From Grotty to Great: how we made an art gallery in our cloak bay.

That title sounds a bit like a novel title to me, but it's not! It's a great description of the way we worked really hard to take our cloak bay from grotty to Great!!

Here are some examples of the finished art works.  See the reports on our personal blogs to see how the process worked to create these. 😎

Gardening Galore (from seed to sprouting)

You may remember how last term we grew  a variety of plants from seed. This week, with the expert support of Corban's Nana and Mum, we planted these and some edible plants in our school garden. Nana Maureen taught us how to prepare the soil by leveling and loosening it. We then planned out where each of the plants would go by laying them on top of the soil. Maureen taught us about complimentary planting like tomatoes and basil, and marigolds to deter pests. We all took turns digging a small hole for a plant and 'heeling' it in to the soil. We have set up a team to water the plants three times a day, being careful no to pour the water on directly. Below are the photos of last terms efforts followed by today's awesomeness. 

Spaghetti and Marshmallow towers

Did you know that some shapes are much stronger than others in a building?

The clever builders who made the pyramids knew this and maybe that's why the pyramids are still standing.

In our class this week I set the clever Kea learners the challenge of building a structure using two non-traditional building materials. The aim was to build either the highest, or strongest structure using only uncooked spaghetti sticks and mini marshmallows. Mr Buckingham acted as our judge and the teams used a 200g vitamin container as a strength tester.

I also had a go at making a tower with some success.

We all did some shared research into which shapes would be strongest and we found that putting lots of triangles into our buildings made them stronger. Here are some pictures of our buildings starting with Mr Gunn's.