Snow storms in Howick?

The Junior Science Club whipped tiny air bubbles into a strong liquid soap solution to make pretending snow, as a way of celebrating Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE WHO ENJOYS READING OUR BLOG - 

MORE SCIENCE NEWS IN 2018!

Christmas comes to Cockle Bay

Year 2 students were excited to go in the gingerbread house.  Even with the door tightly closed, it was light inside.  The solar light fitted in the roof let sunlight stream in through the water in the plastic water bottle taped securely to a hole in the middle of the roof.

Learning about the Bush

The Weka Team went for a hour's tramp through the bush at the bottom of the Auckland Botanical Gardens on their Weka Day Camp.  We followed the symbols on a map to make sure we were travelling the the right direction.  We listened to the hollow stem of the Nikau and followed the creek as it meandered through the bush canopy alive with the sound of tui.

"Knock, knock, Nikau"

We can walk of air!

It was interesting to observe how many people could stand on air.  First the Junior Science Club trapped air in balloons, and placed them carefully under an upturned table.  Then we (very gently) stood on the table, one by one.  We filled the table with people so that there was no more standing room, but still the balloons didn't burst, but kept everyone standing on air!

One . .  .

three . . . 

four . . . 

six . . . 

seven . . . 

eight!

New World Little Gardens

One of the flowers bees like are sunflowers, so we were very pleased to see that there were lots of pots of sunflowers in our Little Garden pottles kindly donated by New World.  As these grew bigger and stronger, we planted them out in gardens by Room 18 and Room 22.

Everyone planted their seeds in pottles.  It was a lucky dip to see what seeds you got.

Ready for planting out in the Room 18 garden.

Bees find a new home at Cockle Bay

As part of becoming an enviro school, Cockle Bay introduced bees to the school.  They live in a small hive by Room 30, where it is relatively cool with plenty of nectar from flower beds.  We will be planting more bee friendly flowers and fruits to keep our new neighbours healthy and happy.

Here is the installation of the hive:

Staff Professional Development

Mrs Taylor, who has started Phase 2 of the Science Teaching Leadership Programme, led a Science session for teachers, where she presented data on the state of Science teaching at Cockle Bay, and ways it could be improved.  This was followed by some hands-on investigations and much lively discussion.

How many bones?

We were interested to find out how many bones we had in our hands.  So, for Halloween, we decided to make Xrays of our hands to find out.

First we looked carefully at our hands as we bent all our fingers like claws - we could see and feel that there was a little joint joining two little bones together at each bend.

We carefully drew around our hand, and then made a mark to show where each joint was.  Then we coloured in each hand with wax crayon, but left a space between each joint which we painted with vegetable oil.  When the pictures were set up by the window, the sunlight shone through the oil so you could count the 'bones'.  How many can you count?

Pest ID Tunnels

As part of the pest eradication programme, Cockle Bay School is setting out pest ID tunnels to see what animals are visiting our school at night, when it is quiet and we have all gone home. 

The Junior Science Club set one up by the worm farms and found evidence of rats visiting the area 'after hours'.

We have since set rat traps.  Mrs Taylor's trap caught our first rat after only one week!  Rats enjoy eating peanut butter or nutella, so we baited our traps with out of date expired spreads to make them irresistible to pests!

A ribbon on a tree marked the location of our pest ID tunnel.

We observed evidence of a snail visitor on the black ink floor of the tunnel.

These inky footprints on the exit of the tunnel tell us a rat had been visiting.

Pest Free Auckland

The Auckland City Council visited Cockle Bay to tell us about the initiative to ultimately make New Zealand pest free.  Work has already started in Howick with some schools and organisations collecting data.  Other areas of the country are also involved in eradicating pests like possums and stoats that kill our native birds.

Robot Rule - learning about simple circuits

As part of our theme, Robots Rule, we have been learning about simple electrical circuits, as these are what make robots move once people have programmed them.  We observed that a circuit needs to be closed, with no gaps to work.  We could tell if the circuit was closed because a light, buzzer or fan would start to go off.

Rhubarb - leaf or stem?

As part of our reading contract the story, 'That's the Idea' in Junior Journal 44, we looked all the school gardens and listed all the fruit and vegetables we could find.  We found a huge patch of rhubarb in the garden by Room 30, and had to decide whether to eat the stalks or the leaves. 

After some discussion, we decided to cook the stalks, as Ruby told us that the leaves were poisonous - we made the correct choice!  Some people enjoyed eating a cup of stewed rhubarb and appled instead of brain food after it had cooled.

Working with Frozen Carbon Dioxide

Senior Science Club was lucky enough to procure some frozen Carbon Dioxide.  We added small amounts of the frozen ice, a little at a time, to a soapy water solution.  It was interesting to observe what happened next!

Making Strong Structures

In Science Club, we investigated ways we could make strong structures.  We made our structures using matchsticks and mini marshmallows.  We observed that structures that had diagonal, as well as vertical and horizontal matchstick 're-inforcement' were the strongest.  Some structures were several storeys tall.