Term Two: Learning about the Geosphere

Nude Food Champions!

We have a lot of Nude Food champions in Room 14! Nude Food is food that does not have wrappers. This could mean food comes to school in a reusable container or zip-lock bag. 

Thank you, parents, for making the effort to help our students to care for our environment by reducing our waste. 

The Atmosphere

We started off the term learning about the four spheres that make up our planet. These are the Atmosphere, Biosphere, Geosphere (or Lithosphere) and the Hydrosphere. 

We did some experiments with Air Pressure to learn a little bit more about the Atmosphere. Here you can see our balloon rockets. The air pressure squeezes out of the balloon and pushes it along a nylon string. 

As you can see, the purple balloon didn't work too well, but the green balloon got all the way to the other side of the classroom!

Inspiration for Writing

We like to think about new and different things to write about. 

Here we squished a bag of playdough in our hands and watched as the playdough slowly changed colour and then wrote about what we could see. 

It feels a little bit like magic! And I like the colours. The red one looks like blood and the blue one looks like water.

Kate Zhu

It smells like dough and I don't like the smell of it. I like playing with it. It's the colour of the table.

Baxter Yang

The playdough smells like sugar. It is really squishy. It looks like gold. 

Tessa Currie

Today we touched playdough. It looked blue. It smelled like sugar. 

TJ Thompson

I played with playdough. It was hard and it looked yellow and white. It looked cool! It smells like salt. 

Liam van den Nieuwenhuysen-O'Dowd

It smells like salt. It feels squishy. The playdough is orange. 

Meila Kopua-Mokole

I touched the playdough. It felt squishy and the colour was blue and yellow and red. It smelt like salt and when the playdough comes to me it is squishy. 

Aria Kolo

The playdough looks pink. It is like it is made out of strawberry, and it is squishy. 

Cynthia Austen

The playdough is so squishy and nice to feel. When I smelt it it smells like salt and it looks like blue playdough. 

Mikana Joyce

Today I played with the playdough. I looked at it. It was yellow playdough. It smelt sugary. It felt soft.

Areesha Khan

I touched playdough. It was blue like a rainbow. The blue is like water. It looked like cooking dough. It smelt like sugar. It felt like a muffin. It is squishy. 

Fiona O'Brien

I love to play with the playdough. The playdough smells like a rose. 

Monique Meyer

Rock Hunters

Room 14 decided that we wanted to learn a little bit more about the Geosphere and what is under the ground we walk on. We started by looking around our school for things that belong in the Geosphere, in particular some different types of rocks. 

We set our rocks up on a small inquiry table with some sediment and magnifying glasses. We noticed that some rocks can be broken and others are hard to break, and sand is made up of lots of small bits of shells and other things. 

Taking on the Planet

We learned about the different layers that make our planet and then used the playdough from our writing to make these layers. We thought carefully about what layer to put on next and what colour each layer should be. As we put the next layer on top we said goodbye to the layer that was disappearing. 

Miss Harris tried to make all the different countries that we are from.

The whole class was very excited to see what all the layers looked like when our playdough Earth was cut in half, and then into quarters.

Thanks, Fiona, for taking some of these fantastic pictures!

Crystals!

We learned that crystals form in the Geosphere, so one afternoon before our trip to the Museum we tried to make our own crystals out of salt and water. We got to choose a colour but the colour didn't really come through in our crystals. 

Volcanoes

We learned about the different parts that make up a volcano and talked about the volcanoes that are in the city we live in. One afternoon we pushed all the tables to the side, and Miss Harris did her best to draw Auckland on the floor. We all held up the name of a volcano and stood on the floor where our volcano lives in Auckland. 

This is not even half of the Volcanoes in Auckland! Luckily most of them are Dormant or Extinct.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

In Room 14 we love presenting Room 14 News, but sometimes there is just too much exciting stuff going on for all of us to share! When this happens, we get into two circles and take turns sharing to the person sitting opposite us. Spaghetti sits around the edge and Meatballs sit in the middle.