That's all folks!

Well this the end of a great year! We all move to new classes next year for yet another year of exciting learning.

 Thanks for following us!

Making Ice cream

What could be better than making ice-cream on the last day of the year?! (A Science Experiment of course!)

Here are the instructions - Try this at home over the holidays!

What you need:

300ml cream

2 tbsp castor sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 trays of ice cubes

6 tbsp rock salt

1 medium sized zip-lock zip-lock bag

1 large sized zip-lock bag

Step 1: Place the cream, sugar and vanilla into the medium sized zip-lock bag and combine the ingredients.  Be sure to zip up the bag securely first.

Step 2: Place the ice into the larger zip-lock bag.   

Step 3: Spoon the salt over the top of the ice in the larger zip-lock bag.

Step 4: Place the medium bag containing the cream mixture inside the larger bag on top of the ice and salt and zip up the bag securely.

Step 5: Shake and massage the bag for five to ten minutes or until the mixture becomes the consistency of ice cream. 

Step 6: You might like to wrap the bag in a tea towel or wear oven mitts while you’re shaking as it can get quite cold!  It’s also a good idea to do this part outside as the water can drip out of the bag as the ice begins to melt.

Step 7: Once ready, remove the bag of ice cream and give it a wipe to remove the salt from the outside of the bag.

Step 8: You now have your own home-made ice cream!

What's the Science behind this?

Salt mixed with ice causes the ice to melt. When salt comes into contact with ice, the freezing point of the ice (0°C) is lowered (-21.1°C)  By lowering the temperature at which ice is frozen, we are able to create an environment in which the milk mixture can freeze. The fat particles in the milk smash into each other and make big molecules of ice cream!

By the way…

When sea ice forms, most of the salt is pushed into the ocean water below the ice. Water below sea ice is really salty and is more dense than surrounding ocean water, and so it sinks. In this way, sea ice contributes to the ocean's global "conveyor-belt" circulation.

The Antarctic Circumpolar current has a lot of dense salty water and has a lot to do with ocean currents and weather patterns.

UV Beads

The UV Beads are out again! These tiny beads look white while indoors, but when we took them outside the ultraviolet-sensitive pigment changed to blue, green, orange, purple, red, and yellow!

We have learnt that the sun gives us the light we need to see, even if we can't see it all! UV Beads are a terrific way of showing Ultra Violet light. They are a great reminder that we must wear sunscreen in summer – even on cloudy days.

(These beads will be coming home along with some other cool science experiment ideas on the last day of school)

School Picnic

What a beautiful day for our school picnic today. Not a cloud in the sky!
We headed down to the new playground at Grasslees Reserve. It's fantastic now that there is a sealed path going down from Victory Cres to the Main Road AND a pedestrian crossing on the Main Road!! Yahoo! We have been lobbying for a crossing for many years!

A great day at the park and the pool. Tired kids and teachers tonight!

Helpers!

We have had some terrific helpers in Room 4 this year.
Many thanks to Ollie, Miss Kadhim, and of course Daile! You guys are awesome!

Candy Cane Experiment

A Christmas Science Experiment for the final Discovery Session of 2014!

We placed a candy cane in cold, warm and hot water and watched what happened. A lot of our ideas about what would happen turned out to be correct. Great discussions! We were all amazed at how fast the candy cane dissolved though.

We also tried some vinegar and baking soda - water was much more efficient!

Which Paper Towel is the best?

We had 5 different brands of paper towel and wanted to know

• Which could hold the most liquid
• which would soak up the most, 
• which would be the most useful

Each writing group came up with different ways to run their investigation. They decided that the same amount of water had to be poured at the same time to see the results must accurately. Also, they decided to colour the water blue so it was easier to see.

All came up with the same answers. The paper towel that was the thickest and bumpiest was the most useful to have around the house.

Christmas Kindness Advent Calendars

We have come up with ways to do random acts of kindness building up to Christmas - they are all on our hand-made advent calendars. A few days late in starting, but we will catch up!

Singing at the Sound Shell, Wellington Botanic Gardens

Friends of Wellington Botanic Gardens are designing a garden with a special focus. It is a Children's Teaching Garden that is unique to Wellington. Such a wonderful idea! More information (and a YouTube clip) found here.

A group of us formed a small choir and have been practising hard for a special performance today at the Botanic Gardens as a fund raiser for the Children's Garden.

Ma ti Mahi Kaora from Mrs B on Vimeo.

Disco girls!

A fun night at our school disco!

Solar Ovens

We have been trying our hand at harnessing the sun's mighty solar power! We had to come up with a solar oven design, and then assemble it. When we finally got a hot, sunny day we tried cooking marshmallows - yum!

Leak-Proof Plastic Bag

Here's a fun experiment we tried in class today - it went so well that we are going to show it in assembly on Friday What you need: Plastic Zip Lock Bags Sharp Pencils Water What to do: Fill plastic bag with water and make sure to seal it tight. Gently 'stab' a pencil through the palstic bag until it pierces through the other side.

Surprise, surprise, NO water leaks out!

The Science behind it:

Despite what it looks like, the zipper-lock bag isn't covered in a magical sealant that blocks leaks. Well… not exactly. Plastic bags like these are made out of our favourite kind of materials, polymers! Polymers are long chains of individual molecules, called monomers. (See that? Mono = one. Poly = many. Mers = molecules.) When you puncture these bags with a sharpened pencil, you're essentially separating polymer chains without breaking them. The long chains of molecules than squeeze in tight around the surface of the pencil preventing any sort of leak. Polymers continue to prove an indispensable part of life. - See more at: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/leak-proof-bag#sthash.jBCRn21H.dpuf

Pathway to Sporting Success with Valerie Adams

= Today we had a fantastic time over in Wainuiomata! We had an opportunity to attend a very exciting Athletics NZ event, playing all sorts of fundamental movement skills games. We also got to meet Valerie Adams and look at her latest gold medal. A special thanks to Athletics NZ for putting on such a fabulous day- and for the t-shirts and posters :)

Sports this season

Cooperative Games

We have been having loads of hilarious fun cooperating with others in PE this week!

As with any 'Photo Peach' show, please add comments here instead of on the Photo peach site - thanks! Cooperative Games :)

Market Day Term 3 2014

We had a great time at Market Day today - raising$1080 that goes towards our Year 6 Camp

Sound of the Week "V"

Loads of inVestigating happened in DiscoVery today!. The sound of the week was "V" so we put our Scientists hats on and obserVed what happened when we made laVa lamps. (Click on the link to make this at home)

 We also made lava for volcanoes - one to also be tried at home using vinegar and baking soda. Red food colouring made this look even more impressive!

Argo Floats and the Argonaut Club!

Argo Floats are instruments that float around in the ocean, measuring temperature and salinity (how salty the water is). They float at a parking depth of 1000m and move with the ocean current for 9 days. On the 10th day they sink to 2000m and for the next 10 hours , take measurements all the way back to the surface. Once on top of the water, they send this info off to a satellite and sink back down to 1000m for another 9 days. Argo Floats do this for over 5 years and there are more than 3600 floats all over the world.
(More info here - Way Down South)

Google Earth has a cool application that allows you to see where all these floats are. Click here to get this.  Google Earth Argo Application 
You'll find that your Google Earth will be covered in little green dots!

We are now able to adopt Argo Floats  - hence the Argonaut Club.
We made some Cartesian divers to see how Argo Floats 'sink' and we also adopted an Argo Float. Float 5903324 is in the Southern Ocean and has travelled 292 km so far.

Te Papa Scientists visit us!

We were really fortunate to have Scott, Laura, and Sarah visit our school today. All three work at Te Papa as educators and scientists.

Scott told us how all Scientists do 3 things - they observe, they hypothesise, and the report back on their findings. He showed us how we can do this with bubbles. Although we know and love bubbles, today we learnt a lot more about them!
 

(Our own Bubble writing will feature later next week)

Laura showed us some different penguins and told us about what sort of things she does as a scientist at Te Papa.

We really enjoyed having them visit.

The NED Show

Today “The NED Show” performed at school today. Matt showed us some cool yoyo tricks and told us a really whacky story about NED’s adventure on the way to visit us.

 There was the circus, roller coasters, round-the-world travel and those crazy aliens… what a funny story with a great message behind it!

NED stands for Never give up, Encourage others and Do your best.

Yoyos are available for sale from our school office.

Water Tension and other Water Experiments

We were investigating water in Discovery Time today as this week's sound of the week was "W".

 Water tension - how many drops can a cup really hold?



Water and air
">We tried to see if molecules of air could stop paper from getting wet.

What we needed:

Small Glass

A screwed up ball of paper

Glass bowl filled with water

What we did: Put the paper in the bottom of the glass then turned the glass upside down over the bowl and lowered it in to the water. We then lifted the cup straight up out of the bowl and took the paper out.

Water going up hill! (Absorption)

It was interesting to observe that clear water travelled up to paper towel first