Swimming at Hilton Brown

It's been a fun few weeks of swimming lessons at Hilton Brown. Everyone in Room 16 has shown improvement in their style and water confidence.

Well done everyone! One week of swimming to go!

Clever Character Descriptions

Over the part few weeks we have been exploring ways to describe characters. We read some fantastic character descriptions from our favourite authors, and then decided what we needed to do to write successful descriptions too. Our success criteria included: Good character descriptions might have-
1. plenty of specific adjectives (describe nouns- e.g. spiky)
2. similes
3. metaphors
4. alliteration
5. specific adverbs (describe verbs- e.g. cautiously)
6. a description of what they look like
7. a description of their personality

Here are two fabulous character descriptions of the wicked stepmother in Fiona French's "Snow White in New York". See how many of the success criteria they used to make their writing interesting.

Snow White's step mother is as deadly as a vampire. She's got a prickly, straight thin nose. Her face is half shadowy and she has blood red lipstick. She has the deadliest look, and she has a prickly outfit too. By Harrison L

The wicked queen has red blood lipstick that looks like the middle of a werewolves mouth. Her eyes look like poison ivy and her earrings look like dead men hanging on a rope from a hollow tree. She has spiked clothing that would hurt a lot, and she loves to smoke with a burnt cigarette. By Baileigh Nicholas

Slimy Experiment!

Today we tried to make Mucus Slime. It was a disapponitment! We expected it to explode like a volcano in a bowl (quoting Baileigh Nicholas) but is was like dish washing liquid which we see and feel every night. We added lux flakes, food colouring and hot water together and vigorously mixed them. Here is what it looked like. Boring isn't it!

Terrific Tio Cakes!

Yesterday we had an exciting Tio team cake day. It was the last cake day of the year. There were awesome cakes including a "Minion from Despictable Me", three hamburger cakes, a Willy Wonka cake and many more. Here are some of our favourites!!

UHPS Gala day!

On Saturday Upper Harbour Primary held their very first Gala day! It was a very exciting event and those who came along had fun on bouncy castles, bungy rides, scooter, ponies, not to mention adventuring into the "Fairytopia" and the Haunted House! One of the highlights of the day was the dunking machine. For just 1 dollar the contestant could throw 3 balls at a target. If they hit the target a big bucket of water would fall on the lucky teacher underneath. Here is Ms Craig, Mr Hall (our 2011 DP) and Mrs Millett on the dunking machine!

Volcano at UHPS!

Today we all clambered into the sandpit and built a huge volcano. Then we lined it with glad wrap, and poured baking soda into the lined hole. We dropped a few drops of red food colouring in and then we were ready to make our volcano erupt! It wasn't a violent eruption, but as Liam poured the vinegar into the hole we could all see the chemical reaction as the baking soda and vinegar created carbon dioxide gas bubbles. The "lava" then poured out of our volcano!! Wow!

Billowing Balloon Fun!

Yesterday we did another really exciting Change experiment with Mrs Esquilant. We wrote up a procedure to show our experimental process.




Goal: We want to investigate what happens when baking soda mixes with vinegar.
Equipment:
Small bottle Balloon Vinegar Baking Soda.
Method:
1. Pour some vinegar into a bottle.
2. Use a funnel to tip baking soda into a balloon.
3. Carefully stretch the balloon over the bottle so that the baking soda drops in.
4. See what happens. Talk about why.

Conclusion: The baking soda and the vinegar mixed together causing a chemical reaction. This reaction created a gas called carbon dioxide (the same gas that we breathe out). This gas blew the balloon up. WOW, Science is COOL!