Beaky Blinders

Following our visit to the bush and our explorations of our school garden, we are beginning to realise that we are finding different plants and creatures in different places. We wondered why this is.

This week, we have been pursuing this line of inquiry by thinking about birds. We noticed that at the bush, we saw piwakawaka (fantails) and tui and we also heard riroriro (grey warblers) up in the trees. At school, we more often see sparrows, starlings, magpies and chaffinches. We also thought about what birds we might see when we go down to the beach. Perhaps some seagulls and oystercatchers.

We realised that the birds must be looking for different kinds of foods that they like. A seagull can find a crab at the beach, but not in the bush. A sparrow can find some lunchbox crumbs at school, but maybe not so often at the beach.

Bird beaks give us clues about the kinds of foods they prefer. We explored some different shapes of beaks.

We had a go at making bird beaks.

We tried picking up different things with them. 

We challenged ourselves to see what the biggest, smallest and strangest things were that we could pick up with our beaks. 

Who knew that birds are keen on eating Lego and hula hoops!

Centennial Reserve Trip

The weather was good for us and we finally were able to go on our trip to the Centennial Reserve. In Inquiry we have been learning about the realm of Tane Mahuta, God of the forest. We have been exploring what lives in our local school environment and this was an opportunity to cast our gaze a little wider to our local native bush.
 

We were full of positive thoughts as we knew it would be a long walk but it was nothing we couldn't do if we kept on trying and didn't give up.

We explored the forest up and down.

Made pretend campfires to roast marshmallows 

Found all the biggest sticks

Sketched and tallied all the different plants we could see 

Found some tipped over trees and saw what the roots looked like

Found a Whare and all tried to fit inside

Tried to camouflage and hide 

Eventually we made our way back to school. After a few water breaks we finally made it. We found out lots of information to help us with our learning and we got some great exercise.

The forest of Tane

 This week we were meant to go to the bush at Centennial reserve. While we look for a sunny day to make our visit we thought we might bring the forest into the classroom. 

First we did some exploring just outside the school to have a glimpse of what lives in our local bush. We talked about how the forest is the realm of Tane Mahuta the Maori god of the forest and how the creatures that live their are all the children of Tane.

We sketched some of the things we could see and gathered some ideas back in the classroom.

The next day a tree trunk had appeared in Autahi. 'What is that doing there?' said the children.

Some recognised that it was a tree trunk like Tane Mahuta from the stories we have been reading. 

Every day we are slowly adding to our tree trunk to flesh out our forest. We want everyone to contribute from the learners to our school community. 

So if you have a few minutes spare please come and make something to add to our Autahi forest. Every new thing that goes up adds more and more things for us to discover. Our learners are naturally curious and we are so excited to dive into some new learning.