Making books

 

In Autahi, we love sharing books of all kinds. Reading great books inspires us to tell and write our own stories. For a little while now, our writers have been asking to make books. So, this week, the Autahi is exploring how books are made so that we can make some beautiful books of our own.

We have been looking closely at some different kinds of books and noticing the some have hard covers and some have soft, paperback covers. Some have wire staples, and some are stitched together with thread. We have been learning about what goes on the front and back covers of books to help readers to know that might be inside. And we have been finding out that books have spines, just like us!

We have been working on writing and illustrating some books of our own. Some of us are writing stories. There is some non-fiction, and also a graphic novel on the go.

We are beginning to share some of our books with our friends in class. Because we know that other people will want to read our stories, we are taking extra care to reread them and add some cool illustrations. 

We are also working on creating some hardback books. We learnt that the hard cover of a book is called the 'case' and we talked about how precious things are sometimes kept in cases to keep them safe. Stories are treasures, too, so we want to make our books as beautiful as we can.

Here we are printing and painting a special piece of paper to wrap around our book's case.

Who lives at the beach?

Carrying on from our learning about what lives in our local bush, the Autahi scientists have been exploring another local environment at Worser Bay Beach.

Here are our two environments side by side. If you've ever wondered which the children in Autahi love the most then the answer is definitely the beach. It took us days to populate our forest but the beach took mere minutes. Every day we are putting up more ideas as we remember all the things we have seen at the beach.

 My favourite is this shark who looks a little unsure of itself. My theory is that it can't figure out this cold Wellington water. Maybe that's my Auckland bias showing.

The next step of our inquiry will be thinking of ways that we can look after these places. We know that lots of living things make these environments their home so we need to look after them. I'm looking forward to sharing our ideas with you.