Friday, February 28, 2014

Neon Animals!

These "Neon Animals" were inspired by contemporary London artist Louise McNaught. Children could choose one of several styles for their own artworks. One option was pencil shading with only parts of the picture painted in neon. The other style was to create the whole painting including the background in neon. Check out the brilliantly bright results!










Thursday, February 27, 2014

Pudding Hill Camp 2014

I really enjoyed abseiling because I've never done it before. At first I felt a little bit scared but as I went down I felt a bit more confident. I also loved archery because I got quite a few bulleyes. It challenged my arm strength!! I found out that I was quite good at archery but pulling straight back was hard on the arms.  We made our own pizzas which was fun. We got to choose our toppings. I put tomato, onion, cheese and tomato paste on mine. It was delicious.  We tried pepper leaves from Pepper Leaf Tree. At first they tasted okay but after a few seconds they stung my mouth. You can identify them by the little red spots on the green leaves. I found a heart shaped one! We also found Lancewood trees with long, thin prickly leaves. The trees are tall and skinny. 

Mahgen





Have a look at our Pudding Hill Camp photos on the right!!

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

T.E.A.M. - Together, Everyone, Achieves, More

TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE 
We've been learning to use team work and work with each other cooperatively. Today we used it to creatively problem solve. We talked about compromising, negotiating, building on each others' ideas and talking, to be able to achieve a result.
Our Challenge!
To build the tallest spaghetti and marshmellow tower that stands on its own for 1 minute. There were teams of 3 and some rules. Take a look at our efforts!



The winning team with a tower of 41cm high!
What we found challenging:
- making it stand
- not receiving any help
- the time pressure affecting team work
- sticky fingers!
- pushing the fragile spaghetti sticks into the marshmellows without them breaking
- trying again if our first idea didn't work
- the main base collapsing
- not having enough support in the centre
- people breaking things
- bumping someone holding something and it falling or breaking
- feeling guilty if you were the one in your team who broke it
- being the only one trying and some people mucking around
- feeling tense because of the fast pace and time limit
- lots of big hands creating a little building