We had a great maths lesson on sorting, using our collection of bugs. We sorted the bugs into lots of different groups according to
It was a great chance to talk about bugs, and to practice our sorting, all at the same time.
The class got to ask questions about whether the object is rough/smooth, hard/soft, warm/cold, where we could find the object and what the object could be used for. The child holding the feeley bag answered the questions and gave hints if it was too hard to guess. It is hard to guess objects using only our sense of touch.
Teacher gave each of us a plastic strip and we used the spare rectangle pieces to make triangle shaped bows for the tail.Since the weather was nice, we did the constructing outside. We used bamboo skewers, string and sticky tape to finish off the kites. 
They looked great.
Now for the testing. 
The weather was perfect - sunny but windy, so we headed to the field next to the school for the flight trials. The kites needed a good run to get them flying. Some of them flew so well. Unfortunately not all of them survived so well - some needed repairs. Making kites is a wonderful experience. Why not try it out for yourself?
Monday, April 27th, 2008
Friday, May 15th. 
One of the caterpillars is in his (or her) cocoon. We think the others will change very soon. Not sure about one caterpillar who is just lying on the bottom of the container and not trying to change.
Monday, May 18th. All 5 caterpillars are in their cocoons (although one is not hanging from the top). Teacher cut them into individual parts and stuck them onto some card. She made a special holder for the cocoon that wasn't stuck to the top. Now they are all safely in their pop up butterfly garden. We wonder how long it will take for them to turn into butterflies?
Teacher found 18 worms in her garden last night, and she brought them to school to show us. We got a wormery ready for them. We put layers of soil and sand in the wormery, then added the worms (they were all sizes, shapes and colours), then some grass and leaves for them to eat. 
We know that worms don't like light. We saw them trying to get to the bottom of the wormery as soon as we put them in. (The bottom is safer for them, further away from birds). We hope that the worms will make tunnels through the soil and sand, so that we can see what way worms live in the soil. We might even try making our own wormeries at home.
One of our girls showed us how to make strange sounds with a balloon. By pulling the neck of the balloon when the air is escaping, the sound it emits is very funny. Teacher showed us how to make strange sounds with plastic, paper and grass, and we all tried making sounds with straws. We found out that if you cut a straw when you are blowing it, that the note it makes gets higher as the straw is cut.
Next the teacher had a cup with a piece of string coming out. If we pull the string it sounds as if there is a woodpecker in the cup. The noise of the string being pulled is amplified when the string is atttached to the cup.
Last of all we got to use string telephones. They are very easy to make - all you need is string and 2 yoghurt cartons. One end of the string is put through a hole in the carton, and tied. The other end of the string is tied through another carton. If you want to talk through the telephone, you must keep the string tight. Otherwise the sound waves can't travel from one yoghurt pot to the other. We really enjoyed learning about sound today.
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Even though we are on holidays from school, we have been keeping a close eye on the buds. Some of the ash buds are out now. These are pictures from the Ash tree in Ms. McLoughlin's garden. How are the buds on the Ash trees near you?
As usual we went to the log pile behind the Senior School for our adventure.
We found wood lice, slugs, worms, flies, ants, centipedes and millipedes. We picked some up and put them in our bug viewers so we could examine how many legs they had. Others we just watched, as they went about their buggy business.
We know that insects have only 6 legs, so we were trying to find as many different insects as we could. We realised that: with 14 legs, wood lice are not insects. Neither are spiders with 8 legs (arachnids actually) or slugs, snails, or worms, all with no legs at all. Naturally, centipedes and millipedes have far too many legs. 
Thank goodness for flies and ants. We looked closely at the mural on the wall and saw how many mini-beasts we could name. Some of us used to be a bit scared around small bugs, but now we can see what interesting creatures they are. We will help look after them if they ever need our help!
We have a little plastic submarine in our classroom. We tried filling it with baking powder and then submerging it in a basin of water. We hoped the baking powder would react with the water and make bubbles of carbon dioxide that would float the submarine. This didn't happen. We could see the bubbles of air popping slowly out the top of the submarine but the submarine stayed stubbornly on the bottom of the basin. We tried again, this time with less baking powder, but that didn't work either. We'll go on trying until we discover the right combination!
