Otago Museum

What an amazing morning we had at the Otago Museum and their new activity centre. From the moment we walked into the area there was just so much to see and do. We felt pretty special being the first class in Dunedin to trial the activities that were finished. There were gravity activities, erosion, light, magnets, bones,animations and so much more . The Infinity Room was amazing and the D.N.A slide was great fun.
After a fun packed time we were then taken to the Planetarium and had fun there looking at planets and constellations and the night sky.

Thank you to the parents who came with us and we hope you enjoyed yourselves too. Abig thank you to the museum staff who were there to show us all the exciting activities.

Spheros

On Monday afternoon we had our turn with the Spheros. There were 12 tutors from S3 and they were really helpful. We started off just learning how to change the colours of the Spheros and how to move them around the hall. We tried making them move through an obstacle course once we were confident moving them backwards and forwards. Then our tutors showed us how we could do some coding and we tried that as well. It was all fun.

Market Day

On Thursday the senior children held a Market Day. It was a sunny day but also windy so we had to be careful that things didn't blow away. S2 made bath bombs . They were lime, orange, rose petal and lavender. There was a selection of used books and toys as well. We also has some Gimpap( Korean sushi) and a delicacy from the Phlippines...Biko.
Other classes sold slushis, pencil topppers, slime, chalk and lots of other things. It was really fun and everyone enjoyed it. Thank you to Julie for all her help.

Christmas Show

We went to Logan Park High School to see their Christmas Show. It was really good.
One part of the story had a clown trying to find a place in a circus and the other part was the kidnapping of Santa's reindeer and how she was being kept locked up at the circus. All the actors performed well and we all said how well they did.

Magnets

We had fun playing with these unusual magnets. We found out about magnets having poles and how they repel or attract each other. These magnets were made from haematite and they made noises when they rushed to each other.

Making Crystals

We looked at changes, mixing, melting and dissolving.
Then we looked carefully at a variety of crystals- salt, sugar, epsom salts, washing powder and found each crystal had its own special shape. We dissolved these in boiling water.  We had fun making and eating jelly.
Then we made our own crystals dissolving them in boiling water. We had to decide what we wanted the crystals to grow on. Some people grew their crystals on tinsel, string, ribbon or paper shapes.
The epsom salts grew the quickest and the best.

Swimming

Every day at 11am we line up and get on the bus and head to DNI Pool. We are all trying really hard with our swimming, listening to the instructors and doing what they tell us. Everyone has improved which is so good with summer coming and hopefully lots of hot weather.

Marble Tracks

At the end of our Forces topic we made marble tracks.We read the Inventors Diary and saw how that class worked and made their track and we watched some Youtube videos of some amazing tracks. We designed what we thought we would make and gathered up some tubes and anything else we thought would be useful. Mrs Evans-Weir said we needed to have....

                   a straight part.....a downhill part.......an uphill part......a jump....... a loop or curve.

We got to work and pretty soon our plans weren't being used and we were inventing as we went along. We started on Monday and we had to finish on Thursday. Unfortunately we had to tidy away at the end of each day so the room could be tidied and vaccuumed.

This track was the most successful.

                                                  Here are some photos of our progress.

                                                           

Gravity Beads

Photos by Anaka

As Mrs. Evans-Weir released the beads out of the container the beads were affected by gravity. They made a very chain-like noise. The beads are about 7 meters long. Layla

Mrs Evans-Weir tugged at the beads. Down they came in 6 seconds. They didn't look like beads. They looked like a thick string.  Seven meters of beads in 6 seconds!  Gravity was the key to them coming down so fast by the way. Annabelle

Parachutes

The parachutes were billowing out.They slowly made their way down to the ground with the force of gravity. The air pressure made the parachutes slow down. They hit the ground hurtlessly as the partners caught them. By Reg.

Gravity

We know about gravity and how everything comes back down..... but do they come down at the same time when they are different sizes ????
To test this we  had 3 different balls that we let go from the same height at the same time and tried to see which landed first  or if they all landed at the same time. We repeated the experiment 5 times because scientists always test and retest. Our results kept changing so we need to think of ways to make this test more fair .

Water work

It was lucky the weather was so good as we were outside with lots of water at maths time. We poured water into containers and estimated amounts and checked that when a container said it held 2 litres that it really did. We had fun and will do more volume work later in the term.