Fond farewells to Alexus

We all enjoyed a shared tea party lunch on Thursday to say goodbye to Alexus who will be returning to Australia during the holidays. The photos say it all and a BIG thankyou for all the wonderful food that arrived. ( Hopefully you all got your plates back.) there was an excess which I saved for Friday and we had this for mornng tea just before watching "The Lorax " our theme for the first two weeks of term 4.

All smiles !

Alexus and her younger brother Axel in the seat of honour !

The Madhatters Tea Table 

Welcome Yassin

A big welcome to Yassin and his family to Rotorua. Yassin has joined us from Denmark and is quickly making friends and settling into class. 

He must be good luck because we had everyone at school today !

All at school with our new class member Yassin.

We also this week are finishing our seed/plant study focus in readiness for "Harold"life education beginning next week. So remember to ask your child what pearls of wisdom he shares with us, I'm sure they will all too readily tell you all about it. 

Harvesting our crops of nutritious food!

Yesterday your child will have come home with their own crop of watercress. We made sprout sandwiches at school to taste how good these are. The verdict?...they were asking for seconds!!

Our class crop that we used for the sandwiches.

Simple and nutritious and very popular with everyone. Watercress and sprout sandwiches

Check out our Sprout diaries in our room! We wrote about the steps of the growing seeds. It really captured the imagination of the class. Hopefully they will share this new knowledge with you when planting seeds at home. 

Creating habitats for plants...can this be done?

 Yes, a question we have been looking at in our class.
We know plants need carbon dioxide to thrive and sunlight to produce their own food but can we create a safe environment for them???
To find out we have created two Terrariums in the class to test our ideas. One is a bush/forest habitat. The second is a desert habitat. We googled if this could be done and found the materials needed to create a natural habitat. 1 man has done this and it has lasted 40 years!
Below are some photos to show what we have done so far.

First we created a rock layer, like the earths crust.

Then we put in layers of crushed rocks (sand) to help with drainage.

We then put in Charcoal to help filter and  keep the water and soil clean

Compost and soil was then put in for the plants to have nutrient to feed on.

We then planted shade loving plants like ferns and mosses.

Plants, Plants, and Plants....

Yes we have no shortage of seeds , seedlings and plants in the room at the moment as we look at "If or Why are Plants  important on Planet Earth?
We began this week looking at the structure of plants and what they need to survive.
 We have also begun several experiments about seeds, how they grow, what is the best way to grow, can we help them grow?
Lots of questions, lots of answers to be found with Hard facts from our experiments! and.... lots of fun and discussions.

We will also be having a Science rotation day this week on Wednesday. This is  to look at the other strands of Science. So hopefully lots of enquiring minds will come home to ask and share with you after all the extra activities.

Class activities so far on our Plant Study:

We have set up a small area to observe closely just how seeds grow 

We were trying to find out if flowers drink once they are cut from the plant. Interesting results and some colour blending knowledge coming in here.

We have planted Beans in soil and placed them in a sunny spot. 

We have marigold seeds placed in the sun too and are liberally watering them to keep them moist.

Here we have a combination of planting styles.
 Seeds in water, seeds just moist and also in the sun.
Also some seeds in soil in miniature green houses used to keep in the moisture and also in the sun.

Our experiments are trying to find out the best way to germinate(grow seeds) to plant outside.