Autahi Architects

Autahi Architects

One of the activities during discovery this week was a bridge building challenge to help some lost animals cross the gap in the table to reach a water hole. The Autahi builders were up to the challenge and displayed lots of teamwork as they constructed their bridges.

Learning to work collaboratively to solve problems is a great skill and a real test of our ability to communicate and listen to each other.

Check out some of our great bridges and the other building projects that have been inspired by this challenge.

What We've Been Up To

Last week we got new kinetic sand.  We got two more colours and some new molds.  We have been loving exploring the sand.  It is pretty amazing how it changes from being a solid moldable consistency to individual bits of sand.  We have been exploring what changes it and how it changes.  When you press it together it becomes a ball but when it's in the tray it falls apart like sand again.  It's fascinating! We are being scientists and thinking about how matter changes.

The story we were reading last week was called Butterfly and it looked at the stages of a butterfly's life.  After reading the story we decided to explore some paint mixing and symmetry by creating our own butterfly art.  Here we were learning about what colours we get when we mix paint, about how symmetry means it's the same thing on both sides and about folding paper in half.  Lots of math and science thinking was going on here!

On the Ipads many of us have been experimenting with garageband and have been using the different instrument settings to make our own music! It's been fun playing with rhythm, beat and tempo.  Not to mention all the different instruments and the sounds they make!

More colour mixing and messy play.  We started with paintbrushes, but it quickly turned to hand painting!

We've also been loving exploring our marble run and changing the heights and pieces to make it so that the marbles flow down!

We have been doing so much great learning!!

Play at the Beach

It is great to get outdoors and take advantage of our backyard!

Last week we went to the beach to have an explore and a play.  What happened there was extraordinary.  At first many people were playing and building on their own and there was one bigger group building together and slowly the groups work became one big city.  People were co-operating, taking turns, and negotiating.  There were conversations and disagreements about where the garage for the castle would be and who would put the car in it.  But eventually, through some coaching, compromises were made. 

Building the main castle.  We had to work on stabilising the sticks, digging the holes, choosing decorations and deciding how to get them to stay up.

There were a few smaller castles and houses being made.  Stones were used as the doors.

Then we found this massive seaweed.  At first we were just interested in it and how heavy it was.  It was pretty heavy so we had to have team work to move it across the beach.  Then we noticed that dragging the seaweed was making something that looked like a road. 

We took turns making the roads go around all the buildings and creations in our city. 

Then some of us decided we were the line-works men and women and we started using sticks to draw the lines in the sand.  Some of us outlined the road and others made the middle dotted line.  Cities have roads and roads have lines to keep the cars and people in the right places.

Overall it was an afternoon filled with fun, imagination, creativity and lots of managing ourselves and relating to others.  There was also lots of thinking and questioning going on.  Will our structures stay up? Should this go here? Will this fit here? How can we make it stronger?

This week we are also going to the beach and we can't wait to see what gets created this time!