Keeping the learning going over the term break

With the end of term rapidly approaching we wanted to dive into some ideas for keeping learning going over the summer. These are some tips of things that will help maintain some of the skills your child has been exploring this year. 

We will give you a physical copy that you can take home with you during the upcoming parent-teacher meetings.

Feeding our minds and our tummies, too!

 

This week, we've been building on our knowledge of shapes by experimenting with finding fractions of circles, squares and triangles. 

We have learnt that fractions are equal parts of a whole: halves are two equal parts of a whole; quarters are four equal parts of a whole.

The word equal is important. If you're sharing a pizza with friends, you have to cut it into equal pieces. Otherwise, someone might be disappointed. Imagine if you're the person who gets the smaller slice!

All this learning is hungry work. But, wait a moment! We know that baking and cooking are full of maths (counting, measuring, adding...). What if we got to practise our fractions by making and cutting up some actual pizza?

As an added bonus, making pizza dough with yeast also gives us a chance to observe something that grows and changes, which is a neat connection to our Inquiry.

Here's the whole process from start to finish.

We used fresh yeast. Some of us liked the smell of it - and some didn't! We added a little sugar to feed the yeast, and some water. And then we waited for it to bubble.

Mixing in the dough, making sure to add the right amount of water.

Time to knead.

After kneading, we let the dough prove and noticed how it became bigger and more bubbly.

Now time for Team Sauce to get to work. We made a pizza sauce with tomato, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper. We also grated the cheese.

We spread the dough out into circles, spread it with sauce and a sprinkle of cheese.

Time for the oven! The dough went even puffier in the oven and the cheese melted. Yummo!

We had a few pizzas so experimented with cutting them into different fractions.

Our quarters, sixths and eighths are delicious!

Challenges and how we face them

 

What do we do when we are faced with a challenge? It is an age old question and one for which we are often still searching for an answer. 

In Autahi we have been learning about challenges and the kinds of things we can do or say that can help us.

The image of a mountain that we have to ascend is a good one for painting this picture. We can see our goal in the distance and have to navigate an uphill path to get there. If we can reach the top on our first try then it isn't really a challenge. But when I am reading a new book for the first time, I might struggle with some of the words and that is a real challenge.

To face this challenge, I need a plan. Here are some of the things we could do:

Think

Ask for help

Keep on trying

Kia Kaha, you can do it! You are still learning to learn.

With some strategies in our pocket we can take on any challenge and not just give up at the first hurdle. 

We will always be faced with new and different challenges and having some tools in our toolkits to help us are so valuable. 

How do you talk about things that are challenging at home? Are there some tools that you could share with your whanau that might help them when they face a challenge?

(Trying to) Grow a seed

 This week we have been exploring the text 'Once there was a seed'. In the story it explains the concept of having Green Fingers, someone who is good at making things grow.

I thought I would get onto planting some Cress seeds with the learners of Autahi this week and see if we had the Green Fingers to get them growing. Turns out that my fingers aren't so green yet. 

For a week we watered the paper towels we had spread the seeds on and waited patiently for them to start to grow. 

And each day we waited...

and waited....

and waited.....

But we didn't give up. We did some more finding out and found the cling film method to create a mini greenhouse for the seeds and overnight we started to see some growth.

Finally our fingers were becoming green!

While we wait for our Cress to grow we have also been exploring what plants need to grow.

And writing about the process of growing a seed into a plant

and finally how our seeds are progressing

Finally this week we went and explored our local environment to find some adjectives to use to describe our local flowers as well as practice our sketching skills. 

Sometimes the wait can be well worth it, especially when we face something challenging.

Growing and changing: beginning our inquiry process

 

With a new term comes a brand new Inquiry for our Autahi explorers to delve into.

This is a perfect topic for our Spring term: there will be plenty in the natural world, and our own lives, to explore.

Our Inquiry model follows a cyclical structure.

We begin by wondering and asking questions. As we make discoveries, we are able to act and reflect on our new knowledge. We will find ways to share and celebrate our learning. Our new learning will also prompt fresh questions and wonderings - and on we go!

This week, we are at the 'I am curious' phase of inquiry. At this stage, we like to keep the inquiry very open and discover what knowledge our students have already, and also what areas of our our inquiry topic are most interesting to them.

You may have seen this table in our classroom.

Sorting and categorising is often a good way to tap into what children already know about a topic. By exploring the objects in this collection, we invited our students to think about 'which things grow?' In doing so, we also had to consider how we know that something is growing or changing. We began to collect some ideas and will dig into this theme further in the course of our Inquiry.

We then began to make a collection of sketches of things we think grow - and things that do not. 

As you'll see from our pictures, the natural world features strongly in the 'things that grow' category. The 'things that don't grow' category is more mixed. It includes natural objects like shells and fruit, as well as man-made objects like houses and shoes.

We also have questions about what actually happens when different kinds of things grow (for example, snakes shed their skins).

This is a great topic to chat about at home. Ask your child which things they think grow - or don't grow. Or maybe spot some growing - or not growing - things when you're out and about. And do drop by and take a look at our Inquiry wall: it will also be growing and changing as our investigation progresses!