Thursday 30 January 2014

Medieval Astronomy


 Which letter do you think we use in place of the "f" on the above page?
 A tool used to teach children about the universe, see the Earth in the middle?
 An Astronomical clock
 All the stars stuck to an invisible bubble surrounding the flat Earth? Sound legit to you?
 The Earth at the centre of the universe? Of course! (At least their Earth is round and not flat)

 An Astrolade
 Much of what we know came from the Islamic Arab World.

South Africa's Big 5



In Africa, the big five game animals are the lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and rhinoceros. The term big five game (sometimes capitalized or quoted as "Big Five") was coined by big-game hunters and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot. Subsequently the term was adopted by safari tour operators for marketing purposes. The term is used in most tourist and wildlife guides that discuss African wildlife safaris. The members of the Big Five were chosen for the difficulty in hunting them and the degree of danger involved, rather than their size.


The big five are among the most dangerous, yet most popular species for big game hunters to hunt.
The 1990 and later releases of South African rand banknotes feature a different big-five animal on each denomination.

Countries where all the members of the big five can be found include Botswana, Uganda, Namibia, Ethiopia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Malawi.

We were inspired by this post: http://merrybeau.edublogs.org/2014/01/28/green-schools-biodiversity-wild-irish-land-mammals/

Wednesday 29 January 2014

Matthew's First Blog Post

My name is Matthew. I was born in 2004 in Cape Town. I am nine years old. I live with my Mom, Dad and my older brother.
Last year I was in the Montessori 6-9 class. It was a very big room. I didn't like having to walk so far to get to my bag. It was 8m x 16m! There were 30 kids in my class.

This year I am in the 9-12 class. I am looking forward to the work being challenging. My teacher lets us bring our flash drives on Fridays and she gives  us Documentaries to watch on the weekends that match up with our themes in class.

In February there is going to be a camp out at our school. All the families are going to bring tents and put them on our big field. Then we are going to play soccer and jump on the jumping castle and slide down the water slide. When it gets dark then we will buy glow sticks and watch a movie on a big outside screen under the stars. I am excited for it!

Thursday 23 January 2014

CAPS documents


Here is a link to a site that has uploaded PDFs of the CAPS documents for Grades 4 - 6:

Tuesday 21 January 2014

Medieval Feast



 We watched a documentary about a Medieval (technically Tudor) Feast and then created a gold plate filled with Medieval foods.

Can you guess what the different foods are?











Thursday 16 January 2014

We had outdoor time for an hour

 
We played a treasure hunt/pick up litter game. 
The instructions were:
...find one thing that starts with a "m"(money),  one thing that's blue and one thing that's long.
 ...one thing that begins with "t"(bottle top), one thing sharp and one thing that's warm
...find one thing that starts with a "s"(stick),  one thing that's red and one thing that's long.
...find one thing that starts with a "m"(menu),  one thing that's orange and one thing that's furry(seed).
...find one thing that starts with a "b"(bark),  one thing that's blue and one thing that's shiney.
...find one thing that starts with a "b",  one thing that's red and one thing that's soft.

Then we played the "squishy" game, where we each grab a hand and try to untangle the mess into one big human circle.

Finally we played "1, 2, 3, block myself!" a version of hide-and-seek where you have to run to "den" which, in this case, was the water fountain, and save yourself before the person who is "on" does and puts you out.
One of the students hid in the tree right above the fountain, pretty impressive "out the box" thinking, if you ask me. :)

Maths books cover page decoration

Skye
Jawad
Khaya
Neo
Summer
Adam
Zoe
The Grade 4 students made number chains


Wednesday 15 January 2014

First day activities

We are colouring in our flip file cover page in beautiful colours.


Tuesday 14 January 2014

Term 1 Cross-curricular Theme: The Medieval Age




This term we will be looking at the Medieval Age in English and Culture (History, Geography and Science)
We will be creating many of the creative ideas that I have pinned in my Pinterest boards.