Butterfly Creek

To follow up all the learning we have done about spiders and insects, last week we went on a trip with Room 20 to Butterfly Creek.

There was a lot to see and do there and we had a fabulous time.

Paul showed us a giant weta and told us all about how it was dying out, there was only one island left in New Zealand that they lived on. But because of a breeding programme they are now living on 3 islands. Miss Williams got to hold the weta, she said its legs tickled her hands and its abdomen (tummy) was cold.

We all went exploring around and saw lots of amazing creatures, there was a farm where we could pat the animals.

A dinosaur kingdom where the dinosaurs moved,

There was an aquarium, we managed to find Nemo, Marlin and Dory in there. There was a butterfly room full of all sorts of tropical butterflies. Because the butterflies are from tropical places it was very hot in the butterfly room.

We met Paul and another keeper in the butterfly room and they told us all about blue tongued lizards and tarantulas. Zoe asked Paul if tarantulas are mean because sometimes they bite humans. He told us that no animals are really mean, the only reason they hurt other living things is because they feel threatened or because they need to eat.

Most of us agreed that the butterfly room was our favourite. If you stood still long enough then the butterflies would come and land on you.

Just before we left we got to see the crocodile show. Paul and another keeper were feeding scar, an Australian Salt Water Crocodile. Check out the videos below of Scar jumping for his food.

You can see all of the photos from the trip in our Butterfly Creek album.

Spider Week: Interesting Videos

We have found out some really interesting things while watching some videos this week. We thought we would share them with you so you can learn more about spiders too.

Spider Week: Making Connections

There has been a lot going on in Room 21 this week with all our learning about spiders. We have been reading about spiders, observing spiders, drawing spiders, watching videos about spiders, making presentations about spiders, and writing stories as if we were a spider.

Mrs Wood even sent us a toy spider and asked us to find out what was wrong with it.

We managed to find not only 3, but 9 things that were wrong.

1. It is yellow, spiders aren't yellow.

2. It only has 2 eyes, spiders normally have 8 eyes.

3. It has 3 body parts, spiders only have 2 parts, the cephalothorax and the abdomen

4. It does not have spinnerets (the part that makes the web)

5. It has no hairs, spiders have small hairs on them.

6.It has no palps. Did you know you can tell if a spider is a boy by looking at the palps. If they are big, like boxing gloves, it means that the spider is a boy.

7. Its legs are stuck together, webbed.

8. The spider is smiling.

9. It is made of plastic.

Thanks for the challenge Mrs Wood!

Spider Week: What do spiders eat?

Spider week is going great. We have had 3 more spiders join our class, we had to start thinking about what to feed them. We looked up what spiders eat. We now know that they are carnivores and they eat insects and other spiders. On Wednesday morning we went bug hunting to find them some food and we managed to catch this cicada.

We realised it was a lot bigger than our spiders though, so after observing it for the morning we released it outside. We did manage to catch a few moths for our spiders to eat.

Spider Week

After finding a spider outside our classroom last week, we had lots of questions about spiders. 

Introducing SPIDER WEEK!

This week in room 21 everything we are doing is related to spiders!

Today Miss Williams found a spider in the staff room. She managed to catch it in a bug container. We looked at it closely and did observational drawings of the spider. We then wrote about the spider. Check out some of our work below.

Can you identify this spider?

Today after morning tea, we found a spider on the wall outside our classroom.

We put on our scientist hats to try and figure out what type of spider it might be.

We think it could be wolf spider because the wolf spider has long legs and so does ours.

Wolf Spider

It could also be a grey house spider because there is an untidy web on the light outside our class, just like the grey house's web. It also has brown dots on its back and it looks the same colour.

Grey house spider

The web under the light

Can you help us identify it?