Mindball and Mindfulness

Today, as part of our inquiry "Thinking Smart - It's Up To Me!",  Room 3 children experienced 'Mindball' from Science Alive!

Mindball is a game designed to work as a measure of how well a person can be calm and focused. A calm and focused mind will prevent the ball from entering the circle and will end up in the opponent's circle. 

The focus of the programme is to introduce concentration techniques. It encourages children to practice mindfulness in their own time. This could be as simple as relaxing, closing your eyes and paying attention to all of the sounds you are hearing in your environment.

Below is a video of Zach and Jack in their states of calm and focus.

Going Global - Greece

The Senior School Inquiry this term has continued from last term. We began with the traditional Maori culture in New Zealand and then went global. Each class turned their classroom into a tourist destination. After much thought, debate and discussion, we used a 'decision making grid' to help us decide and agreed upon "Greece" as our destination of interest. Close contenders were Egypt and the Arctic. 

We formed a 'Wonder Wall' of questions we had about Greece and then decided upon areas of interest. Some of the categories we chose were Art & Architecture, Geography, Culture, History and Food & Wine. After researching and talking to some experts who had been to Greece, we worked out how we were going to turn our information into something that could be presented to a potential tourist. There were many ways of presenting as you can see in the photographs below.

The Food & Wine group made the tastiest lamb kebabs and fried potato balls with feta cheese inside them. We all got to try them and they were delicious!!

All in all, it was an great day. We had 5 classes come and visit Greece and, Mr Dolan too!

The Greek food and wine was extremely popular amongst tourists!

Greek wine! (Actually grape juice...Ssshhh!)

A lovely Greek villa, overlooking the Mediterranean 

Happy Greek waiters!

Finding out about the average temperatures in Greece throughout the year

A large map of Greece outlining the islands, the mainland and other interesting land marks 

Take the quiz and win a traditional Greek coin!

Traditional dancing and music

Apollo - God of light, sun, truth, prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry and more...

The notorious mythical 3 headed monster dog, Cerberus. We burnt the edges of the picture to make it look old.

Many visitors read Greek myths

Be in to win an ancient Greek discus. 

Informing tourists

Visitors finding out about the ancient Greek Olympic sports

The sculpture of the Goddess Athena, once housed in the Parthenon 

Athena: Goddess of wisdom

The Parthenon - A temple once dedicated to the Goddess Athena

A Greek wearing a toga!

Ancient Greek weaponry

Listen to our interviewee "Alexander the Great"

Our Brilliant Brains!!

A brain with a brain tumor above the brain stem

Today Dr Pip Tremewan came to talk to us about brains. We learned about what each of the 4 lobes of the brain are responsible for, what the cerebellum and the brain stem do and how the brain receives messages from the nerve cells located in various parts of the body. 

Amazingly, we got to see specimens of real human brains including one that had a blood clot inside it and one that had a brain tumor above the brain stem. We even got to feel a real pig's brain to find out the texture of a brain!!

 

A brain showing a blood clot

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Mika and Hanan putting the plastic model of the brain together

Touching a pig's brain - they don't smell too good

Levi and George examining the specimen

We are making "thinking caps" to help us remember the parts of the brain and what the functions of each lobe are for.

We discovered that the frontal lobe is the biggest in humans because of how much we think in comparison to animals.