What a Racket!

For Discovery this morning we explored sound. Here are a few photos of us experimenting with different materials to create sounds. 

 

 

 (You can see what my favourite sweet treats are at the moment.)

Turtle Printmaking

A special visitor came to our classroom today - Melvin the Turtle. Melvin is 5 years old, is a red eared slider turtle, and despite the rather masculine name we found out that Melvin is a girl. 

We spent a long time looking carefully at Melvin and she spent a long time looking carefully at us! We found out that Melvin likes eating her special frozen turtle food, she likes warm water and has a special heater in her tank, Melvin has sharp claws and her shell feels very hard.

In honour of Melvin we made turtle prints using a cooking pot! I used this post for inspiration.


To Make a Turtle Print:

Use printing ink to roll the bottom of a cooking pot or cake pan, then scratch a turtle shell pattern into the ink. We made sure to scratch quite firmly with our ice-block sticks so we could see the bottom of the pan through the ink.

Push the pot onto the paper.

Carefully lift off the pot and peel away the print. We made two prints; one for school, and one to take home.

Use finger prints for the flippers. We used a head shaped piece of card for the head, you could also try a milk bottle lid. 

During the week we watched several You Tube clips about baby sea turtles hatching.

We enjoyed reading this book about baby sea turtles and how to look after them.

I love printmaking with children, but you do have to be organised. Sometimes one piece of art will take several sessions, so different equipment or materials will be needed for each lesson. I always complete a printmaking activity with small groups. That way the majority of mess is contained, and as most printing involves special art equipment (often in limited numbers) there is not always enough for everyone to use at once. Small groups of children just make it easier.

Check out some of our other printmaking activities:

Matariki star sponge prints

Apple prints

Fingerprint shamrock cards

Footprint bees

Bubble art

Graham Braddock Art

Look at what Jane from Graham Braddock Art taught us to draw.

A penguin at the beach!

Everyday Superheroes

We had an influx of heroes in J-Block this morning. Some children came dressed in costume for our Everyday Superheroes Discovery session, while others turned into heroes during the session. 

But superheroes are not just characters on TV or in the movies, there are everyday heroes all around us. Today, our everyday heroes were;

 Busy working in the police station,

Taking fingerprints,

Making firefighter helmets,

Completing emergency 111 books, 

Filling out emergency incident forms,

Turning into nurses,

Saving lives and treating dolls, 

And making superhero masks. 

 

'No photos please!'

Buzzing Bees

 Here is the start of something special ....

.... these gorgeous footprint bees.

 They are busy buzzing around our classroom. 

 We have been watching, reading, writing, and talking about honey-bees. 

We saw this amazing You Tube clip showing a queen bee laying eggs in her hive. The worker bees stroke and lick her while she lays the eggs. We found out that when the eggs turn into larvae the worker bees feed them honey and bee milk.

The Fat Bee Man showed us how bee-keepers get the honey out of the honeycomb. And we enjoyed taste testing two different types of honey - runny honey and creamed honey. 

We wrote these bee facts:

 

The bees make honey in the hive. Bees keep the honey in the honeycomb.

Bees make honey to feed the larvae.

The queen bee lays the eggs. The worker bees give the queen royal jelly.

The bee stings with his stinger. It really hurts.

First the bee is an egg and it turns into a larvae. It turns into a pupa and then it’s a bee!

  

Happy Matariki

 We celebrated Matariki today for our Discovery session. Matariki is a group of seven stars (the Pleiades) found in the winter sky just before dawn and signals the start of the Maori new year.

Check out my Matariki post from last year. 

We made happy matariki door hangers to hang on our doors at night.

 

We made Maori kites. Flying kites connects the land and the sky. Our kites won't be able to fly, but the children had a great time cutting flax to the correct lengths and stapling the flax onto a cardboard frame. This type of kite is our attempt at a Manu Taratahi design.

We made recycled poi from newspaper and a plastic bag. Wrap a ball of newspaper in a piece of plastic cut from a plastic bag, then tie on a piece of string.

We also watched some traditional Maori poi dances on the interactive whiteboard. This song is a classic!

We cut stars from sparkly playdough.

We stamped stars on black paper. Some children stamped just seven stars for the seven stars of Matariki, but this artist stamped a whole sky full.

 

We made tiki necklaces. This was one of the most popular activities, and they were worn all day!