(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!

A festival of Chinese language!

 

September 22nd to 28th is Chinese language week. We were very keen to celebrate since we have a number of Mandarin speakers in our school community. Luckily, we had four expert teachers who joined us on the last day of term: Kurt, Clare, Yinjing and Ruotong. We are so grateful to them for sharing their language and culture with so much Zest and Creativity: xie xie! 

Here are some highlights from an action-packed morning of learning.

Aisha and Everette helped out with some role-plays. We practised saying 'xie xie' (thank you), 'ni hao' (hello), 'dui bu qi' (sorry) and other handy phrases.

Then we had a chance to do some writing. Kurt showed us how some Chinese words look like their meaning. This helps a lot when learning thousands of characters. 

We even got to act out some of the words. 'Zuo' means 'sit' and looks like two people sitting back to back on a bench.

Here is 'shui' (water), which looks like three gushing streams of water.

'Shan' is a mountain. This mountain has three peaks, with the tallest peak in the middle.

We had a go at writing the characters. It was fascinating also to hear about how the character for words like 'horse' have evolved from a literal picture of a horse into the stylised character that is used today.

Next, some music! Yinjing and Ruotong shared a beautiful, traditional song about the jasmine flower. We have been learning a lot about different kinds of musical instruments lately, but seeing and hearing the accordion played as something new for us.  

Finally, some crafting with Clare, who showed us how to make delicate paper flowers by folding and cutting paper. 

It took quite a lot of concentration, careful drawing and cutting to make the flowers.

Opening out the folded paper to reveal the flower was very satisfying! We will definitely be making more of these.

Thank you once again to our wonderful teachers. We are so fortunate to have parents in our community who share their expertise and passions so generously.