Our tree of success is filling up

We have lots of handprints going up on our tree for reading and writing.  We have some fantastic spellers and amazing readers in Room 3.

Our froglets and thinking about connections

Today when we were looking at the lifecycle of a mosquito, we wondered whether the mosquito larvae have gills like tadpoles.

Our froglets are starting to develop some bumps in front.  We will see some front legs soon.  Their tails have changed shape too.  Today Mrs Griffin added some big rocks to their tank so when they turn into frogs they can sit on them.

PS: The next morning after these photos where taken, this froglet had front legs! 

They change very quickly.

Patterns and shapes

7 days to go and mosquito lifecycles

Only 7 teaching days left in the term and next Tuesday we have our Triathlon.  Our last few days are turning hectic and its been pretty full on in Room 3. 

Today we looked at the life cyle of a mosquito and we did some really great thinking. 

Mrs Griffin brought in some 'wriggler's which is the common term for mosquito larvae. We watched some videos to see a mosquito laying a raft of eggs. 

We found out that mosquitoes can't live in water but their babies do.

But the mosquito larvae hatches into the water and wriggles around. They have little tubes they stick out of the water so they can breath air and they feed in the water.

Then the mosquito larvae moults four times before turning into a pupa.

Then the mosquito hatches from the pupa and flies away.

It only lives a few days to lay some eggs and dies.

We made conclusions about the mosquito and its life cycle. 

Conclusions:

The eggs float on the water so the mosquito doesn't get wet or drown. 

We thought about why a mosquito has amazing eyes that see all around it.

We concluded that mosquito eyes help them to see things coming from behind that might eat them and so they don't get hit by cars.

We also concluded that mosquitos lay rafts of eggs that float on the water so they don't have to get wet because they can't live in water. 

We made connections and comparisons between mosquito, butterfly and spider lifecycles.

Connections and comparisons:

Mosquito larvae moult like spiderlings.

Mosquito larvae turn into pupa just like caterpillars.

They only live a few days to lay eggs and then die, just like spiders.

Fresh water crayfish - Koura

We have some fresh water crayfish (koura) 

in our classroom today. 

This is what they look like

Here is a link to more information about our koura:

http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/documents/about-doc/concessions-and-permits/conservation-revealed/koura-new-zealand-freshwater-crayfish-lowres.pdf

Bugs and Minibeasts - Life Cycle of a Spider

We had a go at drawing a diagram with labels of a spider's life cycle.

We are learning to make our pictures more detailed,

with all the information included and the spaces coloured in. 

We know that the spider lays eggs in an egg sac. Then the eggs hatch and spiderlings emerge.  The spiderlings then moult their exoskeleton to become adult spiders.

Here are some of our life cycles:

 

Our Fitness Track

We have been practicing fitness all term and

it has really paid off.   When we first started lots of us could not do 1 sit up on our own. 

Now we can all do 10 sit ups! 

Yes, you read that right. 

We can all do 10 sit ups in a row.

 We can do triceps dips and pull ups.

 We can balance on the swing bridge and leap over the hurdles.

We can balance, without using our hands, to go

up and down levels.

 We are super duper steppers on the stairs

and through or on the tyres.

Bugs and Minibeasts - spider title page

Leevi brought a spider to school. 

We talked about what we knew about spiders.  We looked at our spider and wondered what the bits in the front were.  Some of us thought they might be antennae, some thought they were eyes and some thought they were nippers. We saw that our spider had 8 legs and it had 2 parts to its body. 

We had a look on the internet at some spiders to see if we could find out what kind of spider we had.

We read a book about spiders and looked at some pictures in other books.

We brainstormed everything we knew about spiders. 

 Then we made a Title Page for spiders.  We did some fancy lettering and had a go at drawing a spider. 

How do you think we did?

We are learning to use Photobooth on the laptops

 We took a group shot on Mrs Griffin's computer.

Then we experimented with the effects on Photobooth.  We laughed and laughed at some of the funny photos we could make.  We even got a funny photo of Mrs Griffin in a fish tank.

The Life Cycle of a Frog

Some inspiration

Some beautiful handwriting done today

Today Mrs Griffin used some Red Spot Stickers to help us remember spaces between our words.



Frog Life Cycles

This week we have been looking at the frogs life cycle. 

We started our topic books by creating a Title Page about frogs.  This was a real challenge for many of us because its the first time we have created a title page and for many, it was the first time we had heard the name Title Page.

Today we drew the life cycle of a frog. 

It was our first experience at drawing a diagram and putting labels on.
We found a web page that showed us how to draw a frog and some of us had a go at that.