Wheat heads - Mr Green multiplies

This is how you make a wheat head person:

Put some wheat seeds in the end of a stocking and stuff with sphagnum moss to make a round head shape.

Tie a knot and glue a face on. You can use pipe cleaners, pompoms, anything to make the face features.

Soak in water.

Sit your head in a container of water so the moss can draw up the water and moisten the wheat.

Watch the wheat sprout and turn into a hairy headed person!

here is Mr Green Bean. He has an impressive hairdo!

And here are his class of little wheat head people.

Hair starting to sprout after a week.

Magenta started her head a week after the others. See the difference in hair growth.

Pretty hairy wheat head people!

Hair is sprouting on Arya, Chloe and Cooper's wheat head people

Four days later ..... Chloe's was a bit dry so slower to sprout.

Early days.

Five days later.

Dem bones, screen printing, and wheat heads

We explored a science kit about bones.

We looked at x-rays, and a skeleton. We identified the names of some of the major bones in our bodies.

Here is Mr Bones, the skeleton.

We looked at the bones inside a body.

 

 

 

We assembled a skeleton.

 

 

Screenprinting

We experimented with making stencils of fish and printing them. Ms Jones cut out our fish with a scalpel. Then we laid them on paper and printed two colours over them.

Here is the fish stencil ready to print.

After first print.

The print is turned around and reprinted. It shows the earlier print in another colour.

A fish print reversed and printed twice.

Great shapes and colours.

 Mr Green-Bean, the wheat-head man.

Meet Mr Green-Bean. He has wheat hair, a sphagnum moss face, and a class of 22 children lined up beside him on the window-sill. We harvested some wheat that had grown from some wheat straw. We packed it inside stockings with moss and made the heads. The moisture has made the wheat sprout on Mr Green-Bean's head. We are now waiting for the little ones to sprout.

Plastic-free July

Today is the first day of July. It is also the first day of plastic-free July.

Room 5 started the plastic-free month by going around our school boundaries and picking up all the plastic rubbish we could find. We found plastic rubbish in the gutters and along the roadside amongst the plants. By collecting it we stopped all that rubbish ending up going down the drains and into the river then the sea.

look how much we found just around our school boundaries.

We found chip packets, muesli packets, straws, gladwrap, hair ties, packaging, plastic bags and lots and lots of tiny pieces of rubbish.

We talked about how we can make a difference:

• Bring nude food to school.
• Don't buy fruit and vegetables in plastic trays with plastic covers - buy it loose.
• Take bags to the supermarket.
• Buy meat from the butcher - they put it into paper, not plastic.
• We don't need plastic straws.
• Don't buy water in plastic bottles. Re-use a bottle and fill it from the tap.

All these things are  good start for becoming plastic-free.

We are an Enviroschool. This means we think about the best ways to care for our environment.

Museum trip

Yesterday, Kowhai Team walked across the bridge to the museum.

We went to learn about Maori art and design, and how early Maori understood the heavens.

Outside the museum is an artwork called The Tongue of the Dog.

We coloured designs, and drew geckos

We made a paper waka.

Here is the majestic Te Winika, We learned that it was a war canoe.

Te Winika is decorated with albatross feathers along its side.

It has a beautiful stern.

There are many carved ancestors guarding the waka.

This one has paua shell eyes.

At the bow of the waka there are two big eyes, decorated with albatross feather, to help the waka steer the right course.

Decorating a waka

We learned about the constellation of Matariki

Inside Te Whaanau Maarama

These shapes represent the sun and the moon.

Elaine told us the story of Rangi and Papa.

Inside the museum theatre.

It was a great trip to the museum. We will go back again!

After all, it is just across the river!

Other things we have been doing .......

Look at our beautiful pumpkin art!

We harvested our kumara. Every class planted a kumara plant last spring. Now we are harvesting them.
There will be a competition to see which class got the heaviest crop.

This is Room 5s crop.