Room 2 visits Espana

Today we pretended that we were in Spain.  The girls promenaded in their beautiful dresses and mantillas, before they took their seats by the bullring.  The matadors, both boys and girls, used their capote to direct and tire the bull - they swirled it around with great verve.  The bulls ceaselessly thundered towards the matador, attracted by the colour and movement of the red capote. We even had female bulls at Cockle Bay!

As well as learning a little about Spanish traditions, we also learned to converse in Spanish:
Hola - hello
Buenos dias - good day
Estoy ........... - I am (name)
?como estas? - how are you?
Estoy bien, gracias - I am fine, thank you

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Bouncing slime balls

Everyone was keen to make slime.  We added an extra amount of borax solution to the glue solution so that we made bouncing slime balls, instead of sticky slime lumps.  It was interesting to see how far some of them could bounce!

You can see how far the slime balls can bounce in these videos.

Book marks

To encourage sustained reading when you read the same book over several days of nights, we decided to make book marks so we could find the page we were up to.  On one side we coloured our name and on the other, a favourite book character.  After the book marks had been laminated, we added a woollen tassel, which made it extra easy to find our page.

You had to fold the wool in half before you pushed the loop through the hole.

Where is Mrs Bear?

Mrs Bear disappeared to Europe after the last day of term and didn't return until the end of Week 1.
She had travelled to London, then to Malaga in Spain to see her daughter, Alison, on her birthday.  After that they both visited Aberdeen in Scotland to find her Grampy's childhood home.  Finally it was time to return back to New Zealand, in time for Senior Athletics, the Weka Day Camp, Celebration Night and all the other exciting events we have in term 4.

Mrs Bear strolling in Malaga.

One day we visited Dunnottar Castle, but Ali's Grampy didn't live here!

This is the kind of Mr Whippy you have in Hyde Park in London, near Buckingham Palace.

Here is Alison driving Mrs Bear crazy!

It was a lovely surprise to see this welcome on the classroom door - thank you, Mrs Smith.

'Race to the Finish' race track

The Midnight Gang read the book, "Race to the Finish'.  Then they made a race track with mini racing cars, a car park, lego stands for the spectators and all the race flags that are used at racing meets.

Marvellous Mushrooms

Room 2 was lucky enough to win a ballot to get a mushroom growing kit.  It was interesting to watch them grow over several weeks.  We kept them in the shade under the science table and checked them each day.  At first, we could see lots of little white spidery branches called mycelium.  These grew into tiny white mushrooms the size of a pin head, but then they grew bigger ... and bigger ... and bigger!

By the time it got to the last day of term 3, our mushrooms had grown so big that they could hardly fit in their fruiting box.  We decided to cut them by the stalk, rather like cutting down a mini tree but with a knife instead of a saw.  Then we peeled off of the outer membrane, chopped them up and fried them in butter for an End of Term Breakfast Special.

After we had peeled the mushrooms, we chopped them up into small pieces so that they cooked evenly.

Mrs Smith was the chef at the Cockle Bay Cafe and cooked  the mushrooms for us.  Other people made the toast and buttered the slices when they were still warm out of the toaster.  Everyone tried mushrooms on toast, even people who had not tasted them before, and just about everyone liked the taste and texture.

Fraction Fruit Salad

On the last Thursday of Term 3, we made (and ate!) fraction fruit salad.  There were three activities to do for fraction fruit salad, and it didn't matter which order you did them in, so long as they all got done.  Some people cut the fruit for the fruit salad first.

We cut this banana into 1/8ths, but cutting it into half first, then halving the two halves to make quarters, and finally halving the quarters to make eighths.

We cut this orange into quarters first.  Can you see the 4 pieces that are all the same size?

We cut the apple in half and the piece of pineapple into quarters.

Some people didn't like apple peel, so we peeled off the skin and put it in the worm bin.  We cut each pineapple quarter into quarters again.  How many pieces did we have when we cut all four quarters?  (Teacher tip:  you can use your times tables or repeated addition to solve this fraction fruit salad problem).

What fractions of an apple have we got here?

We mixed all the fruit fractions in a large bowl to make two giant fraction fruit salads.

Then it was eating time!

Isaiah brought some special maple biscuits from Canada for us to share as well.

Other people did the fruit salad poem first, and others did the fractions worksheet first.  Whichever order you chose didn't matter, because the fraction fruit salads were SO enormous, there was enough for everyone to have some.  There was even enough for some people who really like fruit to make three helpings!