Antarctic Marine Food Web

Blubber Hands!

We had a go of this wonderful experiment to see how blubber insulates animals - it really does!

Blubber Hands

How do Antarctic animals stay warm in bone-chilling water?

1.    Discuss how quickly our bodies are chilled in cold water. What do we do to stay warm? (move around, wear insulating wetsuits, get out of the water).

2.    Ask students to list ways in which animals are able to stay warm in cold water (blubber, air in feathers, oil on fur, low surface area to volume ratio).

3.    Have the students cover one hand with a plastic bag.

4.    Put a generous amount of solid shortening into another bag. Have the student put the plastic-covered hand into the bag with the shortening. Knead the shortening to make sure the hand is completely surrounded by shortening.

5.    Cover the other hand with two plastic bags (without shortening). This is the "control."

6.    Place both hands simultaneously into a bucket of cold water.

8.    Have a student time how long each hand remains underwater.

9.    Whales, Weddell seals, and penguins all have blubber.

 

Our Bike Track

Work has started on our Bike Track. Diggers, concrete mixers, trucks, rollers - you name it, they have been on our school field this week.(- and working over the weekend too!)

This is a fabulous project! Grass is being sown, we've got seedlings in the greenhouse growing,  a large container and bikes will be arriving the start of next term.... yahoo!

Guest Speaker - Olympic Ambassador Joseph Sullivan

We were really lucky to have Olympic Ambassador, Joseph Sullivan speak to us at Assembly today.

 He shared about how he and Nathan Cohen won Gold at the London 2012 Olympics in the Double Scull rowing. What a tremendous race that was! (Have a look at the video linked below - just the last 500m if you dont have more time!)

https://youtu.be/KC_OcudRnKc

He also shared how it's good to have goals, to plan and work hard. Very inspirational!

The Great Egg Experiment of 2016!

Sports Day at Greenacres

A fun day had by all playing netby, chinese wall and soccer!

...and the path between Greenacres and Hampton Hill is so much tidier now thanks to all our kids being manaakitanga! Great job everyone!

Otari Trip

What a wonderful trip we had to Otari Bush! Being an Enviroschool sure has some wonderful benefits!
We learnt about different types of seed dispersal, collected seeds and planted them*, did some observational drawings of ferns, investigated the water quality of the stream that flows through Otari, and walked up to the 800 year old Rimu tree.

Many thanks to our fabulous parent helpers, the staff at Otari, and our Enviroschool facilitators.

Here are some photos from the day - if you'd like to leave a comment (and yes please do!!) leave it at the bottom of this post rather on the photo peach site - thanks!

Otari on PhotoPeach (* the seeds are now in our plastic bottle greenhouse back at school!)

Density

Today in our RIMU session we were looking at density - floating and sinking. We had cups with different liquids in them - Golden syrup, Dishwashing liquid, water (coloured blue here) and oil.

We then tested various objects to see if they would float or sink - and if they sank, how far did they sink.


It was interesting to see that a paper clip sank right to the bottom and counters sank below the oil but not the water

Amazing Cicada life cycle - Sir David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth - BBC wildlife

Cicadas are rather topical at the moment! We have been researching this fascinating insect and came across this wonderful video clip we'd like to share-

Red Cabbage Science!

Today in RIMU time we were looking at acids and bases - using red cabbage juice an an indicator.



We tested White vinegar, Bleach, Dish-washing liquid, shaving cream, Salt, sugar and baking soda.