Gingerbread City!

We have been learning all about fairytales. One of our favourite fairytales is Hansel and Gretel. As you probably know, in Hansel and Gretel, the witch lives in a house made of Gingerbread. We decided to make our own Gingerbread Houses as part of our Topic learning. We turned this idea into a mini-inquiry project. In groups, we had to find a recipe for gingerbread houses that we thought would be the best. 

We had to compare recipes and identify the one we thought would be the most simple and create the best gingerbread houses. We then had to create a shopping list, with all our ingredients and make a budget for our group. Next, we had to practise our phone conversation skills, as we rang several companies to ask them to donate ingredients to keep our costs as low as possible. We were so excited to be donated 4 dozen eggs from Farmer Brown and 20kgs of flour from Western Milling!  We began the creation process – in our groups, we had to follow our chosen recipe and create our gingerbread. We all did a great job of following the recipes and the class smelled delicious all day! The problems we faced were that we had underestimated how much gingerbread would be needed for each house and we ran out of butter, so we couldn’t make enough for every person. Luckily, Mrs Davies was able to work with the people who didn’t get their gingerbread and make some more with them. The second problem we faced was that it all took a lot longer than we expected. We got the gingerbread made really quickly, but the rolling of the gingerbread and cutting out of the templates took way too long. We took home our Gingerbread to cook over the weekend (we only have one oven at school, so couldn't cook them all here!), then brought them back. We then stuck them together with royal icing, then decorated them with lollies! 

We had an amazing time and we were SO proud of our creations! As well as being a great fairytale inquiry project, it will also be a stunning centre piece for our tables at Christmas time! Did you know that in America and Canada, it is a tradition to make a gingerbread house every year for Christmas? Maybe we could start this tradition in New Zealand too!

Wow! Room 6 has some talented students!

While we always knew that we were a clever bunch of kids in Room 6, we have learnt that some of us have amazing talents that are not related to learning too! Have a look at this awesome video - those are some brilliant yoyo skills! Have you ever tried using a yoyo? It is way harder than this video makes it look!

Around the World

Since the Rugby World Cup is being held in New Zealand at the moment, each child in Room 6 had adopted their own country!

We are researching our country and we will create a book to share our information. We will find out about our country's culture, history, national anthem, native wildlife, flag, location and other interesting facts. We are also finding out about Rugby and Rugby players in our adopted nation - did you know that Namibia has one player who has only ever played 3 games of Rugby in his life? And two of those games were in the 2011 World Cup!

We recreated our country's flag using crayon and dye. We think they look great - do you?

While we are interested in our adopted country and hope they do well in the World Cup, we are all Kiwi kids and want New Zealand to win! 

GO THE ALL BLACKS!!!!! :) 

We WON!!!

We won the challenge to beat Miss Williams to learn the V speech! After only 12 hours, one of our amazing girls had memorised the whole thing, but Miss Williams had only memorised the first 3 sentences. She says that it only took 30 minutes to learn. That's incredible! Here is the recording of the speech - what do you think?

Amazing Alliteration

We found this wonderful piece of alliteration and wanted to share it! It comes from a movie about Guy Fawkes and this is his introductory speech, explaining why he wanted to overthrow the government. Our challenge is to learn it before Miss Williams can learn it! We got into groups to translate this beautiful language into modern English. It was hard, but a lot of fun!

"Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the "vox populi" now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose." We have provided our translation. Are we right, or did we get some things wrong? "Here I am, in your sight, a modest but experienced performer, forced to be both the wronged and the bad guy by the unpredictable nature of fate. My image, not just a self absorbed illusion, is all that is left of the voice of the people. However, I will be courageous and stand up against the leaders of this country who rule in a cruel and greedy way. My only option is to pick a fight with them, I vow to fight so that the good people of the world will one day rule it. Certainly, the soup of difficult words I have used to describe my mission was unnecessary!" Keep an eye out for our own alliteration stories!

Surface Features in Writing

In Room 6 we have been learning about using Surface Features correctly in our writing. We wrote this as a class to help us remember what each of the features are and what they mean. 

Surface Features are the features in writing that you notice straight away. Surface Features are the same in every type of writing, while Deep Features are different depending on the genre. Surface Features are Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling.

Grammar is making sure you are using the English language correctly. When you check your work for Grammar mistakes, make sure the sentence makes sense, that there are no words missing and that words are used correctly.

Punctuation is using the symbols associated with writing accurately. A comma is used to separate ideas that are still connected. A full stop is used to show the end of a sentence. Some other types of common punctuation are speech marks, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation marks, brackets, colons, and a lot more!

Spelling is putting the letters together accurately to make words. Correct spelling is important to make sure that your audience can understand what you are trying to say.

Surface Features are really important to get right, as it makes it very hard to read something with surface mistakes. We are going to work hard to correct our Surface Features in our writing.

Alien Invasion!

In Maths, we have been learning about geometry.

We had a look at some crop circles as amazing examples of using geometry to create art. We looked at the patterns, the symmetry and the use of geometric shapes. Here are some of the amazing examples we looked at:

 

We talked about how crop circles could have been made so symmetrically. We ruled out the alien option (although you never know!) and came up with the idea that maybe they used ropes to make the shapes so perfect.

We had a try at making circles with one person standing in the middle, holding a skipping rope and one person walking around the perimetre with a piece of chalk. It was harder than we thought, although we think that with practise we could get pretty good at it!

After that, we tried creating different geometric shapes using ropes and chalk. Some were easier than others.

We then created our own crop circles on the netball court - we wonder if the rest of the school will think aliens have landed at Sunnyhills!?



Personification Poems

Room 6 has been learning about personification. Personification is when an inanimate object is given human charateristics e.g. "The thunder yelled a warning to all the people below". We wrote poems using personification to describe an inanimate object. Here are some of our poems:

The Moon

It is night.

The moon waits until the sun goes down so that he can speed across

the sky to find the waiting sun.

They swap places in the pitch black sky.

He checks on all of the children with his beady eyes.

He smiles because he knows that they are all sound asleep.

By Megan M.

A Cloudy Poem

The clouds wake up in the morning,

Taking over the sky by stretching out wide.

Trying to hide the sun.

Playing with each other, joining together, moving shape.

Flying around carelessly, floating wonderfully in the sky.

When the sun goes down they bounce around with their friends the stars.

"Oh how I wish I could fly like cloud !"

By Megan D.

Line Drawing

It is Arts Week at Sunnyhills School this week. We have done visual art, dance, drama and music all week. It has been a fun and exciting week!

One of the highlights was having artist Graham Braddock coming to teach us about line drawings.

First, we listened carefully while Mr Braddock explained about perspective, shape and line quality. Then we sketched the lines of the picture, while he talked us through each stage.

Once we had finished drawing, we showed each other our pencil sketch. We were amazed at how good we were at pencil sketching, once we knew the steps to take!

We then started using vivid to go over our lines. Mr Braddock taught us about positive and negative spaces and using the vivid to create the effect we wanted.

Next, we shared our finished line drawings. We were so proud of ourselves!

Finally, Mr Braddock showed us how to use dye to enhance our work. We are going to have a try at dyeing our own work in class.

This was Mr Braddock's finished picture - we hope ours look as amazing! We are sure they will.

Arts Rotation

The Senior Syndicate has an arts rotation this year, where each Thursday afternoon we go to a different teacher to learn about a different form of art. We do Drama, Dance, Music and Visual Art. We go to the same teacher for 6 weeks, so that we can produce some amazing things.

With Mrs Knofflock, we drew Toucans, then painted them with bright colours. Then we decorated our backgrounds with bright crayons. Next, we coloured over the background in black crayon and scratched interesting patterns into the black, so that the bright colours would shine through. These are some of our masterpieces. What do you think?

Our second rotation was with Mr Mac. We made mosaics of Sea Horses or Lizards. We learnt all about colour combinations,  fitting pieces of tile together and how to grout. We love our mosaics. Do you?

Science Fun!

 Ashleigh's Experiment

For this experiment my question was "Will other acids react with baking soda the same way vinegar does?"

My hypothesis was that Lemon Juice would have the biggest reaction as I thought it had the most acid in it.

I put two teaspoons into a jug. I cut a lemon in half and squeezed  it into a quarter cup, than I poured it into the jug. The result wasn't as big as I had thought it would be.

         

The Lemon Juice Reaction     

Next I used an orange, I cut it in half, squeezed it into the quarter cup and tipped it into the jug.

Woah! 

Again, not the results I was expecting! I expected the orange to have less acid in it but the fizz was significantly bigger than the lemons!

At home I plan to repeat the event to see if I get the same results.              

For the final test I used a quarter cup of vinegar to compare all the results. Vinegar had a bigger reaction than the lemon juice, but a smaller reaction than the orange juice. My hypothesis may have been back to front, but I learnt a lot by doing the experiment!

What an awesome science experiment! 

                                                                                                                      

The orange juice reaction

                                                                                                         

                                                                              

Experiments!

We have been doing lots of science experiments this week as part of our fair testing unit.

In this experiment, we soaked chicken bones in vinegar for 5 days. When we took them out, all of the calcium had been drawn out so the bones were really bendy! It showed us why we need to drink milk - we don't want our bones to bend like that from a lack of calcium! To make this a fair test, we are going to do the experiment again and put the bones in wine vinegar, malt vinegar and white vinegar and compare the results.

In this disgusting experiment, we put half of a tooth into a bottle of Coke and put half the tooth in water. We checked it 24 hours later and were horrified with the results! 

The half that had been in water was still perfect - white and clean. The half that had been in Coke was about a quarter of the size and brown with holes in it! We now realise the damage Coke could do to us it we drink it too often!

More Science Raps!!!

 

    Science

What is science?

it's the thing,

the amount of science possible

 can make your ears ring!

Do a hypothesis do it now,

will it explode? POW, POW,POW!

It's experiment time right now,

so get your things and show us how! 

Wasn't the experiment ever so cool?

So show your friends how much it can rule. 

That's what science is today,

you do science this way!

By Ashleigh, Mikaela, Laura and Paige

Science

- What is science? I don't know! Will you tell me?

- Let's go, go go!

First we need to make a goal,

then hypothesise, yo, yo, yo!

Then we should do experiments

(Make sure you add fair testing in,

Otherwise just throw it in the bin.)

- Will you tell me what's next in line?

- Analysing data that's oh so fine.

- How should we present results?

- Graphs or posters, free of faults.

-Wow, science is so much fun today.

Thanks for telling me, yay, yay, yay!!

By Megan M, Amy and Maddy

Science Raps!

We are learning about fair testing in Science. We were struggling to remember all of the different things that you have to do as part of an investigation, so we created Science Raps! We will share them with you here and once we have practised them, we might even be able to video them and upload them. We are really proud of our raps - what do you think?

Shervonne, Jannisa and Carey's Rap

Science is really fun, and this is how you do it.

First ask questions: how or why? Then your hypothesis.

Your aim or goal comes up next: what you are trying to do.

Experiments give you results, they're really important too.

When you get your information,you analyse, then present it.

Make sure you only change one thing: that is called fair testing.

A method is very important: it shows all your equipment,

and if you do it all correct, your results will be perfect.

SCIENCE!

Oh yeah.

Justine, Bailey and Paige's Rap

S-s-s Science What do you know?

S-s-s Science What's your goal?

Experiments are next

I hope it's the best

Now we gonna analyse the results

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Present your work in a really big burst

So your friends will think you're the bomb (Boom)

Now you know a lot about science

Cause we wrote the rap

Now you need to clap

YEAH!

Our buddy class, Room 13 came to visit us today and we taught them a new song. It is called 'Things We Remember'. It is New Zealand Music Month this month, so we were learning a song with a Maori chorus. It was really hard to say the Maori words so fast, but we think we did a great job. What do you think?

Learn about Volcanoes!

In Term 1 we studied all different types of safety - from Outdoor (for camp), Water, Technology and Disasters. We learnt a lot about how to staf safe in each of these ways. The highlight of the unit was the presentations of our learning. We had working models of volcanoes, plays, music and powerpoints.

This is a group of Room 6 students performing their play about the Mt Vesuvius eruption.

Our First Blog

Hi!
We are Room 6, at Sunnyhills School. We are a class of 28 Year 5 students who are very ICT savvy and can't wait to get going on our blog!

Last term our topic was Safety, and we did a project on safety related to Natural Disasters. We learnt a lot about Tsunamis, Tornados, Hurricane, The Bubonic Plague and lots of other cool things. We could decide what we wanted to learn about and we could present it in any way we wanted. We look forward to sharing some of our masterpieces with you!