 theses tubes are to protect the wires…Now its ready for the walls.”
“We’re connecting electricity to the water pump…We’ve attached the wire to something at last.”
We found out that Chinese people love cherry blossom. We didn’t have any cherry blossom so we investigated flowers instead.
“I just seed the juice coming out of it…Cool! I found juice! .. The hard bits in the leaf are for to hold it up.”
“This is soft and gentle to cut but this is hard…The petals are easy to cut too.”
“Oh no! This bit just exploded!... This stem is easier to cut because it’s lighter.”
“There’s whiteness in this stalk and greenness in this one.”
“There’s something at the very bottom. It’s hard…I can’t squish it.”
“Under (the petal) there’s light green and on top there’s dark green.”
“If you do this, you find green treasure – it’s hard.”
“You break it in half and all these bits come off.”
“Smell it! This one smells like…not really nice. These yellow ones smell like orange.”
“I peeled off the outside of the stem and there’s string inside – it helps to stick the big stem.”
“There’s a dark hole in this stem.”
“The petals are stuck on the green bits.”
“All of them are like that.”
“If you snip it, the juice comes out. If there’s no juice the bees have sucked all the honey out and honey is wetness.”
“I think it’s wet so it will grow because that’s how flowers grow.”
“Let’s think…Try and get loads of these seeds out.”
“When I cutted this bit, water came out!”
We decided to add some water of our own.
“What happens if the flowers get in the water…? They will get all soggy… I’m mixing…What happens if we snip them in the water…?
“Will they grow into flowers again?”
What if we used the squeezer?
“It will all squish down…Yeah! They’re all squashed!”
Pestle and mortar:
“The water’s gone all green!”
“My petals are yellow…I’m trying to get yellow water.”
Block challenge: to build a house tall enough to fit the wolf standing up!
This took quite a lot of thinking, negotiating and perseverence but they got there in the end!
Cutting the windows and doors for our house models took a lot of skill and concentration!
Our topic for now is The 3 Little Pigs (and consequently, houses) and, as luck would have it, our classroom was flooded over the holidays and the removal men have had to empty it ready for a new floor to be laid. It was hard work and the men needed a tea break… See below how we were inspired by this!
Cookery this week was Oat Biscuits.
First of all we wondered how to melt the butter.
“Put it in the oven – it makes it hot….It will get all soggy.”
“It will be sticky.”
We watched it melt.
“It’s turned into sauce!”
“Does butter come from bread?”
“No, the farmer.”
“There isn’t a butter plant.”
“You make it.”
The children were very surprised to learn it is made from milk!
We made the dough then wondered what the biscuits would look like when they were cooked.
“It won’t stay all lumped up.”
“It’s gonna be flat.”
“A little bit hot and even might be crunchy!”
“They’re going to be sticky and crunchy.”
“They’re gonna look hard.”
“We won’t see the oats – we can see them now.”
“I think we can’t see the sugar and they will be really crunchy.”
“They will be a flat circle.”
We counted the biscuits. There were 11. How many could we have each?
At first we thought 11, but then realised that if 1 person had 11, they would be all gone!
And after that?
“Zero!... Are the other group going to make biscuits…So we could have 2 each!”
We needed to put the biscuits in the oven but how did it work?
“You turn the knobs.”
“Actually it’s made by electric. It’s something that makes everything go like the TV, microwave…it’s got wires inside it.”
“Not inside the oven ‘cause it will burn!”
“It won’t work anymore.”
“The wires are inside the metal.”
We looked in the oven.
“They’ve gone all flat.”
“They’re not the same anymore.”
In the afternoon the children became builders and after a while they needed a tea break, just like the removal men – luckily they had biscuits to eat too!
“I’m wearing ear defenders ‘cause of all the noise around – machines and concrete mixers.”
“This is for the concret