Year 2's Pollination Party

 

Year 2 Busy Bees!

Have you ever wondered how flowers and plants grow seeds and fruit? Well, now our amazing Year 2’s know! Bees visit flowers to collect something very important – nectar to make honey. But did you know that when bees fly from one flower to another, they help the flowers grow seeds and fruit too? While the bees dive deep into the flower for their sugary drink they brush past the pollen carrying it from flower to flower. When the pollen from one flower goes onto another flower's sticky stamen then the flower can make seeds. Without the bees there would be no seeds and no fruit.

We explored our blooming Waka garden that has silverbeet, carrots and even kumaras! We got to see some bees in action. They were going deep into the purple kumara flowers looking for the nectar. We looked carefully to see the sticky stigma and pollen in the flowers.

Without bees helping with pollination, many flowers and plants wouldn’t be able to grow seeds. That would mean no new flowers or fruits! Bees are plant’s helpers, working hard to make sure plants can grow and bloom. They don't do it for free. They're paid in sweet nectar.

Back in the class we made models of flowers and used pipe cleaner bees to pollinate with glitter.

Next time we'll be making seed packets so we can grow more flowers to feed our bees.

Year 3's Compost Invertebrate Hunt

 Today, Year 3 continued learning about the important job of fungus, bacteria and invertebrates in breaking down waste.  This week it was time to focus on the invertebrates in our compost.

Luke "An invertebrate is something that doesn't have a back bone"

Nala "Like worms, slaters, ant, a fly and caterpillars"

Our aim was to identify some common invertebrates breaking down our food scraps into compost.They may be small and icky but they're important too.

We partner read two articles in Junior Journals about invertebrates  in our green spaces.  Next we took samples of compost and carefully sifted through them to find bugs.  We found beetles, worms, white worms, slaters and surprisingly big fat black wriggly pupa. 

We wanted to find out more about the pupa, so we looked them up on the internet.  We found out they are soldier fly larva and are vey important composters as they can eat TWICE their body weight in food scraps.

Lastly we recorded the soldier fly life cycle in our book and the facts we had learnt.

Can your tamariki name three common invertebrates? 

Next time we are looking forward to finding out how Wakaaranga use CHICKENS to convert food waste into fertiliser and eggs.

Room 2 Looking at Parts of a flower.

Following on from last week's Education for Sustainability lesson, 

Room 2 looked at different parts of a flower. We cut out and labelled parts of a flower.

 

Year Two Yummy Honey

 Today Year Two continued their close look at honey bees. 

We compared and contrasted the bee life cycle to other animals we know that go through metamorphosis. Can your tamariki explain the bee life cycle?

Next we acted out the amazing way bees make honey using nectar from flowers, before trying some honey from our very own school bees. YUM! 

Alice "It looks runny"

Eather "Yellow like a sunflower"

Everyone "MMMMMMMMMMMMM"

Ibaad "Sweet like chocolate"

Thea "Can i have another one?"

Did you know you can buy Waka honey at the school office? 

Afterwards we recorded what we had learnt in diagrams and numbered steps in our special Bee Books. 

Well done Year Two! Next time we are going to learn about why we need bees most in the world... POLLINATION

Yr 3's Dirt made my lunch

Year Three looked at yucky things today in EfS - fungus, bacteria and invertebrates.  Why are we looking at all these gross things? Because with out them dead stuff wouldn't break down and return nutrients to the soil.  And with our soil ...dirt we wouldn't have any kai.

We traced the food chains from our lunchbox back to the ground, then went to explore how Wakaaranga turns food scraps into compost in our worm farms.

Next we gathered apples from our orchard and had a chance to taste our beautiful crunchy apples that we had grown with our own compost.  We drew the CIRCULAR ECONOMY we have created at school- tree - apple - apple core - worm farm - compost - back to tree.  No waste and no need to buy compost for our gardens and orchards.  

Lastly we went on a litterhunt and sadly discovered lots of plastic lunchbox litter.  The fungus, bacteria and invertebrates can't break it down and it can harm our environment.  Thank you to all the whanau making the extra effort to pack a litterfree lunch.  It makes a BIG  difference.