Gingerbread House

Room 18 made a big gingerbread house for Christmas.  First we painted the big cardboard box Mrs Bear's new dishwasher came in.  We used several coats of brown paint to cover all the signage on the box.  Mr Want loaned us a big stanley knife to cut a door that could open and shut.  Next we attached candy canes to the outside walls using wire.  We glued all kinds of lolly wrappers to the walls as well.  Then it was time to make the solar light.  We filled a water bottle with water and stuck in through the roof, so that half was on top of the roof catching the sunlight, and half was inside lighting the inside of the gingerbread house.  People who live in shanty towns with no electricity use this technology to light their homes as well.

We left our gingerbread house outside by our library so that we could share it with other children as a kind of Christmas present to the Cockle Bay.  Here are some Year 1 and 2 people taking a look at Morning Tea.

Snow storm at Cockle Bay

Oh, oh, temperatures plunged as a freak snow storm hit Cockle Bay.  As we shivered, we asked the question, "Could it have been something to do with Science Club?"

The CBS Robot Challenge

To finish the Robots Rule theme, every class completed a robot challenge.  The robot challenge in Room 18 was to design and build a robot that could carry a Christmas card to a buddy.  We worked in small groups, and used recycled materials from home, simple circuit equipment such as battery packs, motors, buzzers, fans and leads.  Some people also used conductive play dough and LED lights,

After we had designed, built and tested our robots, we were able to walk around the school and visit other classes to see what they had done.

Robot Demonstration

We were very lucky in Rooms 18 and 19, because we were the only people in the whole school who had a robot demonstration.  Mr McCloughen brought a robot from his factory and set it up in Room 18  to show us how it worked.  

Through questions and answers, we found out that more and more robots are being used in different industries to do all sorts repetitive dangerous or difficult jobs that help humans, such as lifting heavy boxes and fitting precise fixtures in place over, and over and over again.  

The hard part for humans is to make computer programmes that are precise enough to instruct the robot exactly what to do.  It was interesting to think that robots can work all night in the dark and can send a text to their human supervisor on their mobile phone if they have a technical problem.  

After his demonstration, some people were able to have a go at instructing it themselves.  

Electrical Circuits

In our theme, Robots Rule, was have been learning about electrical circuits and robotics.  We have been learning that circuits need to be closed so that the electrical charge can flow.

We made our own simple electrical circuits using the components from Brain Box and squidgy circuits, where you use conductive play dough instead of electrical wire.

Happy Halloween

On 31st October, we celebrated Happy Halloween in Room 18: through Maths, Word Study, Art and Science.  Desk inspection was scary as everyone had cobwebs and spiders in their desks and tote trays!

The jack-o-lantern smelt like burnt pumpkin as the candle cooked the lid!

First we did Halloween Maths.  We had to join pairs of numbers that make 10, 100 or even 1,000 to make scary cobwebs.

Later on, we worked out Halloween word problems.  Some people worked independently using their multiplication and division skills,  while other people used counters in the Halloween workshop with Mrs Bear.

For lunch, we made spider sandwiches, but thankfully NOT with real spiders!  We used vegemite for the body, and either sticks of cucumber or carrot for the legs.  Then we used red food colouring for the eyes and mouth.

After lunch, we had Spooky Word Study with jelly googly eyes.  We had to write all the words we could think of with the 'OO' chunk.

Afterwards, we could choose one Halloween sweet from the Skull because no one really wanted to eat the googly eyes when they had felt pen all around the edge - there were jelly googly eyes, false teeth or cut off fingers to choose from.

We also did spooky Halloween Art, but this took several days.  First we looked very closely at our hands to see where the finger bones were.   We bent our finders, rotated our wrists and made a fist to see our knuckles.  Then we drew an outline of our hand, and made little lines to show each join.  Next we drew in each bone, separating them at each join and coloured in the spaces between.  The last part was to carefully paint the bones with oil to make them see-through.  When they were dry, we stuck them to the window.  When the light shines through, they look just like X-rays!

Later on, we did some Halloween Science and learned about physical change and chemical change.  We looked at all sorts of changes and decided in which group they belonged.  We  classified things like melting ice, mixing sand in water or chopping wood as physical change because they stayed the same, but we classified making toast and slime and baking cakes as chemical change because things changed and you could not change them back again.

At the end of the day, little groups of people went into the Halloween Cave with a glow stick - was this a physical change or a chemical change?  Can we change the glow stick back, or not?  We thought about this as we whirled them around in the dark.  What do you think?

Little Gardens Get Big!

The Little Gardens we planted in Term 3 with Ali are now ready to plant out in our classroom garden.

Can you estimate how tall the sunflowers will be by the end of the year?  Keep watching and measuring!