed at the results as the bark kept on breaking….mmm….how could we fix that?

After much thought we headed down to the trees on the field and tried with the paper straight on to the bark of the tree.
It worked!!!   It was such a windy day so we had to press the paper very firmly against the tree.

Next week we are painting blocks of wood which we are going to put the colour in Maori on them, so yesterday we went to the Resene paint shop at Tower Junction to purchase the paint.
We had to tell the lady what colour paint we needed in Maori and then we could choose any shade of that colour.

The staff there must have thought that we were amazing…and we are…because we were given a game, allowed to keep the paint chart, a balloon and a lollipop !!

After choosing all the colours we had time to play with the toys there and eat our lollipop.

There were so many colours to choose from!

Wow.. a paint tin filled with lollipops!

Ready to head back to school with our bag of goodies!!

              We have had a VERY busy week. We hope that you have had a busy week too.

What amazing weather….

Hope that you are all enjoying the incredible weather that we are having at the moment!

We are ! On Tuesday we all went for a walk to St James Park to have fun in the leaves!

We had SO much fun!     It is a wonder you didn't hear us laughing and screaming with delight!!

The leaves were all lying on the ground…some in very thick piles so we were able to scoop them up to have a leaf fight.

                    When we ran through the leaves they made a wonderful scrunchy sound.

   If the weather stays beautiful like it has been take a trip to St James Park and have some fun!



We told you about our rubbery egg experiment last week….oh my goodness you should come and have a look to see what has happened.

The egg has grown in size, lost its shell and is VERY rubbery. We think that the vinegar must have taken all the calcium from the shell.


This weeks experiment was all about seeing a change with steel wool using bleach, water and vinegar .
The steel wool was put into a snap lock bag and then we poured in  vinegar, water and bleach.

There was a reaction as soon as we did this…the liquid changed colour.

Yesterday when we took the steel wool out of the bag there was rust in the middle of the steel wool.
We are wondering if all of the steel wool will have changed to rust when we come to school on Monday.

Watch this space…we will let you know.

SCIENCE IS FUN !

When we arrived on Wednesday there were six white shirts waiting for us!

We wondered what they were for…can you guess?

Yes you are right! 

Lab coats for scientists , because that is what we are going to be this term!

We wondered what scientists might do all day and this is what we came up with…..

You have to be very focused and aware because being a scientist can be very dangerous. 

You have to know a lot about the thing that you are working on.       Luke B

You need to work with dinosaur fossils to find out what they looked like.

You would have to be very careful with them.       Aaron

You make potions.      Luke U

Im not sure but they wear a white coat and safety goggles.      Gabby

So with all this knowledge we put on our lab coats and began our first experiment.

Can an egg go soft and gooey ?    That was our task to find out!

We put an egg in a glass and covered it with vinegar…We noticed that straight away the eggs colour changed and bubbles appeared on it.

When we arrived at class the next day there was a frothy mixture on top of the vinegar…was our egg starting to change?

We are going to have to wait and see!!     We will tell you next week.

With all that froth and bubbles we wondered if we could make some connections…..and yes we could!

Other things that are frothy or have bubbles are…..a fluffy, shampoo, dish washing liquid, bubble bath, baking soda in the Anzac biscuits, the sea, a spa and  milkshakes.

We made a milkshake yesterday and it was very frothy on the top.

                                                        SCIENTISTS AT WORK!

                                                        

  We are wondering how our eggs are going to look on Monday…. will there be more froth?
  Will the shell still be strong?                                                                   Will the egg be gooey ?

                                       We will just have to be patient and wait and see!!

A lovely surprise yesterday…..Jacob Lowson came to visit us.   He has grown so tall …he is even taller than Gayle.!    It looked like Gayle had shrunk!!!!     He stayed and tasted our milkshake ….he thought it was delicious.
Thanks for coming Jacob.

Time to remember…...

Welcome back!

We hope that you all had a fun filled holiday. We were so lucky to get amazing weather over Easter.

Did the Easter bunny come to visit you?
He came and visited all of us….Yum!!!

Our apologies for no blog on the last week…things didn't go according to plan!

A time to remember…..

This week has been all about remembering the soldiers that went to war 100 years ago.

We have listened to some beautiful stories, looked at pictures of Gallipoli from the war and how it is now, made poppies to put on the remembrance crosses at school, looked at war medals that belonged to Gayle's granddad and great granddad , made Anzac biscuits and talked and talked about how people must have felt…the soldiers and the families that they left behind.
We think that it must have been a very sad time.

We used sponges to paint our poppies red.

"I will just put my name on my poppy because I want to take this one home"

"I have loved learning about the soldiers''

'Now for the centre of the poppy'

Our Anzac biscuits….modified!

Have a wonderful weekend.

We are all going to spend some time tomorrow …Anzac Day….remembering what we have learnt this week.

It is important to  stop for a moment and remember.

A favour… could you please save all your cream bottle top lids as we are going to carry on with our bottle top art this term.  This time we are making a poppy so we need HEAPS of red bottle tops.
Thanks

See you next week

Gabby,Aieshar, Luke B, Luke U, Aaron and Ethan