Learning at home

Here are the Middle School learning activities for Week 2, Term 4. There is a Reading, Maths, Language, and Topic task each day. As it’s Labour Day on Monday, our activities start on Tuesday. However, there is an extra day at the end if you want to have a go.

Your child’s teacher will have emailed you to direct you towards which reading and maths group your child is in. Just click on your child’s group for their online reading and maths activities.

With our classroom meetings, your teacher may ask you to bring something that you’ve been doing during home learning to share with the class. Or, you could always take a photo of your work and email it to your teacher. We look forward to hearing about the work you’ve been doing while at home.

Special addition this week: Fun activities to do in your spare time.

**Extra activities you can complete throughout the week if you wish**

A couple of other places you can explore during your home learning time are:

Home Learning TV channels

Puhinui Library site

MOTAT Youtube Channel and extra activities from MOTAT

Some websites that can help support the science and STEM learning your child has been doing at school are below:

STEM Challenges (on our school website)

Nanogirl Youtube Channel

Lockdown Fitness! Click here for fun ways to mix up your walking!

Middle School Home Based Learning

Government learning from home website - https://learningfromhome.govt.nz/resources

As well as daily activities, here are some websites that you might like to have a look at.

No set activities today due to Labour Day. There are extra activities at the end of this week’s work if you would like extra.

Mysterious Objects

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, Russia on 16th December 1866. He died on 13th December 1944, at the age of 77.

He is known for his inventive use of colour, and for his representations of music through art.

Kandinsky had a condition called synesthesia which allowed him to hear colours.

Kandinsky is famous for his use of colour, using it to express emotions and scenes in a new way of looking at the world.

One of his most famous works is of circles. It wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone, he just used it to study colours. We are going to create our own circle picture

Materials needed

paper or card

oil pastels or any other crayons, colouring pencils.

ruler

pencil

tissues or paper towel

Begin by using a pencil and ruler to divide your paper or card into squares.

Draw a circle in the centre of one of your square spaces.

Use other colours of oil pastels/crayons to build up your circle, adding bigger circles of colour around your first circle, until you have filled your square space with colourful concentric circles.

Experiment by taking a tissue or paper towel and using it to rub over the oil pastel/crayons on your paper.

Rub around each circle of colour in turn, following each colour’s ring – rather than rubbing over all the rings at the same time – so you don’t blur your colours together

Prompt from Pobble 365

Hope

The Thaumatrope is a very old toy constructed from a simple disk or card. It has a different picture on each side of the card and is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled rapidly the card rotates on its axis and the two pictures look like they are combining into one image.

The Thaumatrope was invented by John Paris in 1825. Paris believed that children could learn about science through playing with toys.

You will need:

• Thin card

• Pencil

• A circle to trace around

• Scissors

• String or rubber bands

• Colouring pens/pencils

• Glue

• Hole punch (or something to make holes)

1. Think about what you want to draw on your thaumatrope. It needs to have two related elements—like a bird and a cage, or a fish and a bowl.

2. Draw a circle on a piece of card. You can trace something with a circular shape, like a roll of masking tape or plastic lid.

3. Cut out the circle and punch two holes opposite each other and at the edge.

4. Make sure the holes are horizontal. Then, draw an element on one side.

5. Now flip the circle over from bottom to top.

6. Draw the second element on the other side.

7. String a rubber band through one of the holes, and thread one end through the loop at the other end. Repeat on the other side.

8. Pull the rubber bands tight and use your forefingers and thumbs to spin the circle back and forth. Watch your two drawings become one!

Prompt from Pobble 365

Moment of Fame

Make some noise! This DIY harmonica activity is so fun, even the grown-ups are going to be tempted to jam.

What you’ll need:

• 2 popsicle sticks or craft sticks

• 1 wide rubber band

• 2 smaller rubber bands

• a plastic straw

Instructions:

1. Cut two approximately 3 cm pieces off the end of your straw

2. Wrap the wide rubber band lengthwise around one popsicle stick

3. Take one piece of straw and tuck it under the rubber band on one end of the popsicle stick

4. Place the other piece of straw on top of the rubber band on the other end of the popsicle stick

5. Place your other popsicle stick on top, and wrap a small rubber band around each end of the popsicle sticks

6. Blow into your harmonica, just like you would a real harmonica! It’s tempting to think you need to hum, like with a kazoo, but a simple blow will do the trick!

Prompt from Pobble 365

Greedy!

Capillary action is a way of describing how water moves when it gets into tiny tubes or spaces, like in between hairs on your head or fibers in a piece of paper.

Capillary action works because water molecules are sticky — not sticky like glue, but sticky enough to stay on your fingers after you wash your hands. Water likes to stick to itself, and it likes to stick to other things. When water gets into a tiny space like between paper fibers, it’ll stick to the sides of the fibers. Because it also sticks to other water molecules, more water gets pulled into the space after it. Gradually, by pulling in more water and sticking to the sides, the water will inch its way along and climb all the way across the paper!

Check out capillary action at work in this wild, water-wicking experiment!

You will need

• coffee filter or paper towels

• small cups (5)

• food colouring - red, yellow, blue

• water

Place five cups about 3 cms apart from each other. Then, place a folded paper towel in between each of them.

Squeeze two drops of red food colouring into the cup on the far left, two drops of yellow food colouring into the cup in the middle, and two drops of blue food colouring into the cup on the far right. Leave the other two cups empty!

Pour water into each of the cups with food colouring, filling almost to the top.

Observe what happened!

Prompt from Pobble 365

Moving House

Look at the Moon. Can you see those circular shapes all across the face of the Moon and the lines extending from them? Those circular shapes are craters and the lines are "ejecta rays" made from material blasted out of the crater.

These craters formed when rocks or comets from space smashed into the surface of the Moon. The impact was so powerful that it pulverized the ground.

You can make craters like those on the Moon using simple baking ingredients!

You will need:

A cake pan or tin

Flour

Sprinkles

Cocoa

Spoon or sifter

Towel, Newspaper, Paper Towels

Rocks of different sizes to be the “impactors”

1. Prepare the Moon’s sub-surface
Spread about an inch of flour into your cake pan. The flour represents the part of the Moon’s crust that an impactor will pulverize and blast out.

2. Add rocks and minerals
Add a layer of cake sprinkles to represent rocks and minerals buried under the surface. (You do not need to completely cover the flour layer.)

3. Create the Moon’s surface
Add a thin third layer by sprinkling cocoa over the top with a spoon. You can also use a sifter for a more even coating. The cocoa represents the surface layer on the Moon.

4. Prepare for impact
Find a spot where you can safely and easily drop a rock into your cake pan. You may want to put down a newspaper or a towel to catch any baking ingredients that come out of the pan.

5. Make a Moon crater
Simulate a rock impacting the Moon by holding a small rock above your head and dropping it into the cake pan. Observe the "ejecta pattern" created by the impact. Did any of the sprinkles get ejected out of the crater? Gently remove the impactor

6. Get creative with your craters

Try dropping different size rocks from different angles and heights. How does the ejecta pattern differ from one impact to the next?