Our whanau groups enable siblings to work and share in learning experiences alongside other students of various backgrounds, ages and levels.These groups are about getting to know each other, helping and supporting each other and having lots of fun. We meet 3 or 4 times a term and share common experiences that celebrate and promote strengths and interests of group members. Have a look at some of the exciting things we do during our whanau times.


Saturday 9 September 2017

Making Slime

After a couple of failed attempts, the expert "SLIMEMAKER" Dania from D3 took over!



 
Success - we have slime!
 
Three main ingredients - borax, white craft glue and water. Add a little bit of green food colouring and hey presto - you have icky, sticky gooey slime!!
 
The crazy thing is - it doesn't behave like most matter. It's like a liquid and a solid all in one!
 
Click here to find out more: SLIME
 
By Manaaki Whanau

Tuesday 5 September 2017

D3 Whanau Group Made Chocolate Rice Bubble Crackle

D3 Whanau Group Made Chocolate Rice Bubble Crackle

This experiment included heating, mixing and cooling. We heated the chocolate in the microwave. We mixed the chocolate, rice bubbles and coconut together Then we cooled the mixture to let it set.

Materials:

Rice bubbles
500g chocolate
Large bowl
Small bowl (melting chocolate)
Spoon
Spatula
Microwave
½ cup of desiccated coconut
Cupcake tins

  1. First we broke the chocolate into pieces and melted it in the microwave for 1 minute. It wasn’t completely melted so we put it back in the microwave for another 10 seconds.

  1. Next, we measured 6 cups of rice bubbles and poured them in a large bowl.

  1. Then, we added the melted chocolate to the bowl. We also added ½ cup of desiccated coconut.

  1. We mixed the rice bubbles until they were coated with chocolate.

  1. We put two tablespoons of the mixture into each cupcake cups and put them in the fridge to set.

The chocolate rice bubble crackle were crunchy, delicious and mouth watering. You should try this recipe at home! It’s only three ingredients and it’s very easy to make.



D3 Whanau Group Made Lemonade

D3 Whanau Group made delicious lemonade. We have been learning about the three states of matter, liquids, solids and gasses. We can change states of matter by heating, mixing and cooling. We learnt that sugar is a solid but it can dissolve into hot water. Lemons are a solid but when you squeeze them, lemon juice comes out, which is a liquid. We had to heat the sugar syrup, mix in the lemon juice and then cool the lemonade before we could drink it. It was so much fun!


D2 Whanau Groups attempt to fly

This week D2 Whanau group made simple and easy kites using newspaper and sticks. When we finished making these we went outside to see if we could make it fly. Here are some photos of us outside attempting to fly our kids.

Wednesday 23 August 2017

Yuuummmmm - scones for lunch!





















Whanau Manaaki experimented with making whipped cream to complete our jam scones. Everyone agreed that scones with jam and cream are . . . "YUM!"

We learned that the more you mix the cream the stiffer it gets, so it turns from a liquid to a solid.

We did some 'kitchen science' research and learned that cream has lots of fat globules. By beating the cream with a whisk or electric mixer, the coating around the fat globules wears down and allows the fat to stick together making it more solid. If we kept mixing, it would turn into butter!

Making Popcorn in A8

We have been learning about Change. For Whanau group, we made popcorn. We used the popcorn maker and talked about the corn kernel. The best part was when we got to eat it.


Friday 11 August 2017

Making Pendants A1 Whanau


Tastes like butter!



A7s whanau group made butter!  We only needed 2 items - a jar and cream.  Everyone had a turn at shaking the cream and in about 10 minutes, we had created butter!  It tasted really good with toast and cinnamon sugar!  Yum!!!

Wednesday 9 August 2017

Ice Ice Babies! by C6 Whanau

On Monday C6's whanau group played an ice game to see which team could melt their ice cubes the fastest.

Some of the different ways we melted the ice were:
1. Squeezing it

2. Leaving it in the sun
3. Playing pass the parcel with the ice cube
4. Blowing on it
5. Rubbing it on the deck

Our hands were freezing but the game was a lot of fun! At the end, all of our ice cubes had melted into water.

Here are some pictures of us in action.









Sunday 19 March 2017

Meet Whanau Manaaki











Hi everyone, we're Whanau Manaaki, the 'caring' family that meets in the library. You can see our pictures on the wall in the library. We've been using iPads to create self portraits and pop art pictures of ourselves using apps called Photo Booth, Pic Collage and Pop Art FX.