Rock Pools

Shell Study

Room 9 are working on a shell study, we will be drawing shells to scale and enlarging and reducing shells for our art and mathematics work. We are measuring shells in everyway possible and thinking about the beauty of shells, how shells have been used by people and how appreciating shells can bring science and art together. We have bought some context and purpose to this study thinking about how shells are collected and studied in the real world. The Smithsonian Museum has the biggest shell collection in the world. We will make our own shell museum display for everyone to come and see. We have learnt to measure shells length and width. We found it hard to measure the shells as they had curved faces so Mrs Walker taught us to measure curved surfaces with string and our ruler. Then we learnt about perimeter and measured this. We will weigh our shells and then we will use displacement to find the volume of our shells. At the beginning this work was difficult but with practise everyone has mastered measurement and the classroom has such a quiet hum as all of the children explore their own shell investigations and collect measurements of their favourite shells.

Living or Non-Living

Today Room 9 have explored a definition for living and non-living things, what amazing thinkers! The change and development of these types of discussions over the year has been amazing to be a part of.

We talked about some of our ideas about what defines something as living or non-living. We watched this video of Cookie Monster's definition. Then we sorted pictures of objects. Our most interesting discussions were around fire, the sun, seeds. We talked about how a scientist would define a living organism and how writers sometimes talk about non-living things as if they are alive, such as rivers and fire. We made lots of connections with our learning about growth and change over time from Term 2, many of the things that we said were not living do grow and change but not from those things purposefully eating.

 

From a scientific point of view the sun and fire are not living as they are not made up of cells. Some children asked about Earth, if the Sun is living then Earth could be because it changes and grows. Other children recognised that these things didn't really breathe and eat. 

What about seeds? We had the most amazing discussion, the children talked for a long time about the potential life of the seed. We connected this with our poppy growing, some seeds did not germinate and others do because seed can die (become sterile). Seeds do live off their stored energy.

 More about seeds if anyone at home asks any questions.