The Water Cycle

We started looking into the water cycle today. Some of us already knew some of the different parts of the cycle.

We watched the below video, from a cool website called brainpopjr.com to help us understand it a little bit better (I apologise for the watermark on the video).

We learnt that:

- the sun heats up the water causing it to evaporate (which means it changes from a liquid to a gas).
- As the water vapour rises into the atmosphere it cools down and turns back into a liquid, this is called condensation.
- The condensed water drops join together to make larger droplets, forming clouds.
- When the condensed water gets too heavy, it precipitates, which can be in the form of rain, snow, sleet or hail.
- The precipitation can fall in lots of places! It falls back into the rivers, lakes and oceans, it can soak into the ground, or it can fall on mountains and run-off into lakes, rivers and oceans.
- Then the cycle starts all over again!

Here's an awesome video on Ruma Iwa's blog that goes into a more detail.

Swimming

Sadly, our swimming lessons have come to an end. We had great fun going to the pool each day and we made some amazing progress in our swimming!

We were lucky enough to borrow Miss Perkins' underwater camera and we got some really cool shots! Here are some before, during and after shots.

 

 

 

Discovering Water Pollution with the Year 3s

Last week during senior swimming sports the year 3s stayed behind with Mr. McC and started thinking about water pollution. We wanted to find out what happens to that fresh water once it gets polluted and if it is possible to get it back to clean, drinkable water. So, we found rubbish and other things from around the school and polluted our water. We then tried our best to clean it!

We discovered that even though you can remove a lot of the obvious pollution, such as rubbish and debris, it is much more difficult to actually clean the water and remove other things like oil and dirt.

From our previous learning we knew that only about 3% of the world's water is freshwater that we can drink so it's extremely important to do what we can to keep it clean!

There was no way we were going to drink our water after we polluted it but don't worry we used it on the gardens so it wouldn't be wasted!

Water in Other Countries

We have been reading about how people in other countries use water. The countries we were reading about were Ethiopia, Israel and Australia. Here are some of the things we found out:

"In Ethiopia people use a special stick to brush their teeth." - Jacob

"In Australia they get their water from a network of pipes from several dams. They get their water out of the tap like we do in New Zealand." - Amelia

"In Australia, some people shower for only 4 minutes to save water." - Flynn

"In Israel they have special attachments on their taps to add air to the water so it goes further." - Noah

"For some people in Ethiopia they have to walk 1 and a half hours to get to their waterhole. This means kids would have to miss out on school just to get water. They do this twice a day." - Ruma Waru

"In Ethiopia, most people don't have showers, they wash themselves with a cloth." - Connor

"In Israel they don't fill the sink when they wash their dishes, they rinse them then, scrub them with detergent and then rinse them again. They do this to save water." - Josephine

"In Ethiopia, they put a little bit of cow's milk in their drinking water so it goes further." - Dylan C.

The Fish Swam

Yesterday we were taking boring sentences and making them more interesting by using descriptive words. We decided that more descriptive sentences help the reader to visualise by giving them a clear picture.

The sentence we started with was 'the fish swam'.

Check out some of the amazing sentences we came up with!

Making Benchmarks

We have been learning to measure length We searched the school looking for objects that we could use as benchmarks for 1 metre and half a metre to help us estimate length.

Here are some things we found that were about 1 metre:



Here are some things we found that are about half a metre:

A Moment in Time

Last week we thought of a time we were nervous, scared or excited and focused on a particular moment. We then had fun trying to guess what each others' moments were! Check out some of our moments.

I heard the other people playing.
I saw the alien on the roof.
I felt the armour chaffing my body.
I wondered if I was going to get shot.

By Connor


I felt worried, excited and proud.
I saw the seagulls perched on a rock.
I saw it next to me.
I wondered if I could make it.
I heard silence and it was scraping the ground.

By Josephine


I heard the water splashing.
I saw the boat stuck in the water.
I felt my hands gripping the top of the slide.
I wondered how fun this was going to be.

By Leighton

Class Treaty

During the first week we spent some time talking about what we want our class to look, sound and feel like. We also explored te Tiriti o Waitangi and what a treaty is. This lead us to creating our own class treaty with some expectations that we decided are important to an awesome classroom!

We have been talking about consequences and how our actions affect others. Also, about how consequences can be positive and negative. We came up with a list of possible consequences to go with our class treaty, both positive and negative.

Then, we signed the treaty to show that we all agree to the expectations and possible consequences. 

Check them all out below!

Water is our Taonga

For our inquiry this term we are investigating water, where it comes from, how we use it and why it's important.

Last week we were exploring what Taonga means and what we consider to be Taonga. I absolutely loved sharing everybody's Taonga and discussing why we find these things special.

Today, to get ourselves inspired about water, we watched some videos and did an alphabet brainstorm to get an idea of all the things we already knew about water.

Below is one of the videos we watched, check it out!

Welcome back & Ruma Waru's Summer Holiday

Welcome back! I'm excited to be starting the new year! What have you been doing these holidays? Add all the things you've been doing to the padlet below! Add a new comment by double clicking anywhere on the padlet. Leave your name first and then write what you have been up to.

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