Wildlife Photography

The 2016 Comedy Wildlife Photography Competition

Photo Prompts: Using photographs of animals caught on camera with unusual or amusing expressions or poses. 

What is the cheetah doing on the side of the road? Nearby just happens to be a road sign with 40 on it - could this be what the cheetah is looking at?

Is this Zebra calling out to their herd? Has another Zebra done something to make the Zebra call out, does it have toothache or is it yawning?

This Toad certainly looks friendly, what's the joke? Use your imagination and tell us a short story.

Looking Great Fabulous Amazing Fantastic Everyone!

Dear Families for those of you who are busy and find it tricky to visit our room in person, this is what Room 20 is looking like right now!
Soon we have to take everything down for the end of the year so we thought we would show you all now!

Our Class Dojos. We are all different and we appreciate that fact when we are learning and working together. We each designed our own character and wrote the speech bubble to describe what our character is like.

These are our camouflaged Skinks and Stick Insects - can you find them? What are their Adaptations to their Environment or Habitat?

Look at this herd of Zebras! The idea was to learn how to paint a sunset background and show silhouettes with the trees. And then the Zebra is in the front or the foreground. The black and white patterning links well into maths and was a challenge to those that are used to patterning only from left to right! Black tissue paper was added to enhance the 3-D illusion.

Look at these glorious giraffes! Hands on construction is always fun and it's a great way to recycle found objects. We have used giraffes as a subject for Maths Inquiry learning  about estimation and measuring height.

Zoo Maths - thanks to Mrs Madden!

Hippo Maths - October 2016

Photographer William Warby snapped these 2 kissing hippos at the Whipsnade Zoo in England. Actually, it's hard to tell whether they're playing, kissing, or just shoving each other out of the way. Hippo is short for "hippopotamus,' which means "river horse."

These round, grey lumps are the 3rd largest land mammal, after the elephant and the white rhinoceros. The funny thing is, their closest cousins are another set of chubby mammals: whales and dolphins! Well, hippos love water just like they do, and it looks like they love to play, too.

Questions:

1 : Hippos need to breathe every 3 minutes. If a hippo swims for 3 minutes, comes up for 1 minute, then goes under for 3, how many minutes does that take?  

Bonus: If it keeps up that pattern, is the hippo swimming or breathing at 10 minutes?

 

Extension : A hippo can live until 45 years. If a hippo's grandchildren are all ages that divide neatly into 45, with 1 hippo of each age, at least how many grandchildren must it have?

Post your answers on the blog below in the Comment box! Don't forget to leave your first name so we know who left the comment!

Adaptation and Animals

Room 20's Inquiry this term is based on Adaptation and Animals. We visited the Auckland Zoo last week. We have been learning to skim and scan through books and the Auckland Zoo web site for information. We are gathering the information to plan and write a report on our findings.
We have made camouflaged skinks in painting and collage.

Watch this space for the next step in our Inquiry!

Vera's Dad Tim works for Waste Management!

Tim trains drivers for these trucks. He talked to us about the trucks and their jobs. 

The children from R14 invited us to come and share in the talk and watch how the truck lifts the bin.

These trucks pick up 22 tonnes a day and there are 12 trucks plus all the other commercial bins. Some of the rubbish can be recycled like wood for playgrounds, compost for gardens. 

And away we go

Creative designers!

Olympic Finale for the Middle Syndicate

Lining up in our countries dressed in the colours of their flag! Our teams were made up of children from across the Syndicate. We made new friends today! Mrs Trembath was so proud of everyone and how they participated upholding the Olympic Values of Friendship, Excellence and Respect. 

It was a beautiful day and we had lots of games and sports to try around the playground and in the hall. We used hurdles, balloons, potatoes, horses, rockets, balls, frisbees which just goes to show you can make a game out of just about anything! 

I challenge you to make up some games at home and have a Family Olympics!!

Science Club

Experimenting with Cornflour and Shaving foam! What kinds of changes do you notice happening?

How does it feel? What has the texture become like? Has the temperature changed? 

What do you see?

Instant snow! It feels like cold bread crumbs! 

How did we make it? 

Using 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/3 cups we measured 3/4 cornflour and 1 cup of shaving foam 

Then we mixed the ingredients together with our hands!!

Drum Roll Please! Our Stadium is complete! Now to use it!

The secret material has been revealed - Bubble Wrap! To create the Water effect we saw in our study of the Water Cube and to let light into our space, bubble wrap seemed to be the best material - all 30 metres of it! So the maths, technology and group problem solving skills have now been extended this week and we have a new and interesting space to work in.

Inspired by the Beijing Water Cube! Maths and Technology join forces in this Storm of Ideas!

One of the sports stadiums we looked at was the Water Cube in Beijing which was built for the Beijing Olympics Aquatics. We talked about why the Architect chose to design the building like this. What does it remind you of? Water, molecules, ice, bubbles, floating - use your imagination!


So we set about making our own mini stadium using paper, card, sellotape and a secret material to wrap it all up in!

The shape of our stadium was begun with a hexagonal base. Then we had to roll paper to make cylinders. Next we chose the triangular frame shape to hold our wall up as we noticed the beams in our classroom were triangles so we decided they must be the strongest shape.

So here is the frame work all sturdy and strong!