Khobi's insect habitat Rap

Khobi's Insect Habitat Rap

                                                     
                                                           

When building an insect motel

make it like a perfect hotel.

If you don't want to use a nail

as it might hurt and make you go pale

Since it's made of real wood

I hope it will be perfectly good

for insects to nibble on as food.

So whenever you use a tool,

Please be careful, you don't end up a fool

                                          By Khobi Pekepo

Bug Condo and Weta Woodshack plans in Week 9

Here is Amy's choice for an insect hotel for the Te Manawa Bug group 

                         This is the Bug Condo that we plan to make for our insect garden

We made lots of sketches like the one above and we filled the gaps with circles for bamboo and hay, bark, brick and pipes.

We boys are also planning to make a Weta-Woodshack for the homeless wetas in our native garden behind our classroom.
                    

                    First we need to saw a piece of tree trunk into two like this picture above.

Then we need to chisel out a space or gallery for the weta to relax and sleep during the day when predators are out and about.

   

 Finally we need to drill a hole about 18mm for the weta to be able to enter and leave or exit his gallery.

                                                       
When we are completed we plan to place Weta Woodshack in a warm and sheltered pole across from the Bug Condo. You don't want to place the two habitats too close to each other knowing that Weta will prey on the insects nextdoor.

Planning an Outdoor Classroom to nurture Nature learners in Week 6-7

                      Planning an Insect and Bug habitat niche to nurture Nature Learners
                                                 
                                                
                        We in room 22 read about bees as being the main plant pollinators. 
Did you know that bees are the only insects that collect pollen from flower to flower to feed its babies (larvae) in the beehive. So according to research bees make up one third of all creatures that help pollinate plants. We all went "Wow!"

                                     

 We wanted to do the Nature Walk but my teacher said "Not in the rain, it will be wet underfoot and slippery." So we did this nature study in our class (all because we couldn't go out in the rain). 

My teacher made a booklet of some awesome activities we could do outside to find out how to create a "treasure trove" habitat to invite our native "cussies" to live in harmony alongside us.

We practised looking for main ideas while we were skimming and scanning. That's what we are learning in reading now. "I can find the main idea in this paragraph'" said Noema to her buzz buddy, Leoni.

We loved reading about how bees pollinate plants.

 What fabulous features bees have to do its job!

Then our teacher sketched a rough picture of a flower on the whiteboard and we helped to label the important parts that had to do with pollination.

                                     

Insect and Bug's inquiry cross grouping sessions -Term 1 Week 6

                                        The Insect and Bug cross-grouped class in Room 22

          Francois and Moehau google researching native insects and bugs for SPS-OC 
                                                     (outdoor classroom) project.

Marina from year 6 is supporting her year 4 buddy, Ray and Rylah (from year 5) in finding native bugs on google.

Keleni is helping Dikansha to find out what kinds of insects might be living on our school fields.

Kat and her research mate Marie from year 5 are looking for information on what weta's feed on.

Sela and Amy are searching for what we might need to set up a safe habitat for skinks (native lizards) in our outdoor classroom, which is in backyard. 

Lina and her year 4 mate Acacia are looking for information on how to make a Rock Garden to provide a safe niche or habitat for native insects and bugs like bees, butterflies and ladybugs to live.

Roof garden bird boxes made at Botanic gardens in Term 1

"Look! Here are our green-roof garden bird boxes" said Katriona and Sela

                   Caroline told us how important it is to plant trees to soak up the raindrops.

                                      
              She showed us how the rainwater soaks into the ground to help the grass to grow.

                                        
We went to see the awesome green roof garden above the toilets. "Cool !" said the students.

                                       
                      "Caroline was giving us instructions of how to make a bird box" said Darren.

"See how busy our group was while we were making the bottom and sides of the bird box" said Brandon's group.

We used some interesting tools to help us to make the bird boxes.

Maitland and Leoni are helping each other in our group to make our green roof garden.

Haniel and Francois are hammering the two pieces of wood in the vice.

                                       "Here is our completed roof garden" said Salote

                                       
                                                 
                                           Look! Here we are giving the Kiwi- lady a warm hug.

                                                    This is a warning sign to not step on me.

Pleeeease do not feed me!

Bonding activities "At the End of the Day" in Week 2

                        Bonding Activities  "At the End of the Day" on Fabulous Friday

This is the book that inspired us to do some bonding activities to form good relationships in our class. Seeing that we have lots of children in our class who come from different cultures and who speak different languages at home, we decided to do an activity to get to know them in  a fun way.                                      

                                      
                                                                               Weee!

                                                                            Geee!

First Sela from our class picked out a book  called "At the End of the Day" for our teacher to read to us. We liked how the kids were having heaps of fun even at the end of the day.

So Sela told our teacher "We would  like to do a massage circle like the kids at Albany School." And our teacher said "Sure thing". And so we got into a funny sort of circle that wasn't really round by wiggling closer to form a train. That was really funny.

As our teacher read the instructions to us we followed it. We had to  be in time to do each move. Some of us helped our buddies who were finding it hard to do the actions in the massage circle.

We did pitter-pat rain drops on our partner's backs. First we started off gently then we did it harder. We laughed out loud. My teacher said try to laugh quietly or mime it. Miming was not as much fun as lol. Then we drew fluffy clouds. That was a bit tigglesh so we giggled and wiggled.

When Francois's Mum came in to get him, we invited her and Sahil's Mum to watch us  do our famous massage circle activity. What a way to end the second week. 
I wonder what fun thing we might do next week?

Welcome to Room 22's first week

                                                Small change for me Big change for all
                                                                                           from room 22

Here are our personal profiles of who we are.

"I want to know why the Maori people celebrate Waitangi Day?" asked Keleni in week 1.

All the groups in our class presented their research on the Treaty of Waitangi.  

Avatars group made  a question on why the maori people celebrate Waitangi Day to  present to the class. 

We in Kingkong  asked questions about who were the groups of people that signed the Treaty of Waitangi and here are our responses to those questions.

Kids from Cobra's group asked questions about why the maori were unhappy with the terms of the Treaty.

We in Tapout wanted to know what role the Waitangi tribunal played in solving some issues between the 2 groups to bring about some peace among them.

We are still working through the article to come to some understanding of the main issues in the Waitangi Treaty.