Being scientists

Our goal this term in science is to "Develop a delight for the world which God has created around us."  This means we get to investigate (explore and play), ask questions, try things out and think about explanations we come across along the way.  There are lots of big words and big ideas to really stretch our thinking.  When Dr Ferrar came to our class the other day, he taught us about 'matter'.  We tend to call matter 'stuff' but we are learning to choose much better words now!  See if you can understand what we were thinking about:

More big words!  See if we can tell you what Dr Ferrar was teaching us in this diagram...

Dr Ferrar strikes again!

You know we are in for fun when Dr Ferrar arrives wearing his lab coat and carrying a box of 'tricks'!  This time we were learning about 'dry ice' or frozen carbon dioxide.  We even got to hold (or juggle!) little pieces of it in our hands.  It was so cold...but it almost felt like it could burn us.  Strange!  Check out the fun we had in these pictures!  Ask us what was happening...

...and it all ended with a big bang when Dr Ferrar made a dry ice bomb - a very dangerous thing to do so as the Mythbusters say, "Don't try this at home!"  We stood well back and watched as a little bit of water and some dry ice created so much pressure in a Coke bottle that it exploded!

The water cycle

We have been learning about the water cycle with Mrs Williams.  To show how it works, Mrs Williams hung a plastic bag with some water in it on our window.  Here it is:

You can ask us what all those big words are - we really do know!

Slowly the inside of the bag started showing condensation and (if you look really closely...) it even rained!

If you want to be clever, you can call rain 'precipitation'!

Hamish the scientist

Hamish showed us how to make a tornado in a bottle!  You will need:

• 2 plastic bottles
• a special joiner (which he bought from Te Manawa when he was having a special visit there with his dad).  If you don't have one of these you could experiment with the lids of the bottles - drill holes in them and join the bottles with really strong tape (duct tape).
• water!

1. You put water in one of the bottles then use the special joiner to stick the other bottle on to it upside down.  Make sure it is on tight!  Then turn it so the water is on top.

2. Then you 'swirl' the bottle around... (thanks Mrs Williams for helping!)

3. Soon you will see bubbles forming and you can stop swirling it...

4. Now you have a tornado in the bottle!  

Wonderings...

There is a wall in Room 10 with lots of questions on it!  Each person in the class has a question about water that they will try to find the answer to as we learn this term.  We already have some amazing investigators and researchers hard at work.  Keep watching to see how we go!

The super scientists of Room 10...

Anya the Scientist

Anya did some amazing research about our topic, "Water'.  We have been thinking about the water cycle and Anya found a diagram that shows a lot of detail.

Anya sharing her information with the class

This is the water cycle diagram Anya told us about.

Remembering Term 1

At the end of last term we made some 'word clouds' on the computer to show what we had enjoyed the most.  The words that are the biggest in the pictures are our 'favourite things' from term 1.  Can you see them?

Snowy the rabbit seems popular and so does NIE (Newspapers in Education)!

Meet Riley-Jane

Mrs Sutherland had another special visitor on Friday after school.  Mrs Williams brought her beautiful baby girl, Riley-Jane in to Room 10.  Just so that you don't miss out, here is a photo.  She will be 7 weeks old on Sunday!

Science is fun!

In case you didn't know it...science is so much fun!  Dr Ferrar came to Room 10 on Friday and surprised us all with an amazing 'show'.  There were balloons, hydrogen gas, explosions and fire!  It was spectacular!

Dr Ferrar lit a wick and when he put it up to the balloon...BOOM!  We had to stand well back and block our ears very carefully.  No Room 10 work was harmed in the making of this explosion :-)

Some of the things Room 10 said afterwards were:

• Hydrogen explodes when fire comes near it
• Scientists wear a special coat to protect their clothes when they do experiments
• The explosion was so loud!
• There was so much fire!
• Can we do that again...??!!

We learnt that hydrogen and helium both make balloons float up but that helium is expensive so it is better to use hydrogen.  We wonder if hydrogen makes a better explosion too?  It really made us ecstatic!

I see, I think, I wonder...

We have started learning about science and what scientists do.  We will be learning a lot about water this term.
Yesterday we wanted to see if ice would float or sink.  We predicted then voted about whether we thought it would sink or float.  We experimented by filling a cup and a bowl with water.  We put a BIG block of ice in the bowl...and it floated!  We put small cubes of ice in the cup and they floated too.  We were surprised because we thought the big block of ice would sink!

There really was a BIG block of ice in the bowl!  It melted really quickly!

Egg-cellent!

This is Lily and her beloved hen, Midge.  She is in her mum's vegetable garden.  The article is in the New Zealand Gardener magazine.  Now she is world famous!

Awesome Autumn!

Room 10 wrote some amazing autumn poems with Mrs Bannister on Tuesday.  We were trying to 'paint a picture' with our words.  How do you think we did?  In the afternoon we also did some art and created incredible leaf shapes to display our published poems on.  Come in and visit Room 10 to see more!  We hope you enjoy them!

Beautiful work by Martha, Maia and Anya.

Great effort by Edrei, Paula and Xander.

Here are two more poems:

Autumn by Caragh

In autumn the grass is soggy

In autumn Jack Frost has awoken and he is running across my roof

The sun is peeking through the grey clouds just to say hello

The orange, yellow and red 'butterflies' are fluttering down from the berry trees

As the smell of shepherd's pie blows across my face

In autumn the snugly clothes keep me warm.

Autumn by Christian

In autumn I go into a colourful forest

I bite into a juicy mandarin...mmm

The freezing wind talks to me "Ssshhh"

I hear rustling leaves and crackling leaves

I eat my juicy mandarin for lunch