Swimming

Week One we started our swimming program at Easyswim School.

We swim twice a week.

Check out the photos!

Off the bus and through Tawa School.

Waiting patiently for our lessons.

Listening to our instructors.

Doing our best.

Swimming lengths.

Starfish

Lots of starfish!

 Don't forget we have three more weeks of swimming!  

Remember all your gear on Wednesdays and Thursdays!

Students as teachers

This week the Turquiose reading group  have been reading a Junior Journal.  

One part of the journal was some instructions to make some paper creations. 

 During reading time Willow and Gianna read the instructions with Mrs O'Leary and made a cool paper house and then a paper tree.  

In the afternoon it was their job to teach the rest of the class how to make them.  

Check out the photos below.

Well done Gianna and Willow, you read the instructions clearly and slowly and helped your classmates when they were stuck!  

The houses look great, perfect size for our teddies!

It's all about maths!

The problem

The children came up with lots of combinations and used counting strategies such as counting-on and doubling to make sure they had only seated 12 teddies at the 4 tables.

We love kitchen science!

This week we made bread two ways.

 First we used a recipe to be used in Mrs O'Leary's bread machine.  

This recipe had yeast in it.

We put all the ingredients into the tin.

The machine mixed and kneaded the dough for almost two hours!

The dough is finished.  Now it had to rest again for about an hour.

Done!  It looked and smelled delicious!

Inside the bread was soft and fluffy, the crust was hard and crunchy.

Slicing it up to try.

It was scrumptious!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we carefully measured out the ingredients for the dough without yeast.

Kneading and rolling the dough.

Some of us ate it, but it was hard and not as light and fluffy as our bread made in the machine.

 What did we learn?

Yeast is an important ingredient in bread.  Mrs O'Leary explained that yeast is like a little monster who likes to eat up sugar.  When it eats up sugar it burps out a gas (carbon dioxide).  This gas is important when you start kneading the dough.  The more you knead the dough the more gluten is produced which traps the carbon dioxide making the bread soft and fluffy.

Calendar Art

Calendar art orders out now!

Order forms home today.

Here's a sneak peek.

Mixing things up!

Our topic this term  is 'How the world works in the kitchen'.  We discussed what it means to mix something.  We wondered what would happen if we mixed water, flour and salt.  

Some clever children thought we would make a dough!  

We started adding the ingredients, the mixture became very sticky and sloppy.  

We brainstormed how to change it to make a dough we could shape.  

"We could add more...water", some children replied.  

Good scientists make predictions and then do an experiment to see if their guesses were right.  

We added more water and... it got runnier!  "More flour!" we decided.  

Finally the mixture made a dough.  

We each got some to shape. The next day once the dough had harden we painted our creations.

The ingredients are mixed together

It's looking a bit runny!

We tried adding more water

The finished creations!

Next we wondered what would happen if we changed some of the ingredients.  Would the dough be the same if we used water and cornflour?  We first noticed a difference in how the cornflour felt.  "Its very silky" said Liam.  This time we added the water slowly and watched how the mixture changed.

The mixture was hard but runny at the same time!

The mixture was very thick and hard to mix

The mixture looked like runny liquid but it moved very slowly when we tried to pour it.

Lots of messy fun!

We decided this mixture was no good for shaping like a dough.  We had to take our table outside it was so messy!

As the mixture dried it turned into a chalk-like texture.  Lucky Jake had his digger to help scrap the table clean!

By the end of lunchtime the table was clean again.  Good job guys!