Golden Time Trip

We went on a Golden Time Trip. We went to Hamilton to watch Shrek Forever After, we had McDonalds for lunch, and we went to Sky City to play a game of Ten Pin Bowling.
It was awesome.

Wordle

We wrote stories and Mrs Chrystall made them into wordles.



Now we can see how many different words we used.



We can also see which words we used the most. They are the biggest words.



Go to our class wiki to see the rest of our wordles.

http://otoprim1.wikispaces.com/Wordle

COPS Cross Country

Sativa and Freddy went to our interschool Cross Country competition.

Sativa finished 4th and Freddy finished 8th.











Congratulations Sativa and Freddy.

OPS Cross Country

We like cross country. We ran fast at cross country. It isn't about winning, it's about having fun, getting fit, and doing your best.

ZooBurst Book - this is so cool.

We have been writing narrative stories and we made them into books. Our teacher saw a ZooBurst book on another class blog so she turned Justus' book into an animated book. We think these books are really cool.

Our UFO Ball and How it Works

We have a UFO ball in our class.  When Mrs Chrystall gave it to us we were amazed and didn't know how it worked.  We asked lots of questions about it.

We really wanted to know what it looked like inside so Mrs Chrystall carefully cut away some of the plastic.  Before she did this we had to PREDICT what it would have inside.  We thought it would be a circuit with a battery, wires, a bulb and a buzzer. 

We can now see inside our UFO ball and it still works.  We were right about it having a circuit but we were surprised at how the circuit looked.  We learnt a new word too - soldering.  Soldering is when the metal is melted onto the circuit board to connect the wires.

More Magnets and Electricity

We had fun finding the answers to some of our questions.

Brae and Yawden designed a fair test to find out How many layers of bubble wrap does a magnet work through?

They put a magnet on one side of the bubble wrap and a paper clip on the other side of the bubble wrap.
The magnet held the paperclip through three layers of bubble wrap but it didn’t work through four layers.

Jimi and Ngapera designed a fair test to find out How thick does the wood have to be before the magnet stops working?

They put a magnet on one side of the wood and a paper clip on the other side of the wood. They kept adding layers of wood until they could not pick up the paper clip.
The magnet picked the paperclip up through two layers of wood. This was 7mm thick.

Will we get the same results for these tests if we use a different magnet?  Are some magnets stronger than others?

Richard and Justus quickly worked out How do you make the buzzer work?

They worked together to make a complete circuit using a cell (battery), wires and a buzzer.
They had a lot of fun making the buzzer work but some people found the loud buzzing annoying.

Charlee and Sativa found out How do you make the buzzer work?

They made a complete circuit using two AA cells (batteries), wires and a buzzer.
Their buzzer made a quieter sound than Richard and Justus’ buzzer. They swapped cells and this made the girls buzzer louder. We think the square cell is more powerful and that is why the buzzer was louder when we used it.

Te Heruika and Freddy designed a fair test to find out What happens when you use two bulbs and one cell (battery)?

They made a circuit using two bulbs, wires and one cell. Then they shifted the wires to make a complete circuit with only one bulb and one cell.

They found out that the bulbs were dimmer in the circuit which had two bulbs in it compared to the bulbs in the circuit that had just one bulb in it.

How many bulbs will the cell light up at the same time?  Is there another way to connect the bulbs in the circuit so they don't get dimmer?

Peter and Portia knew what a circuit was so they had to find out How do you make a circuit with one bulb and two cells (batteries)?

They knew that a circuit had to be complete before the bulb would light. They made the bulb glow by using cells, wires, a bulb holder and a bulb.

Mrs Chrystall showed Peter how to make a complete circuit without using the bulb holder. 

We looked at the inside of the bulb.  We could see a squiggly piece of wire that connected the two metal prongs.  We noticed that it is this wire that glows.

Why does the squiggly wire glow?

We found the answer to a lot of our questions but now we have more questions we want to find the answers too.  Learning is FUN!!!!

What makes something magnetic?

We already knew that lots of metal things are magnetic but some metal things are not magnetic.

We designed a fair test to find out "What is in the metal that makes things magnetic?"

We had two container lids of sand.  The black sand was from Kawhia and the other sand is river sand from our school sandpit.

The containers were the same size even though they don't look it in this picture.

Mrs Chrystall covered the sand with a paper towel but she wouldn't tell us why.  (At the end she showed us how the sand stuck to the magnet and was really hard to get off.)

When we used the circular magnet on the river sand it only picked up a little sand.  We noticed that it was the black bits.

The circular magnet picked up a lot more of the Kawhia sand.  We also noticed that the Kawhia sand was still a little wet.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
We did the test (experiment) again using a bar magnet instead of a circular magnet.
 
The bar magnet only picked up a little of the river sand.  All the pieces were black.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
The bar magnet picked up a lot more of the black sand from Kawhia.
 
We also noticed that the end of the bar magnet picked up a lot more sand than the middle of the magnet.
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
It was easy to see that the black sand was magnetic. 

Mrs Chrystall told us that the black sand has a thing called iron in it and it is the iron in the metal that makes things magnetic.
 
 
 
 
 
 

We now know that it is "iron" that makes things magnetic.