Why is the May Fly endangered?

Over the last 2 weeks the Year 5 and 6's attended a learning day immersed in the environment out at Waikereru Reserve on Riverside Road.  The Wildlab is funded by Air New Zealand and offers integrated learning about our environment through science, the arts and on location experiences.  

Here we are watching an actor give us information about why the May Fly is endangered. 

We climbed a big hill and looked at the surrounding geography learning about how the reserve was rebuilt from barren farmland. 

After lunch we spent some time down at the river looking for May Fly lavae in the river.  The May Fly is an insect that decomposes the algae and provides nutrients in the water for higher species such as fish and birds.  They need 95% pure water to survive!  This is why they are endangered - our rivers are shockingly polluted!  The May Fly is an interesting insect!  What facts did you learn? 

Some people would like the Waimata River to have the status of a person so that it can be treated better and we can prosecute anyone who pollutes it!  What do you think about that? 

MAPS workshop: How to groom a long haired cat!

Makaraka Animal Protection Shelter held it's inaugural workshop training today.  Responsible shelter volunteers and experts learnt hot to run a workshop, the knowledge and skills that come from workshops as well as taking away information on how to groom a long haired cat. 

Everyone participated well and asked great questions.  The cat experts: Bella, Kaycee, Eden and Zion agreed that the workshop went well and they were happy with the level of understanding that the group had.  

A fake cat was used in order to conduct the training as a real cat could possibly not cope well with the numbers present.  This will be followed up with a video with a real cat.  We all look forward to that.  

Here is a short clip of today's workshop: 

Tomorrow we follow this success with a workshop on how to care for a rejected lamb.  Wow it's all happening here at MAPS! 

All in a day's work @ TED Lab!

We had our first rocket test flight last Thursday!  It was so much fun!  The rockets went well but they were all different!  I wonder what are the things that make them different? 

Report format for each test flight. 

After we have flown them we need to file a report about the performance of the rocket.  This helps us to know if the rocket has performed at expectation and whether we need to make some changes! 

Once we had filed our reports, we present our findings to the rest of TED Lab!  This helps other teams to think about their rockets to as well as seeing what has happened to our rockets!  

All in a day's work! 

Here we are presenting our findings! 

TED Lab tests the weather!

TED Lab is developing ways of testing the weather to check it is safe to launch the rocket!

We are understanding how the rain and clouds are formed by evaporation! 

Can you see the water droplets forming? 

We are learning about air pressure and how you can predict if it is going to rain! This machine is called a barometer! 

The needle will go up and down...  Does that mean that it will rain or be sunny? 

We are making weather vanes to see which direction the wind is blowing so we can point the rocket the right way!  

Is it pointing to North? 

We are certainly a professional and safety conscious company!

TED Lab - Tawhirimatea Engineering and Design Lab

Today we met Danielle for the first time in person!  She spoke to us about her job and how important it is to be able to work in a team with a diverse range of people and skills.  We really enjoyed hearing some of her stories and ideas! 

We formed teams of 3-5 people and. researched our roles within the team. This was really interesting - who knew that rocket teams need a meteorologist?  Or even a biologist?

We finished our session outside shooting our first raw PET bottle to see how the machine works!  Gee we are so excited to be designing, building and launching rockets!  

We can't wait until next week!  

Clean Air around my house?

This week we have been looking at how clean the air is around our houses.  It is very interesting how far dust travels!  

Putting up the tape on the Trampoline

Peek - a - boo!

Curious Jono has been helping out and trying to be a scientist!  He has got into a bit of mischief but here is his map to show the data collection: 

Hero's Engine, class data.

Last week we studied Hero of Alexandria and his invention the Aeolipile. 

We made some out of soda cans and tested to see if we could get the maximum number of revolutions out of a can full of water!  

Here is our class data.  The most common number of holes was 5 and the highest number of spins for 5 holes was 18!  

Wow I wonder how Libby made her Hero Engine get 81 revolutions!  Head to her blog and find out!  

What other results in our class data surprised you? 

Games to try with straw rockets!

Straw Rocket Games! 

As part of our straw rocket study, we tried to create games to play with them!  Here they are!  

I am so looking forward to trying them out and then when we are back at school having a class rocket game day!  Fun!!!! 

Great ideas everyone!  Thanks for sharing at our meet this morning! 

Rockets are Amazing Machines! 

Kite Kraze

This week we have been making and TRYING to fly kites.  There hasn't been much wind so a lot of our kites are waiting for wind until they can fly!

This morning on our Google Meet we shared our kites and how we made them and I took some screen shots of them to show you.  If you want to see more from everyone's kites, head over to individual blogs and find the post on kites.  There are some fabulous designs there!

We learnt that there are 4 forces acting on kites.  Lift, Thrust, Drag and Weight/Gravity.  The balance of the kite is also important - where you tie your string.

We all had fun this week getting outside and designing kites!

Here is our sharing session! 

An unusual present!

Today Lachie bought me an ostrich egg from his aunty's farm!  Wow it is huge!  It was vey heavy and the shell was so thick!  Lachie told me that you can eat them and make cakes with them and use them the same way that hens eggs are used.  

Lachie said that one ostrich egg has 22 hens eggs worth of egg inside!  He uses a drill to open them up and pour the egg out.  That's one huge omelette! I can't wait for Saturday's breakfast!  

I wonder what other facts we can learn about ostrich eggs? Can we compare them to hen's eggs?  

Friday was an exciting day! 

Are you like your star sign?

We went on a trip to the museum to the star lab and learnt about how our ancestors navigated the seas with the stars.  We saw all the different shapes of the constellations.  The reason we are learning about this is because this year is the Sestercentennial - 250 Years since the first landings of Europeans.  Tairawhiti was the actual first landing!

 

Here are some photos from the Museum.  A bit blurry but shows us in the star lab learning about our ancestors.

This was really interesting.  The constellations are right above us at certain times of the year.  One of the things wWe had a look at our star signs and did some writing about them.  We learnt was that they are named after Greek Gods and characters of the myths.  They also have personality types which we compared to ourselves to see if they were true!

Check out our blogs to see our writing and artwork!

Is there any other uses for knowing the star constellations?
What do you know about navigating and our first encounters?

Here is Miss McIntosh showing off our cool art! 

Not for the faint hearted!

One of our camp activities for 2019 was to go eeling!  We were all very excited - some had done it before and others hadn't!  It didn't matter which group you were in eeling is exciting!  You have to go late at night, set the traps and then check them early in the morning.  Eels can't see very well but can sense light so when it is dusk they come out!  Well when we first arrived there was a huge one in the river!  Wow excitement ripples through all of us!  

We set 2 types of traps - hinaki we had mad ourselves out of wire and a fyke net which was lent to us by Mr Farmer.  This one as you will see caught the most eels!  We were astounded to see over 25 eels in there in the morning!  Some had blue eyes which means that they are on their way to Tonga to breed so Jed (our parent expert) let those ones go to keep the species alive!  We kept 7 eels for our learning and put the rest back. 

Today, March 12, we dissected the eels.  It was very smelly and we had to be very self disciplined because the equipment is very sharp.  We learnt a lot about dissection, anatomy and cultural practices.  

The rules were: 

• Be respectful of the animal - no sillyness and trying to scare others. 
• Be responsible with the equipment - it can harm you. 
• Wear safety gear. 
• Take turns. 

The anatomy we looked for was: 

• The 2 types of fins. 
• Eyes
• Mouth
• Ears
• Vent
• Heart
• Gills
• Guts
• Liver - gall bladder
• Brain

Culturally we: 

• Learnt about their habitat and why eels are special creatures to NZ
• Blessed the life we were using to learn from with Karakia
• Buried the remains to give back to the Earth
• Hung them in a tree to deslime. 
• Learnt how to catch them traditionally with hinaki. 

Big thank you to Rachel, Miss McIntosh, Matua James and Jed for teaching us and helping us with this learning. 

Nā tō rourou, nā taku rourou
ka ora ai te iwi

With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive

Visit from a scientist...

We were lucky enough on Thursday to have a visit from a scientist who is studying eels.  Mr Ray Farmer.  He knows soooooo much about eels and boy are they interesting!

Who ever knew that eels travel to Tonga to spawn and then the babies automatically know how to travel back to NZ when they are only a couple of centimetres long!  Not only that they go to the exact same stream their parent came from!  Amazing!  Nature is so cool.

  

There are 2 types of eels in NZ - the long and short finned eels.  Can you remember which one these pictures are showing?
The circle things on this diagram are showing the rings around their ear holes.  These tell you how old eels are.  The gaps between the circles tell yo if the water they live in is good quality - the closer together the circles the worse the water quality!
Can you remember how old they have to get to before they travel to Tonga?

This is a picture of a different type of eel trap called a Fyke.  It doesn't use bait and channels the eels into it when they hit the flat part of the net.  Mr Farmer lent us his Fyke so we can try it out!  Boy I can't wait for camp now!  Its going to be so much fun!

Hinaki's for camp!

We have been learning about eels.  They are fascinating.  You may have seen some of the readings we have done on individual blogs.  We decided to make hinaki to take to camp so we can go eeling. 

Here are the finished products!  Aren't we clever? We can't wait to use them and possibly even taste the finished product!