Winners of the school speech competition

A huge congratulations to all of the winners in this year's school speech competition.

William is congratulated by Mr Auld on winning the Year 3 section with his speech titled 'The world would be better if there were no sisters'.  Your speech made the audience laugh and you did a great job presenting it William.

Mr Auld congratulates Josie on winning the Year 4 section with her speech titled 'The world would be better if there were no speeches'.  Your speech was VERY appropriate and gave your audience plenty to think about Josie.  I wonder if there will be speeches next year...

Congratulations also to Te Aroha, Bryce, Charlotte and Alyssa for being chosen to present their speeches in the finals.  You all did Room 4 proud!

Here is William's speech that he presented in front of Room 4.  If you would like to see Josie's speech, click on the link to Josie's blog (on the right hand side of our blog).

Making hokey pokey

While some of our classmates were away skiing, the rest of us were very busy learning while making...

HOKEY POKEY!

This was a terrific way to end our science topic all about solids, liquids and gases.

2 Tablespoons of golden syrup and 4 Tablespoons of sugar, simmering in a pot for 7 minutes

1 teaspoon of baking soda added - woah! What a difference!

 In no time our liquid had turned into a solid.

 Time for the taste test - Mmmmmm delicious!

Did you know....? when the baking soda is added to the golden syrup and sugar mixture, that there is a reaction which causes carbon dioxide to be trapped in the mixture (resulting in the bubbles/holes in the hokey pokey).

Turning liquids into a solid

Today in Room 4 Mrs O showed us a bottle of milk and a bottle of white vinegar - 2 liquids.  She then told us that these two liquids could turn into a solid.  But how? We wondered if we had to put them in the freezer... but NO!

Watch our video to find out what to do...

Thank you to William and Josie for making our movie.

Student of the week - William

Everyone in Room 4 is super-proud of William's effort in writing and learning his speech.  He has shown determination and a natural ability in presenting his speech in an interesting way.  We can't wait to hear his final performance!

Fairytales to watch

Sleeping Beauty

Little Red Riding Hood

Three Little Pigs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Rapunzel

The Elves and the Shoemaker

Hansel & Gretal

The Pied Piper of Hamlin

Robin Hood

The Emperor's New Clothes

Thumbelina

Pinocchio

South Otago Cross Country Runners

Toby, Lanie and Ryan went to to the South Otago cross country to represent Lawrence Area School for the Year 4's today. They all competed very well and we are super proud of out runners! Well done Team!!!!!!

Mentos and fizz experiment

Today we conducted another science experiment using readily available household materials - Sprite, Diet Coke and Mentos mints.

We all gathered outside while Bryce opened the Sprite bottle.  We waited...... 

Samara took the paper tube with half of the packed of the mint mentos inside and lined it up with the Sprite bottle opening. She then pulled her hand away to let the mentos fall into the bottle (this was a bit tricky as it was raining and the paper had got damp so the mentos stuck to the paper!)

 And..... a little ACTION!!!!!!!!

There was a reaction with instant foaming of the Sprite up the neck of the bottle and spilling out.  It was over quite quickly though with 3/4 of the Sprite still left in the bottle.

Time to repeat the experiment with Diet Coke.  We all had to make a prediction prior to carrying out the experiment with most of us thinking that the Diet Coke would have a better reaction with the mentos mints.  

William lines up the tube of mentos with the Diet Coke bottle...

 And... ACTION!!!!!

 Check out the reaction on the students' faces!!!!

 Instantly there was a fountain of coke spurting up above the top of the coke bottle. The mixture continued to bubble inside the bottle for quite some time.

 All that was left - half a bottle of Diet Coke with mentos sunk to the bottom!

We think that there was a chemical reaction between the Sprite / Diet Coke and the mentos. The carbon dioxide (in the fizz) caused the fizz to be spurted up out of the bottle as soon as it came into contact with the mentos lollies.

What the experts say....

When we searched the internet for an explanation for how this experiment works we found out that dropping something into the fizz speeds up the process of the carbon dioxide trying to escape, because bubbles form on the surface of the Mentos.  Because Mentos lollies are covered in tiny dimples (a bit like a golf ball), this increases it's surface area and means a lot of bubbles can form.

We also found out that the experiment works better with Diet Coke than other fizzy drinks due to the different ingredients used in Diet Coke and the fact that it is less sticky.

We were left wondering........

• Would other types of lollies work so well, for example, Eclipse mints?
• Would it spurt up higher if we put the whole tube of Mentos mints into the Diet Coke?
• What would happen if we put a Mentos and some coke in our mouth at the same time?

Student of the week - Wyatt

What a terrific role model Wyatt has been to the rest of the class over the past couple of weeks.  He is always quick to the mat, sitting up nicely, looking at the teacher and ready for instructions related to his learning.  Top work Wyatt.

Aerobics routine for gymfest

Why is Maths important?

Room 4 students - please add your ideas to one or more of these padlets.

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Student of the week - Regan

We love to see students always trying their best.  Regan is a great example of this - he always pushes himself during Cross Country training, giving his very best effort.  Regan you are a shining example of our school motto 'Strive to Excel'.

NPC Rugby players visited today!!!!

We had such an awesome visit from the Otago NPC rugby players! They called in on their way through to Alexandra. They were so cool, talking to us, signing autographs, posing for photographs and (best of all) playing some games with us in the tennis courts. Check out our cool photos!


Otago NPC Players drop in for a visit on PhotoPeach

Book & Movie Reviews

We have looking at persuasive writing this term, and one of our tasks was to write a review of our favourite book or movie to persuade out teachers to either watch or read it. 

This week we have been using our writing to help us create a movie trailer advertising our book or our movie. Here are the ones that have been completed so far.

Charlotte's trailer

Clifton's trailer

Josie's Trailer

Samara's Trailer

Alyssa's Trailer

Lanie's Trailer

Anna's Trailer

Ryan's Trailer

Toby's Trailer

Clues about me

TeAroha

In Room 4 we have been learning about how to use the 'inference' strategy when we are reading. One of our independent reading activities was to create an inference clues chart using Google Draw about ourselves - we had to try to include a variety of different clues for our audience.

What can you infer about these Room 4 students?

by Aaron

by Bryce

by Charlotte

by William

Volcano in the sand-pit

Today for science we started to learn about fizz. We learned that carbon-dioxide creates fizz, and we watched a Suzy Cato video where she showed lots of fun experiments creating fizz using carbon dioxide. We decided to create an experiment of our own.

Imogen, Regan and Josie built a fabulous volcano in the sand-pit and we put a cup of malt vinegar in a crater at the top. Toby poured in a couple of table spoons of baking soda and we all stood back to see what the reaction would be.

Here is a video made by Alyssa and Samara showing exactly what happened...

OUR VIDEO OF OUR EXPERIMENT

Ice-cream Science

How lucky are we in Room 4?  Who would have thought that learning could be so much fun!

We have been learning about the states of matter - solid, liquid and gas, and how these can be changed.

We watched a short DVD which showed an experiment, making ice-cream within about 10 minutes and decided that we'd like to give it a try.

For those of you at home who would like to give this a go, here's our method:

Take one small sealable plastic bag (Glad bags seem to be the strongest).

Inside place:

1/2 cup milk

1 Tablespoon of sugar

1/4 teaspoon of vanilla essence

Seal the bag.

Inside a larger sealable plastic bag place some ice and 3/4 cup of salt. Put the small bag with the milk mixture inside the larger bag with the ice and salt and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE......

 Measuring the milk, sugar and vanilla essence

 

Into a separate bag goes the ice and salt

SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE...

 ... and shake some more!

 It worked!!! We now have SOLID ice-cream.

Time to sample the finished product - Mmmmmmmmmmm. Delicious.

Room 4 students - your challenge is to change this recipe in some way at home (maybe add something or leave something out and see what happens), then tell us all about it.