The Lighthouse - 5s
Senses
The Lighthouse Keepers have started their new unit of inquiry which will explore the central idea ‘We use our senses to learn about ourselves and discover the world.’ Our lines of inquiry will be that there are 5 senses in the human body and senses give us information to help us learn. We will explore these lines of inquiry within the conceptual focus of form and connection.
Much of this inquiry will be filtered through our Conceptual PlayWorld, which for this term will be linked to the story George’s Marvelous Medicine, by Roald Dahl. We started reading the story this week and we have already started identifying ourselves as scientists. We spoke about how being a scientist can be a hazardous job and that we need to make sure we use our senses, um, sensibly, so that we can stay safe. We conducted a survey to find out which sense was the most popular in the Lighthouse, and we found out that touch was the most popular. The Lighthouse Keepers also surveyed the Lofties to find out which sense was their favourite to explore with.
We have really enjoyed the science experiments that we have carried out so far. We mixed vinegar and bicarbonate soda in a sandwich bag in order to create a reaction. We started by putting one teaspoon of bicarbonate soda into a tissue and then added the vinegar and we sealed up the bag. The first reaction we created wasn’t enough to make the lunch bag pop. We continued adding bicarbonate soda until we got to 5 teaspoons and then, pop!
We also had a great time making elephant toothpaste: we mixed peroxide, dishwashing liquid, food colour, warm water and yeast. Then we watched the elephant toothpaste rise up out of the plastic bottle! We noticed that it even smelt like toothpaste, some of us thought this was because of the food colouring that we added.
George and Grandma (from George’s Marvelous Medicine) will be popping into the class at different times and they will no doubt need some help measuring, listing, creating, mixing and observing. Grandma will no doubt need a few pointers on how to be a better Grandma as well!
Stay tuned for where we end up with this Inquiry/ Conceptual PlayWorld!
Clinton Morgan & Sophia Tsolakis
The Fives Classroom Teachers