Saturday, September 29, 2012

An electric last day in Term 3

There was an awful lot happening last Friday. Hopefully you were able to come and see us wearing our kabuto hats and waving our koi carb kites at the cultural expo.  Some of us were wearing Kimonos too and we looked particularly gorgeous! Unfortunately, with all the excitement, we forgot to take any photos.  Oooops, sorry!  But here are a couple of photos taken while we were creating the hats and kites.







We were so very lucky that Miho was able to bring some kimonos for some of us to wear but, of course, there were many of us that weren't able to wear one.  Steven had learned so much about kimonos when he researched Japanese clothing so Miho very kindly brought a kimono today for Steven to try on. 

He looks pretty cool!  Sora used his expert knowledge to help Steven get dressed.  Thanks Sora.
The electric part of the day happened after lunch.  We learned why birds can stand on high voltage power cables without getting zapped and we learned about how static electricity attracts and repels things.  (Attract means to make something come nearer and repel means to make something move away)  

Then ...


We had a huge amount of fun creating lots of static electricity ourselves.  We wondered if our new hair styles would attract lots of attention as we left school!!

We managed to create so much static electricity that we made the balloons stick to our hair by themselves!


It looks like Lindsay is being pushed over by the balloon!

"Caleb, there seems to be something stuck to your head!"



"Goodness me Tom, your hair seems to have grabbed your balloon!"

Salesi had a little knot in his hair after all the static electricity got to it.

Briah's balloon is staying on the narrow ledge by itself.

Luke's balloon is stuck too AND it is glowing because the sun is shining through it. Cool!
See you again next term.


Room 4.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

カエル Frogs!

Konnichiwa.   こんにちは。Hello

We've had such a great week with our inquiry into Japanese culture and celebrations. 

We found out lots about schools in Japan, including that school in Japan usually starts at 8 o'clock in the morning!  We've been making koi kites (Japanese carp) used to celebrate Children's Day.  They are hanging in the classroom and look just fantastic!! 

Sora's mother, Miho, came to visit and taught us how to make frogs  カエル  and a special type of hat called a kabuto  兜, 冑

We also learned how to write our names in Japanese.  It was kind of challenging writing down the page instead of from left to right the way we usually do it. But such fun and we're very proud of our learning.

We have lots and lots of photos so you can see what fun we had.  But we're not showing you the finished products yet!!  We hope you will come next Friday afternoon to see us at Bradford's Fabulous Cultural Expo so you can see them first hand.  We will put photos on the blog after that though, just in case you can't make it on Friday.

Our thanks to Cairo from Room 5 for taking the photos and to Nat from Room 6, Mel (Deacon's mum) and Leanne who helped us heaps with the tricky folds.  Plus extra special thanks to Miho for all her hard work to prepare for our learning and teaching us.

Here's a sneaky peek ...





Look at how hard we are concentrating on the instructions!




You can certainly tell where Miho is standing because we're all looking straight at her!















  

Sayonara    さよなら。     Good-bye

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Some things are more likely than others ...

We've been learning about probability.  That's when we work out that some things are more likely to happen than others.    Last week we learned some words to show how likely we think it is that something will happen.  The first three words were certain, impossible and possible.

If it's Monday today, then it is CERTAIN to be Tuesday tomorrow.  It's IMPOSSIBLE that it will be Friday tomorrow (Unfortunately!!)  

If I throw a normal dice with 1 - 6 dot patterns on it, it is POSSIBLE that I might throw a 4. Then we talked about two more words, unlikely and probably.  After some investigation and discussion we put the words in order with the word that meant MOST likely to happen at the top down to LEAST likely at the bottom.

This is how we ordered the words.

CERTAIN

PROBABLE

POSSIBLE

UNLIKELY

IMPOSSIBLE

Have a go at working out which of these words go with the following statements.

  1. Someone at Bradford will leave an item of clothing in the library on Tuesday.
  2. Someone in Room 4 will have an apple for lunch on Tuesday.
  3. Everyone in Room 4 will have an apple for lunch on Tuesday.
  4. It will rain on Wednesday.
  5. Mrs Mitchell-Bain will wear boots on Wednesday.
  6. A cat will come to school on Friday.
  7. A monkey will come to school on Friday.
  8. It will snow on Thursday.
  9. Someone in Room 5 will bring a scooter to school on Thursday.
This week we put some of our new words to good use by playing some cool games.   

We played Bunny Hop where you toss a coin and move your counter according to whether the coin comes up heads of tails.



On Friday we learned two more games.  They are fun to play but they aren't very fair!  This one is called Doubles.  You play in pairs and take turns throwing dice.  If the two dice show the same number (Doubles) Player B takes 5 cubes from Player A.  If the dice show different numbers (Not Doubles) then Player A takes just 1 cube from Player B.   Which player do you think is MORE LIKELY to win?  The winner is the player with the most cubes after 20 throws of the dice.  So we got to practise some learning from last term (counting with tally marks) at the same time.  Aren't we clever!


It looks rather like Josh is about to win.  But you just never know.  It's only PROBABLE.  Not CERTAIN.


Another fun game is Duck Racing.  No, we didn't have feathery creatures waddling around the classroom!  This game involves taking turns to pick numbers from 2 to 12.  Then you throw dice and move the 'duck' that is on that number.  The player that put their colour bean on the duck that makes it to the gate first is the winner.  

Which numbers do you think came up MORE OFTEN?  Is that fair?  
Have a look at the photos to see if your predictions are similar to some of the outcomes in Room 4.




Well Room 4, it's highly likely that I will see you again on Friday.  It's also possible that I might see you before then so keep your eyes open!!
Mrs B