Calendula Plants

Take a look at how fast our Calendula plants are growing!  We water our plants 3 times a week and a special monitor takes them outside to get plenty of sunlight each day.  Mrs Nansen is trying to organise a patch of garden where we can plant our flowers and look after them.

A Fabulous Day at the Gardens!

The Juniors went to the Auckland Botanic Gardens on Friday, 15 February 2013.  We enjoyed a full day of flowery fun.

First the bus picked us up from school. We felt happy and joyful about riding on the bus.  We arrived at the Auckland Botanic Gardens, we went into the covered area to eat our morning tea.  After morning tea we walked across the gardens to the kids garden, and into the classroom with our garden's teacher Susie. 

 Here we are riding on the bus

Here is Mr and Mrs Prout - Caleb's Mum and Dad. Mrs Prout is a teacher; Mr Prout came to help us for the day



 Mrs O'Connor was an awesome parent helper too 

 Ngarangi and Hunter are being funny with their delicious oranges 

Here are our new friends from Room 1

In the classroom we were learning about the life-cycle of a plant and how it grows from a seedling.  Did you know plants have petals, roots, leaves and a stem?  These are their parts.

 The Life Cycle of a Seed

 Susie teaching us about the life cycle of a seed.

Lauren is looking at the parts of the plant with her magnifying glass

Caleb is labelling the parts of a plant

Susie taught us about pollenation.  This is where insects pick up pollen and mix it with other plant's pollen to make new plants.  We had fun finding the pollen in the flowers. 

Susie showing us how bees collect and redistribute pollen

Rehutai found pollen

Daniel and Tyrone found some pollen too

A highlight of our trip was when some students got to dress up in flower costumes.  We acted out how the pollenation happens.

 Here are our lovely 'flowers'! Daniel, Mose, Ngarangi and Verity

 Ngarangi took his role very seriously, holding up his stamen proudly

Some bumble bees and butterflies taking the pollen from one plant to the next

The last part of our lesson was learning to plant a seed. 

We each got a yoghurt pot with holes in the bottom.  We filled it over half way with some soil.  Then we put some Calendula seeds in the pot.  We covered them with some more soil, patted them down then watered them lightly.  We can't wait to watch our seeds grow as we give them plenty of sunlight, fresh air and water to grow.

 

 Ready to plant our seeds. 

We used our best listening skills

 Te Whero, Trinity, Jode Reign and Kiri are busy planting

Caleb is adding his seeds to his pot

We would like to thank Susie for an amazing day - we enjoyed being in her class and all the exciting things she taught us.

After the class we had lunch under the trees, and spent the afternoon exploring the different gardens.  We all think we would like to go back to the gardens, especially now that we know so much more about flowers and how they grow!

 Having lunch in the shade of the tree

 Mrs Nansen's group :)

 Naomi found an interesting plant to sketch

 Deciding where we will go next by reading the gardens map

Enjoying the rose garden's bridge.  We think we saw some eels in the water!

Beautiful Trinity

We love science and learning about new things.  We are excited for our next learning out of the classroom experience.

Recount and captions written collectively by Room 4

Botanic Gardens Learning Experience!

Here ia a sneak peak of our trip today!  More to come :)

All About Magnets!

In Room 4 our current focus for science is "Materials".  

We are learning what the various properties of different materials are, and which materials are suitable for certain kinds of jobs e.g rubber for tires due to it's grip and durability etc.

Our latest set of investigations were about discovering what makes something magnetic, and how to identify magnetic materials.  

First Mrs Nansen gathered some prior knowledge, to find out what we already knew.

"What does Magnetic mean?"

Charlize: "Magnetic things stick together."

Roman: "They go to each other."

We all had similar ideas.

We then teamed up in pairs with a class magnet to find out if a range of materials were magnetic or non magnetic.

We tested objects to see if we could feel any attraction (pulls) or resistance (pushes) to our magnets.

 Tinashe and Caleb are testing the pencils to see if they are magnetic...

Keilani and Erika Lee have completed a test and are recording their results (sorry it's a bit tricky to read our test sheets!)

On our test sheets we indicated whether an item was magnetic or non-magnetic by using a smile-scale.  So here is our own smile scale...

Erika Lee and Keilani are showing us that books are non magnetic

Alize and Mikayla are showing us that this ruler is non magnetic

Gideon and Roman are showing us that the .50 and .10c coin are magnetic (We were very interested to see that the $1.00 and $2.00 coins are non magnetic...ooooo!)

Jacob and Carlos found out that paper-clips are magnetic

Ekklesia and Brooklyn found out that connector blocks are non-magnetic

Shannahl and Liana discovered scissors are definitely magnetic!

Genesis and Caleb found out that rubbers are non magnetic

The next stage was to find out WHY all these objects are non/magentic.  We discussed our findings, and our reasoning behind them.  

"Those things {the magnetic objects} are magnetic because they have magnets in them" was the most common statement. 

Then Mrs Nansen showed us some special 'dust'.  We guessed what the dust could be...lead shavings from a pencil...black sand...magnet powder ;) 

Then Mrs Nansen got out a magnet and placed it under the paper with the dust on it

The magnet made the dust move around the paper!  It followed the magnetic through the paper.  It reminded us of our "Magna Doodles"!

When Mrs Nansen waved the magnet over the dust, all the dust leapt of the paper and stuck to the magnet like "fuzz" (says Jacob).

We experimented passing the dust from magnet to magnet.  When we wiped the 'fuzz' off the magnet, it fell back to the paper like dust again!

Mrs Nansen explained that the 'dust' was Iron Filings.  Small particles of iron.  We learnt that iron is a naturally-occurring metal that comes from within the earth.  The iron has properties within it that make it magnetic.  Many of the items we tested that were magnetic were made with some iron, or a similar naturally-occurring metal from within the earth.  This is why they were magnetic!!

In our next lesson we are going to learn about atoms, electrons and charges!

ROOM FOUR LOVE SCIENCE!!