I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees!

Dear parents, This week our unit of inquiry focussed on trees and why they are an important resource. The students learnt that trees make oxygen by taking in the carbon dioxide and we breathe the oxygen in and breathe out carbon dioxide. Juni recognised that the relationship between people and trees is a cycle. We read the Dr Seuss book The Lorax. In this story, a character called the Lorax lives in nature with many trees called 'truffala trees' and animals with clean air and water. Then, a character called the Oncler comes along and starts cutting down the trees to make things to sell. His business starts making more money and he keeps cutting more trees down and building a bigger factory. The Lorax isn't happy and tells him, "I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees." He explains that the animals that live in this place need to trees for clean air and the fruit and a place to live. The pollution from the factory flows into the lake and the fish start dying. The air gets dirtier and the Lorax starts coughing. But the Oncler doesn't listen and cuts down all the trees. So then he can't make anymore things to sell and packs up his car and leaves. At the end of the story, the boy is given the last truffala tree seed by the Oncler who is now very old and regrets what he did. He says to the boy, now it is up to you to make this seed grow and bring back the trees. In literacy, we practised writing letter u and in phonics this week, we learnt about the long vowel sounds of i and u and did a picture sort activity for both. In maths, we learnt about the most common shapes and did simple number bonds under 10 to learnt about the different ways to add values to make a number.

Saving water and learning about the water cycle

 

 





This week we learned about a very important resource: water. We did a little experiment in the bathroom where I showed the children how much water is wasted when they don't turn the tap off when they are washing their hands and brushing their teeth. About 5 litres per child each time were wasted!

We listened to a very catchy song about the water cycle and learnt the terms; evaporation, condensation and precipitation. The students helped me make a collage of a landscape picture demonstrating how these 3 important stages in the water cycle happen. We also made a rainbow with rain drops to show how important it is to save every drop of water.

In math, we played games such as snakes and ladders and addition games as well as doing a size ordering activity with animal shapes.

 

In literacy, we practised writing letters r and s. In phonics, we continued to learn about long vowel sounds: o and e this week. In maths, the students learnt how to order pictures from smallest to biggest. Today children were sent home another Raz book to practise at home, please bring it back to school on Monday with the homework sheet.





In the park we found many dead cicadas stuck to leaves in a tree and Hinano and Daito found many acorns. We built a bug house with bark that had fallen off the tree.

Resources can be recycled or reused!

Thank you to all the parents and grandparents who came on Wednesday for grandparent's day. It was great to have your help making the photo frames which I have sent home today.

This week in phonics we learnt about the long a sound. We watched a video about how to pronounce it using our mouth and doing a cut and paste activity sorting photos of short /a/ and long /a/ images. For example, play, say, train, rain, plate, ate and eight. We had 5 new sight words: did, good, into, four, and out. For handwriting, they practised writing letter q.  In maths, we learnt about how to make number bonds with numbers up to 20, such as 15+?=20

We also read the book The Giving Tree which talks about a tree that was very caring to a boy and always gave her leaves, branches, wood and apples to him so he could use them. Sadly, at the end of the story, all that was left of the tree was her stump. The boy was very old by that time and all he wanted to do was sit down and rest. So she let him do that.

 

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                                                                                                                In inquiry, we continued to learn about resources and how paper, plastic, glass, aluminium and other items can be recycled. I brought many containers, tissue boxes, toilet rolls and other things from home and the children sorted them into categories. 

Mr Ben also showed the children the compost that they made last year in his class and how it has become soil now. So on Thursday we did another sorting activity using pictures to put things into different rubbish categories. 

In one of our park/gym sessions we practised catching and throwing balls and on another day we practised throwing bean bags into hoops.

Learning about sharing resources

Hi everyone and thank you for your understanding while I was away.
This week we learnt about number bonds for 20. So we used blocks and number lines to work out what is the missing number if we want to make 20 and we have 6 already.

In literacy, we practised writing letters l, m and o and in phonics we revised short vowel sounds in preparation for learning long vowel sounds.

Our new unit of inquiry is: Sharing resources helps the world. This as part of the transdisciplinary theme: How the world works. Last week the children learnt what a resource is and the difference between natural and human-made resources. They did a cut and paste activity in teams in which they had to sort the resources into the two categories.

They also learnt how to share resources with Pre K A in an activity where they had to make a tree out of paper. Pre K B were given scissors and brown paper while Pre K A were given the green paper and glue. The children were asked how they can make the tree if they didn't have all the resources. Keita said, "share!"

The other challenge was to avoid wasting any paper which they did very well. They realised that they could scrunch up the leftover pieces and glue them onto the leaves.