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Showing posts from May, 2012

Making Ice Cream

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Changes of State In a journal we read about how to make liquid cream into ice cream without a freezer.   We put the cream, sugar and vanilla essence into a small jar.   Then we put ice into the bottom of a large jar.   Our small cream jar sat on the ice and was then surrounded by ice and topped with rock salt.    Everyone had a turn at rolling the jars for four minutes, resting it for one minute and then repeating.   We did this over half an hour then opened out jars and discovered we had made ice cream.   It was delicious.   We ate it in minutes.    

Practising Reading Fluently

This week we tried recording ourselves reading with the flipcam. It is the first time we have done this independently. We were focusing on reading fluently with our journal held below our face so that the camera could record our faces as we read. How do you think we did on our first attempt?

Making a worm farm

How to make a worm farm on PhotoPeach This week we read a school journal about how to make a worm farm using ice cream containers. We have decided to make one for our classroom and put our lunch food scraps into it. It will be fun to see how the food decomposes and how the worms eat it all up. We should be able to get some worm wee for our garden from it too. :-)

Pumpkin Cake

Last week we were given a crown pumpkin from out of the school kitchen garden.  It really needed to be cooked and eaten as it was beginning to rot.  After cutting it up, peeling and boiling it, we mashed it and made it into a pumpkin cake. It was yummy!  If you want to try our nice moist spicy pumpkin cake here is the recipe: 125g butter 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 eggs 1 cup of cooked pumpkin pulp 2/3 cup milk 1 3/4 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well.  Add cooked pumpkin.  Mix in all the dry ingredients. Add in milk and mix till smooth.  Bake in a lined, greased baking tin for 45 minutes at 180 degrees C. Pumpkin Cake on PhotoPeach

Writing about someone special

This week we wrote about someone special.  We had to be descriptive and paint a picture of the person.  Some of us were clever enough to use similes to make our writing interesting.  Here are two pieces of our writing:   Grandma My Grandma is special.   I love her.   When I go to her house we bake cookies and cup cakes. She has curly brown hair.   Her eyes sparkle.   I feel happy when I see her. She behaves beautifully.   She speaks nicely to me and helps me to make good decisions.   She is a kind-hearted lady.   My Grandma looks after the trees and she waters the trees. By Eve   Daniel My brother Daniel sounds very cute like a baby kitten miaowing at my bedroom door.   He looks very funny when he pokes out his tongue.   He copies me like a monkey.   Daniel has big tantrums.   He screams like a dying cat.   He likes to pull my dogs tail.   He makes a red face when he is about to cry and screams.   His face goes as red as Mars.  

Finding out why leaves change colour in Autumn

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This term we are learning about changes.  This week we have been looking at the changes in seasons and we wanted to know why the leaves change colour in Autumn so we did an experiment. For this experiment we needed leaves from an evergreen, and green and autumn coloured leaves from deciduous trees, plus some rubbing alcohol and a coffee filter sheet.   We cut up the leaves really small with a plastic knife and put them into jars that we covered with rubbing alcohol and labelled.  Then we covered the jars with plastic film and placed them in a tray full of boiling water.  After half an hour we checked to see if the colour from the leaves was showing in the liquid. Autumn deciduous leaves Autumn deciduous leaves Deciduous green leaves Deciduous green leaves Evergreen green leaves We uncovered the jars and placed strips of the filter paper into the liquid.  We checked the jars after half an hour and then again another half hour later.