Tadpole Travels

Last Friday we made TANK BROMELIADS for our rainforest. These are amazing plants that do a very special job in the rainforest. As you can guess from the TANK part of the name, they hold water. They are the ideal place for small creatures that need water. Especially tadpoles. And that's why frogs often go up to the CANOPY level.


Check out this short (and silent) video clip that shows just how a tadpole finds itself a long, long way up a tree!



After the tadpole has emerged from the egg it stays alive in the very wet leaves on the forest floor but it won't live very long down there. The frog (Briah) hops down to the forest floor where it laid the eggs and lets the tadpole wriggle onto it's back. Kerrianne is here to help our tadpole wriggle!!

The frog then hops up the tree and lets the tadpole wriggle into the tiny pool of water in the bromeliad.

(The bromeliad is demonstrated by Libby, Aden, Rebecca, Mina, Dylan and Kaylee all showing the curved leaves and Luke holding the bucket)

New arrivals in the rainforest...

Welcome back to Room 3's Rainforest. The newest arrivals are...

...frogs. Very brightly coloured frogs.


We learned that RED EYED TREE FROGS like to camouflage themselves just like the snakes. They tuck up their red feet & close their eyes. This means the insects they like to eat can't see them coming. And their predators find it hard to spot them too. But... when they get a fright... they flash their red eyes and feet so they surprise their predators and have time to get away. Cool eh?


We also learned that POISON ARROW FROGS are very brightly coloured to let their predators know that they are are poisonous.


Frogs live in the UNDERSTORY most of the time. Except... well... sometimes they go to the CANOPY but you'll have to come back next week to find out why!!!

In the meantime, check out these amazing facts and creative stories about our rainforest from some really clever authors.

The butterfly is flying around the big emergent tree.

by Steven

The butterfly and the snake are playing on the emergent tree.

by Arleyah

The emergent tree is humungous. The butterfly and the snake are on the tree.

by Briah

Why is the emergent tree so very big?

Why?

Because they are. That’s why.

by Josiah

We are learning about the rainforest. The canopy has leaves like an umbrella.

by Destiny

Butterflies live in the emergent layer. They have beautiful wings.

by Rebecca

It has a trunk and it has big leaves.

by Kaylee

I like the butterflies and the leaves.

by Annashay

I like the tree. It has leaves. I really, really like it. Wow.

by Libby

The emergent tree. It was blue. It was smelly. Cool.

by Zoe

I saw some leaves. It was cool. The end.

by Aden

I saw a big tarantula on the forest floor. It was hairy. Wow.

by Stefan

The frog is on the emergent tree.

by Kelli

The emergent tree is covered with snakes.

by Luke

I like the emergent tree. It is cool.

by Mina

This is a snake.

by Dylan

There are snakes in the rainforest.

by Tigue

The butterflies are flying round the tree.

by Kerrianne

Emergent, canopy, Understory, forest floor. These are the four layers of the rainforest.

by Mykee

The emergent trees stick out so not much rain and sun can get in. The rainforest smells like nature.

by Cairo

More Layers in our Rainforest

Last Thursday we welcomed Dylan into Room 3.

On Friday we made foliage (leaves) for the CANOPY and UNDERSTORY in our rainforest.


We used two different art techniques. The first technique was painting. We blended different shades of green and yellow paint again which we're getting really good at. Dylan is doing a great job on his second day of school.



The second technique was collage. We tore different types and shades of green paper into small pieces then glued them onto leaf shapes.




Don't you think the leaves make the different layers in our rainforest look pretty cool?



We made snakes last Wednesday afternoon at Buzzy Bees. Snakes live on the FOREST FLOOR, in the UNDERSTORY and in the CANOPY. Wow!
Snakes have amazing patterns on their bodies so they are well camouflaged. This means they blend in really well so their prey don't see them coming. You better look carefully when you check out our rainforest... just in case you're being watched!



Come back soon for some awesome writing about the rainforest from the team in Room 3.

Our Rainforest is Growing

We have been putting our new knowledge about the layers of the rainforest to good use and have started building a mini rainforest right in Room 3! We read a book called The Great Kapok Tree so we started with a Kapok Tree for the EMERGENT LAYER.

Teamwork has been a huge part of Room 3 recently. You might wonder what we're doing here...










We're making bark rubbings to make the trunk of the Kapok Tree look really interesting.









Cairo & Mykee are hard at work.













So are Kaylee, Kelli & Briah.














The trunk and branches of the Kapok Tree is in the background and another group are hard at work to create the leaves. We discovered that a Kapok Tree has COMPOUND LEAVES. This means one large leaf is made up of 5 to 9 leaflets. So if you come and visit Room 3 you will see that our tree has compound leaves too!










And here we all are in front of our EMERGENT Kapok Tree.







The next layers of our mini Rainforest are already under construction. Come back soon and see what they are and what they look like...

The Tropical Forest and The Great Kapok Tree

We've had such a busy week!!

On Monday we went to the Tropical Forest at the Otago Museum.








We saw a pond,








a waterfall,











turtles,








exciting insects,








fish,








a tarantula skin,

and, of course, lots and lots and lots of butterflies!!








On Tuesday we welcomed Tigue into Room 3. It's great to have you here Tigue!

On Wednesday we had a very busy Buzzy Bees session. We helped our Buzzy Bees visitors learn about the butterfly life-cycle that we saw at the Tropical Forest.

On Thursday we didn't have discovery which was sad but we had a special assembly to say goodbye to Mr McLeod in Room 5 (also very sad)

On Friday we began creating our very own Tropical Rainforest wall. Watch out this week as we continue the Room Three Kapok Tree.

Painting The Gardner's Maze

This week our Big Book was The Gardner's Maze. Today we painted small hedge plants to make our own little maze on the wall. We worked on our own but it was a real team effort to paint enough to make the maze. Three different greens and some yellow gave a great effect. We didn't even use water to rinse our brushes because we learned how to unload the brushes by painting out the excess onto newspaper.

Letter to Mrs O'Donnell

After Mrs O'Donnell responded to our post about what we found in the rainforest we decided to write her a letter. She was very keen to find out what is special about a toucan. The extra large letter is on the wall in room 3 but we think Mrs O'Donnell won't mind if you share her letter here. Thanks to the wonderful kids in room 3 for all the great ideas for the letter.

Dear Mrs O'Donnell

We have learned a lot about tropical birds. We noticed a lot of different beaks on the birds.

The Harpy Eagle has a sharp beak to eat small birds and animals. The macaw has a strong beak for eating nuts with hard shells. The quetzal has a tiny beak to eat little bugs.

The Toucan has a humungous beak to eat large insects and fruit.

We hope you get to see our pictures.

From Room 3.