MAKING BOATS

We had a blast at school today.  

Not only did Belinda bring her fire truck to school, but we made our boats!  Mrs Lunn showed us some photos of the boats the Maori people used to come from Hawaiki to New Zealand many, many years ago.  We had a close look at these ocean going waka and Mrs Lunn challenged us to include on feature of a waka on OUR boat.





The teachers were very impressed with what we came up with.  Many of our groups made a boat with two hulls to make them more stable.  Lots of us put sails on our boats and a few groups put a paddle to help the teddies steer their ship.  We were very good at modifying our designs to incorporate the newest Success Criteria

Then the teachers set up a testing station for us to test our boats.  They were very impressed with how well our boats meet the Success Criteria.

Here are a few photos of us in action...

We had a wonderful time building our boats.  This activity provided us with an opportunity to practise our problem solving strategies, our negotiating skills and our ability to cooperate.  The teachers were very proud of us AND our boats.

BOAT MAKING CHALLENGE

As you will have seen on the Blog, the teachers have challenged us to make a boat strong enough to hold three teddies.

Today we were able to get with a couple of friends and start planning our boats.

First we WONDERED what we would need to make our boats and what design features our boats might have.

Then we drew a plan of our boat.  We labeled our diagram and wrote a list of materials that we might need.

If we have any bits and pieces at home that we could use, please can you send them to school tomorrow.

Thanks!!!

First we WONDERED what we might need to make the boats

Then we had to draw our plans

Here is Fai'ana's boat

Here is Oliver's boat plan

Keira and Alec worked well together as a team

EXPLORING WEIGHT

Today the Blue and Purple Maths groups EXPLORED Weight.

The teachers were impressed with our use of mathematical language.  We were using words like heavier, lighter and balance.  We spent time exploring the different stations and then we were able to share back to the class what we had discovered.

The kids explored how to get the
stretchy weighing machine to work

Miharo put together some scales and figured out how they worked

Ethan was able to tell his friends how he got his weighing machine to work

Jamie realised that when he added
more teddies into the bucket the needle
moved around and pointed to bigger
numbers

Holly and Brooke were able to work out which cup held the most by
filling the cups and counting how many blocks each could hold.
They discovered that the one that has the most blocks in it, has the greater
capacity.

Mika was able to make a weighing machine too!

Taha was pleased with how his weighing
machine turned out

Ethan did a great job explaining to
the group how his weighing machine
worked

MEASURING FUN

Today some of us watched a video story of Cosmo the Boat Cat...

Mrs Lunn issued us with a challenge.  On Thursday we are going to make a boat to sail in the school pool.  But first we need to find out all about weight  so that we can make our boats.

We used a stretchy machine to measure how
heavy things are

We measured the capacity of different obects
to see how much things hold

We made our very own weighing machines
 to weigh things in

We watched this funny song about weight too...

You can help us at home by getting us to help you cook tea or bake.  We would love to use the scales at home.  You might like to ask us about which objects are heavier or lighter than others.

Vocabulary we are beginning to use:

• weight
• weigh
• lighter
• heavier
• balance
• scales