Acquiring Knowledge

Last week we were busy acquiring knowledge for our topic on Visual Impairment. On Tuesday Anne and her guide dog, Peddie, came to talk to us. We learnt that you must not touch a guide dog when it is working and that Anne can tell Peddie which way to go by using her voice or pointing her feet in the correct direction. Why do you think her cane is so shiny in the picture below?

On Thursday Mike came to talk to us about all the sports he still takes part in even though he can only see out of a 1/4 of one eye. He rows, plays cricket with a special ball that makes a sound as it moves and has even taken part in a Marathon in New York!

We used the knowledge we have gathered so far to think about the best way to send a thank you to our visitors. Our ideas included sending soap and flowers as they could smell them, sending one of our fish sculptures for them to feel and making a voice recording for them to listen to our thank you. We will be working on these items this week and sending them off on Friday. The picture below shows us working on the paper fish sculptures, adding tissue paper scales. Come and see the finished fish in Room 11.

On Friday we acquired more knowledge when we went to visit the Science Fair in Rooms 1,2,7 and 8. Thank you to our older friends who explained their experiments very clearly. Here we are learning about seeds.

Also on Friday we learnt how to make toast and very much enjoyed eating the results. We had such a great time that we have decided to include a special Friday toast spot on a weekly basis. If you have interesting, nut free, toast toppings to share please send them in to add to our collection. We all wrote our own instructions explaining how to make toast and used these to make a class digital story.

This week we will be writing questions to ask an expert about the things around Nelson Central School that make it easier for visually impaired people and any ideas they have for improvements.

Our sound for this week is 'ch' and we will be starting to look at alphabetical order and capital letters. We will be looking at the poem Caterpillar Crunch and making 3D hanging caterpillar sculptures. On Tuesday we are off to the Suter to look at an exhibition about animals and have a go at modelling with clay. In maths we will be practicing instant recall of doubles to 10 and in P.E. we are starting our unit on large ball skills. On Friday we will be celebrating Library Week by all dressing up as a book character, remember to bring in the book that your character is from if you can.

Reminders
Monday: Library books are due back
Wednesday: Walk to school day
Tues 11th August Suter visit 1.00 Bing Dawe, Animals and Sculptures, helpers needed

Friday 14th August Book Character Dress Up Day
Tues 1st September Suter visit 1.00 John Bevan Ford, Maori Art , helpers needed