Home is Where the Heart is-Kei Te Kainga Te Ngakau
Oct. 23, 2009
An interesting year to date...
...The Sydney weather has been crazy this year, but today was a typical, spring day, warm, sunny, and a great day at the Sutherland Leisure center. We are now at Sutherland for art ever second week on a Friday, and then to the pools afterwards, a brilliant way to spend a Friday!
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ELise's end of year exam project: Choosing the right dog, how to look after a dog, what they eat, calculate the cost of owning a dog-flea, worming, vet bills, grooming, food!! etc. Basically everything you need to know about owning a dog.
Science unit for the term (Elise): Population Dynamics, sounds impressive doesn't it! It is a unit I got from a google search for year 6 science projects/lessons, from the Public Schools of North Carolina website [www.ncpublicschools.org]
Major Goals and Learning Outcomes:
Why is the interaction of an organism essential for its survival?
What abiotic factors affect growth and survival of organisms?
How does habitat destruction affect biodiversity?
What is pollution?
How does human activity impact the environment?
What steps can humans take to reduce their impact on the environment? Why has human population increased?
What effect does increased population have?
What is natural selection and how does it work?
What is adaptation?
What evidence is there for change over time?
Its actually just an extension of what we have been doing about all year, environmental change, habitats, how our actions affect the environment etc. It is a great wrap up for an end of year unit.
Our main learning will be making a terrarium, for a turtle, she is currently in the process of making a list of all the requirements, while Im looking for a really big glass container or fishtank/terrarium. She has to find out and get everything the turtle will need in a balance ecosystem.
The little kiddies are doing, an excel workbook, living and non living at the moment. But we are also working in line with Eli'ses unit, by finding out what a bean plant needs to grow, recycling and not wasting resources. Not any/much book work, mainly oral, but there are a few sites on the internet that they go on, and we do alot of hands on, nature study, recycling, timing showers, talking about news articles.
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Had a trial for 14 days with Reading Eggs, the kids loved it, I assessed Tamerah's reading using their online test, but I got her to start only a couple of levels from the beginning as I didn't want her to miss the fun of getting to the higher levels. Will be purchasing it for the year for both, but only Gil Gway will carry on as I think Tamerah will be pass this stage by years end. Quite good because it has the readers oline, they can make a little avatar and it has a little house! [Reading Eggs]
The two little kids have finished their maths for the year, will just let them play around on the Matheletics, play lots of hands on games and just general everyday activities for maths.
Elise is still carrying on but she'll be finished also, hopefully in a couple of weeks so we can concertrate on our projects. All in all we've had a good maths year, learnt new concepts, did some great assessments, had a good time.
Glad to hear life is going well over there. School sounds very exciting for you all. So pleased you enjoyed Reading Eggs! Thanks for sharing the science unit you discovered. I'll be sure to check it out to incorporate with our kids work on habitat etc.
Oct. 26, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Glad to hear life is going well over there. School sounds very exciting for you all. So pleased you enjoyed Reading Eggs! Thanks for sharing the science unit you discovered. I'll be sure to check it out to incorporate with our kids work on habitat etc.
Well done with your school year!
Maree